Oops Day

The Lesson of Someone Who Stays

REFLECTIONSHEALING FOUNDATIONS

Shannon Korczynski

6/14/20265 min read

Yesterday was our "Oops Day."

Thirteen years ago, I accidentally sent a message on a dating app and two days later David and I met in person and have been together ever since. Looking back now, it is hard to imagine my life without him in it. He quickly became my "Turtle," and for so many years I saw him as the answer to all the questions I didn't even know I had been asking. All of the heartbreak, disappointment, failed relationships, and painful lessons that came before him suddenly seemed worth it because they led me to him.

Anniversaries have a way of making us reflect, and this one arrived during a season when I already seem to be questioning everything in my life. My business feels stalled, projects remain unfinished, relationships are asking more of me, old wounds seem closer to the surface than they have been in years, and I cannot seem to find my direction. I find myself wondering where I am supposed to be going and whether the path I have been walking down is still the one that is meant for me.

Earlier today I was reading a post from the creator of the Matridonal Remedies group that I am part of, and one sentence seemed to settle into my soul: healing happens in response.

I thought about that sentence long and hard because it mirrors what I have believed for a very long time. Healing is divine. The body carries an incredible intelligence that far exceeds our understanding, and my role as a practitioner has never been to force healing. Whether I am looking through the lens of biological dentistry, natural health, Traditional Chinese Medicine, homeopathy, cellular health, or through the esoteric lens of Human Design, astrology, or simply my own life experiences, I continue to arrive at the same place. We do not create healing; we participate with it.

The body responds, life responds, relationships respond, our businesses respond. Even our symptoms respond.

Every day I speak with people who are searching for the one supplement, the one protocol, the one practitioner who will finally fix the problem, yet the symptom itself is simply pointing toward something much deeper. The symptom is never the beginning of the story. It is simply the place where the story finally became visible.

As I sat with that thought, I started wondering what symptoms are showing up in my own life right now. What if my frustration with business is merely a symptom? What if my uncertainty is a symptom? What if the difficult conversations in my relationship are symptoms? What if all of them are pointing toward something deeper that is asking to be seen?

I have spent years studying patterns through dentistry and holistic health. Human Design taught me to look at response rather than force. Astrology taught me that life moves through seasons and cycles. Tarot taught me that we revisit lessons at deeper levels of understanding. The body taught me that symptoms are messengers. When I step back and look at all of those systems together, they speak the same language and offer me understanding and patience for what I am moving through and learning.

There is a question that makes me uncomfortable because I am not entirely sure I know the answer. Have I spent much of my life negotiating myself downward so that others could remain comfortable?

When abandonment becomes part of your story, adaptation becomes a necessary survival skill. You learn to anticipate needs, soften desires, lower expectations, and make yourself easier to accommodate, less of a burden. Over time those adaptations stop feeling like survival strategies and begin feeling like personality traits. They can easily lead to self-abandonment, anger, and grief.

As I have been sitting with all of this, I have also found myself reflecting on my parents and some of the patterns I witnessed growing up. The older I get, the more I realize that many of the lessons we think belong to our present circumstances actually began long before we arrived here. Family patterns have a way of moving through generations until someone finally becomes aware enough to see them, and heal them.

That may be why this season feels so significant. I may not only be looking at my own story. I may actually be looking at a story that began long before me and is now asking to be understood differently, addressed, and released.

That is also why this season feels so emotional. I am beginning to question which parts of me are truly mine and which parts were built to keep me safe, maintain connection, avoid conflict, or protect me from disappointment.

Maybe that is why my Turtle came into my life thirteen years ago. For a long time I believed he was my reward after all of the life lessons and heartache. Today I find myself wondering if he is both the reward and the lesson.

David is not perfect. Anyone who knows us knows he can drive me absolutely crazy at times, just as I am sure I drive him crazy too. We both carry our own stories, wounds, fears, and ways of seeing the world. Yet through all of it, he stayed.

That is very impactful for me to see, and as I sit with that realization, I wonder if the lesson was never about learning how to survive when people leave.

The lesson may be learning how to receive someone who stays.

For someone whose life has been shaped by themes of abandonment, rejection, dismissal, and feeling unseen or unheard, that may be one of the hardest lessons of all. I have spent much of my life preparing for loss and bracing for disappointment. I am not sure I have spent enough time learning how to fully receive love, loyalty, commitment, and presence.

He was not meant to be perfect, and he was not meant to fix me, nor was he meant to heal my wounds for me. He was meant to stay.

And in staying, he may be helping me see all the places where I still struggle to believe that I am worthy of taking up space, expressing my unique beliefs, honoring my desires, and asking for more.

I don't have a conclusion for any of this right now. I am still sitting with these questions. What I do know is that healing has never arrived through force in my life. It has always arrived through awareness, through willingness, through timing, through struggles, and through the courage to see all the things that seemed hidden.

For now, I am listening to my body, my heart, the patterns, and the questions, trusting that whatever is asking to be healed will continue revealing itself when I am ready to see it. Healing has always unfolded this way for me, one layer at a time, one realization at a time, one lesson at a time.

This week's post ended up being very different than the toothbrush article I had planned to write. A colleague recently asked me to put together a comprehensive toothpaste post for her community, and I have been working through that project as well. Both topics are still coming and will find their way into future blogs.

This week, however, I felt called to honor what was asking for my attention. Sometimes the lesson arrives before the article. Sometimes the student needs the message before the teacher can share it. Thank you for allowing me to share a little of my own journey. As practitioners, we often stand beside others as they navigate their healing.

This week reminded me that we never stop being students ourselves.

Oops Day

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