What we don’t talk about when we talk about healing
One of the bravest things a woman can do is to decide she will start healing. I call it a decision because it is a conscious choice to transcend a state of suffering to a state of peace.
It sounds well and good until you realize that peace only comes with acceptance, often of your suffering. Sometimes it is accepting that you have chronic pain, that you will never see a person again, or that your trauma will leave you with scars for always.
It is not easy to decide that you can live with that. Some decide they can’t, so they try to change their lives—they find someone new, find a new job, or move away. But what of the wounds that never heal? The ones that haunt you at 3 a.m. or when someone says something and suddenly you are back to the person who was alone and hurting. Sure, healing is all about moving past it and deciding that your pain has made you stronger and indefatigable. But that is not healing. That is biting your lip until it bleeds again, and isn’t the point of healing to be rid of pain?
Maybe healing is not about extinguishing your pain but knowing that you deserve better.
Perhaps there is more pain in healing than we care to acknowledge. You must face the reality that no one is ever going to know the depths of your pain. That only you will completely understand what it is like to live inside your brain. That really bad things happened to you. That not everything happens for a reason.
And then there is the crushing realization that maybe you deserved better. Maybe you let bad things happen because it felt like a punishment you deserved, and now that you’re feeling better, you feel angry. You can’t do anything about it because the moment you should have been angry has long ago passed. You sit there and the only thing you can do is promise yourself that you are not going to let people do you wrong like that again.
Maybe healing is just realizing that you are worth more than everything that has ever happened to you. Maybe it is not about extinguishing your pain but knowing that you deserve better.
It is the conviction that, no matter how lonely you are, you do not deserve what happened to you. You tell yourself that it’s okay to stand up for yourself. You deserve someone who stands up for you, even if it’s just yourself.