🪙 The Coin in the Chest:

Katiana Cordoba
Jun 16
2 min read

Learning to Live with Two Truths at Once

There’s a subtle yet powerful trap on the path of personal growth. It whispers:

“If I were truly healed, I wouldn’t feel this anymore.”“If I were whole, I wouldn’t need anyone’s validation.”“If I were strong, I wouldn’t still want to be seen or chosen.”

But the truth is softer, and deeper:

We can be whole and still ache. We can be self-sufficient and still long to be recognized.We can love ourselves and still wish that someone else had loved us differently.

🌗 Two truths, one soul

Inside each of us lives a paradox:

One part of us is complete, centered, full. It says: “I don’t need you to validate me. I know who I am.”
Another part of us still waits at the door. It whispers: “Please tell me I mattered. Tell me I was good. That I wasn’t wrong.”

These two aren’t in conflict.They’re both telling the truth.

The problem isn’t that we have two voices.The suffering comes when we force them to fight, or try to silence one.

🪙 The sacred coin

Imagine a coin resting in the center of your chest.On one side: the longing —to be chosen, to be validated, to be loved back.On the other: the knowing —that you are already whole, already enough, already love itself.

This coin is not a mistake. It is your inner balance.

Not to choose one side over the other,but to hold both without judgment. To say: “Yes, I want connection. Yes, I am already complete.”

🔁 Contradiction is not brokenness

We are not meant to be internally one-dimensional.We are, like nature, full of opposites that dance and create life.

Day and night.Inhale and exhale.Roots and wings.Solitude and belonging.

Why wouldn’t the soul be the same?à

We’re not broken because we still wish for recognition.We’re not weak because we hope someone who hurt us might one day say: “You were right.”We’re just human.

And being human is not a flaw —it’s the canvas of our wholeness.

🌱 Wholeness includes the longing

The mistake isn’t in having that soft, open, aching place inside.The mistake is in making it wrong.

You can allow that part of you to live —the one that still hopes for an apology, still wants to feel loved, still sometimes checks the door just in case—without letting it rule you.

Let it live. Let it breathe.But don’t give it the keys to your worth.

🧬 We are like cells

Each human is like a living cell: complete in itself,yet also part of a greater body.A cell alone can’t survive.A cell that denies its connection loses its function.But a cell that loses its boundary becomes chaos.

You are whole. And you belong. You are sovereign. And you are woven into everything.

Both are true.