Stop Asking the Snake Why It Bit You

There’s this idea floating around the internet:

Imagine being bit by a snake,
and instead of helping yourself heal,
you spend your time chasing the snake
to ask why it bit you
and to prove you didn’t deserve it.

Now read that again, but this time, not as a quote, but as a mirror. 

If you’re a woman over 40 coming home to yourself,
you’ve lived some version of this.

Not with a literal snake.

With a person.
A system.
A job.
A family dynamic.
Or a version of you that kept abandoning you.

We got hella good at chasing the thing that hurt us.

We were not raised to tend to the wound.

We were raised to:

Understand
Explain
Fix
Earn
Be chosen
Be liked
Be reasonable
Be the one who keeps the peace

So when something bites us
rejection
betrayal
coldness
dismissal

we don’t turn inward.
We turn toward the source.

We analyze it.
We replay it.
We build entire psychological documentaries about it.

If I can just understand why
If I can just say this one thing better
If I can just show them who I really am
If I can just not be too much or not enough

Then maybe…

I won’t get bitten again.

Our brains are not trying to give us peace. They’re trying to prevent round two.

And when we’ve been hurt, our brain does something wildly efficient and wildly inconvenient:

It loops.

Not because we’re broken.
Because our brain is trying to solve the threat.

The brain is a prediction machine.
It wants to prevent future pain.

So it runs simulations:

What happened
Why it happened
How to avoid it next time

Over and over and over.

Except here’s the problem.

When the “snake” is another human
or a system
or an old relational pattern

There is no clean answer.

So the loop never closes.

Which means our nervous system stays activated
long after the bite.

So instead of healing, we stay busy trying to make it make sense
like it’s a puzzle that owes us a clean edge.

We call it processing.

Sometimes it is.

And sometimes it’s self-abandonment doing magic tricks so we don’t notice what’s missing.

Because while we are:

drafting the perfect text
rehearsing imaginary conversations
mentally defending ourselves in a courtroom that does not exist

we are not doing the one thing that actually heals us:

Coming back to ourselves.

And then midlife rolls in and our tolerance for this shit quietly expires.

There is a moment
not always dramatic
sometimes quiet and almost boring
where something inside us says:

I cannot do this anymore.

Not the chasing
Not the explaining
Not the performing emotional labor for people who already decided who I am

And it feels confusing at first.

Because the old strategies worked.

They kept relationships intact
They kept things smooth
They kept us safe enough.

Until they didn’t.

Midlife isn’t a crisis.

It’s a recalibration.

Our system is done chasing snakes.

This is the unsexy middle where nobody claps.

I care deeply about this work.

I sit in these conversations every week.

I watch women realize, in real time, that they’ve spent decades trying to be understood by people who were never trying to understand them.

It is not:

Winning the argument
Getting the apology
Being finally seen by the person who hurt us

It is:

Regulating our body
Interrupting the loop
Letting the question go unanswered
Choosing our energy over the explanation

It’s deeply unsexy.
And wildly powerful.

It's time to stop chasing after snakes. 

We don’t need their explanation to begin our recovery.

Understanding them will not undo what happened.

Closure isn’t something they give us.

It’s what our nervous system feels
when we stop re-entering the wound.

Not every bite is a lesson.

Some are just information.

And the information is:

That is not safe for me.

This is the lie holding the whole thing together.

Sometimes the most radical thing we can do
is stop trying to prove we didn’t deserve what happened.

Because we didn’t.

And the proof was never required.

Prick your finger and become blood sisters with this shit.

Imagine being bit by a snake…

…and choosing, for the first time,

to walk away
without chasing it
without explaining ourselves
without needing anything from it

and tending to our own damn wound.