healthy, safe, secure relationships are a blessing but healthy, safe, secure relationships that *also* uplift, challenge you, nourish you, consistently stimulate growth, and bring you joy do more by teaching you that healthiness, safety, and security are the bare minimum. navigating violent systems and complex social relations as survivors of abuse is something many of us must do on a daily basis; this impacts us on a moment-to-moment basis and influences our behavior, thinking, and belief-formation processes in different ways, often depending on where we are in our healing journey and how much access we have to healthy, safe, secure spaces and relationships. be that as it may when we start to *truly* prioritize healthy boundary setting, let go of unhealthy beliefs and actions that negatively impact/harm ourselves and other beings, and prune our spiritual trees—aka cut people and behaviors out of our lives—to promote healthy growth it becomes evermore apparent which features of our lives aren’t enhancing our peace or stimulating growth. the more my chronic illnesses/pain increase in severity the more I’ve been forced to become aware of sources of emotional/spiritual/psychological pain that I have the power to control my relationship with/to. whatever *needs* to be pruned will be. recognizing what we *do* have control over in our lives is important because, let’s be real, we don’t have control over most aspects of our lives under given their ways white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, and violent system directly impact our lives and have since before we were born. gonna stop rambling now, but last thing: we really can’t control other people so it’s imperative that we do all we can to at least try to control how we respond to other people in an effort o preserve our peace amidst collective grief and global turmoil. surrender to reclaim.