There are places in this world I don’t want to visit.
Some are physical.
Some are internal.
Some wear the mask of healing retreats or childhood hometowns or certain conversations I’m still not ready to have.
But not wanting to visit isn’t always about fear.
Sometimes, it’s about sovereignty.
With Oddthentics, we don’t force meaning onto things.
We don’t drag ourselves into spaces just because they promise “growth.”
We listen.
We host.
We allow avoidance to be curious, not cowardly.
So when I think about places I don’t want to visit, I don’t start with geography.
I start with texture.
What does this place stir in my nervous system?
What lives there that I am not ready—or willing—to hold?
For me, that place might look like:
- An old house full of silence that once held too much noise.
- A spiritual community that taught me to shrink in the name of “oneness.”
- A conversation where I know I’ll be expected to perform healing I haven’t lived yet.
These are not failures of courage.
These are boundaries rooted in truth.
Not every door needs to be walked through.
Not every trauma needs to be revisited for it to be valid.
Not every shadow needs to be chased down to prove you’re doing the work.
Sometimes honoring the place you refuse to go is the most integrated act you can make.
It says:
“I trust my no.”
“I trust my not yet.”
“I trust that healing doesn’t always require confrontation—it sometimes requires a lantern and a different path entirely.”
So what place in the world do I never want to visit?
The one that asks me to abandon myself to be accepted.
The one that demands performance over presence.
The one that doesn’t make space for contradiction, complexity, or quiet.
And that’s not avoidance.
That’s Oddthenticity.
That’s me, choosing which valleys I walk into—and which ones I let lie untouched, until the day a lantern lights there on its own.
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