All right. If I’m being 100 percent honest, the entire reason I got into healing crystals was because they’re pretty and shiny. I wanted a carefully curated collection of gems on my nightstand—and in a singing bowl and scattered about my desk—that could balance my insanely frazzled New York City energy and lighten my heavy spirit.

It all started with rose quartz, purported to help with all matters of the heart. Not just your relationships with others, but your relationship with yourself too, something I’m always working on. Plus, they were millennial pink.

I first noticed the blush-pink stone sparkling in some of my favorite yoga studios. When I heard they could heal my heart chakra and repair my heinous lack of self-esteem, I couldn’t help but pick up a palm stone, and then another, and then, well, a LOT more healing crystals from there. Turns out rose quartz is a gateway stone, and I got hooked.

What the hell are healing crystals anyway?!

Honestly, I don’t know. You can ask eight different people and get eight answers, but the gist of it is that various stones have healing energies that align with imbalances in one of the seven (or nine, or 13, again, depending on who you ask) chakras, or the spiritual energy centers corresponding to nerve bundles, major organs, and our “psychological, emotional, and spiritual states of being,” according to the Chopra Center. When these energy centers are misaligned, or blocked, millennia-old logic explains, energy becomes stagnant and can manifest as physical illness or throw you off emotionally.

“Crystal healing is the use of a crystal’s vibration to affect the human energy field. Crystals act as a conduit for healing—allowing positive, healing energy to flow into the body while pushing negative, toxic, disease-causing energy out,” says Audrey Kitching, a crystal healer and the founder of CrystalCactus.com, where my obsession with pretty crystals was magnified by ten million because of how chic her packaging is.

After ordering a bottle of her Rose Quartz Venus Love Bath (I’ll be a romantic until the bitter end, not sorry) and enjoying the shit out of the two soaks the jar provided, I was ready to go all-in on crystals. Considering all the messed up things I have going on right now in my life (from headaches and anxiety to stomachaches and a never-fully-disappeared eating disorder), I figured I could use all the healing I could get.