My Therapist is a Quote Account and the Algorithm Knows I'm Healing
Twenty-two people held space for her becoming. He wasn't among them.
| Keren Letizia Screen Time Documentarian |
It was 2:47 am when @unfoldingwoman asked me why I was still apologizing for my evolution, and I understood then that the universe had been watching all along.
I don't remember following @unfoldingwoman. I don't remember following any of them — @soulfullqueen, @the.healing.era, @liberatedwomanwrites — but they found me anyway, the way light finds a crack, the way water finds its level, the way a targeted post finds someone who has recently changed their relationship status. The algorithm recognized that I was ready.
Three weeks ago, I ended a chapter. I won't say his name because this essay is about me. It has always been about me. That's something I'm only now learning to embrace, thanks to a carousel post from @reclaimyournarrative that explained I had been pouring from an empty cup into hands that were never thirsty. I saved it immediately. I have saved 47 posts in the last 21 days. This is what the work looks like.
People talk about healing like it's a straight road from A to B. They've clearly never seen the nautilus shell infographic. Healing spirals. Healing doubles back. Healing sometimes lies in bed until 3 pm, watching a stranger in some developed country explain attachment styles over b-roll of ocean waves. I'm part of a great communion of women standing on metaphorical beaches at sunset, silhouetted against our becoming. Every repost to my story is a testimony.
My screen time report says I've averaged six hours and 23 minutes of daily screen time this week. What the metrics don't capture is that those hours are an investment in my future self, the version of me who will look back on this cocoon phase and weep with gratitude. Every scroll is an act of self-parenting. Every double-tap, a tiny revolution.
My For You page has become a mirror, and I finally like what I see: a woman who knows her worth, who sets boundaries, and who understands that some people are sent to us as lessons, not destinations. I read that somewhere. I've read everything somewhere.
Yesterday I posted a sunset I photographed from my kitchen window. The light was doing something transcendent over the building opposite, turning the satellite dishes into chalices of gold. I added a song, and I typed, then deleted, then retyped. "She remembered who she was, and the game changed." It's a quote. I don't know who originally said it. It doesn't matter. It belongs to all of us now.
Twenty-two people viewed that story. I know because I checked. I check the way I used to, compulsively, with my thumb already knowing the motion before my brain authorizes it. Except now I've learned to see those numbers as affirmations. Twenty-two people held space for my becoming. Twenty-two people saw the sunset and, on some level, understood that I'm emerging.
He was not among them.
I noticed this without intentionally seeking it out. I noticed it the way you notice a gap where a tooth used to be: involuntarily, with your tongue, several times an hour. But the noticing doesn't mean anything. Just residual pattern recognition. The algorithm has already moved on. So have I.
Tonight, @unfoldingwoman posted again. "The version of you that they couldn't love is the version someone else is praying for." I reshared it without adding commentary. Some truths speak for themselves. Some transformations don't require witnesses.
But just in case, I left my account public. ■
