There was a reel going around once, showing a trick for when you go to the beach and you’re afraid someone might steal your money or valuables.
The advice was to put them inside a diaper that looks used.
You fold it carefully, make it look full of “authentic” poop and leave it there, in plain sight, on your towel.
No one touches it. (Unless they’ve seen the reel too, maybe.)
Usually, everyone just walks past the diaper, wearing that disgusted grimace, suspecting nothing.
Who would ever look where they expect to find shit?
That image hit me during a writing workshop, when one of the participants asked if it’s “normal” to resist inner work.
And I thought: I do that too, all the time.
I avoid opening the diaper, afraid I’ll get dirty with all the shit (for nothing).
But every time I wrinkle my nose and dare to open the Velcro, I always find something valuable inside.
Sometimes, things are mixed up, it’s true, and I have to dig a bit before I find the treasure, but every single time, without exception, there’s something good in there.
And more than that, I realized I also use diapers to hide what’s precious in me, under something repulsive.
I hide, under anger, under resistance, the things I’m afraid for others to see.
I hide them under “I don’t have time,” “I’m not ready,” “I don’t feel like writing today,” “not now,” “I’m fine as I am,” or “how much more shit do I have to dig through?”
I forget that there, under the emotional “shit,” under all the excuses, the tiredness, and the fear, lie the valuable things.
Authenticity.
That piece of truth that sometimes smells too strong to leave in the open.
Resistance isn’t the enemy.
It’s the guard.
It protects what’s sacred in me.
Something that doesn’t want to be stolen, judged, or desired by those who don’t know how much it cost.
Because it remembers how much I was hurt when I once exposed what was valuable: kindness, empathy, care, vulnerability…
Now I’m in a place where I have the courage to open those foul-smelling little bundles.
To look inside without turning away.
To admit: yes, it might smell bad.
But inside, among the shame and the fear, lies my precious truth.
And that truth, no matter how ugly or dirty it seems at first, is the purest, most valuable part of me.