I used to think healing was a straight line.
I think when your heart is broken, action feels like the answer. And there was a time when I believed that if I journaled enough, prayed enough, forgave enough, read enough, I’d cross some invisible finish line and finally feel… whole. There were many nights when I’d lie awake imagining that one day I’d wake up and not flinch when certain memories tapped me on the shoulder. That I’d reach a place called healed and never have to feel the ache again — or wince at the memory that still stings.
Oh! But how life has humbled my youthful angst for perfection and destination highs. How it’s softened my obsession with tidy arcs and destination highs. I know better now. I think I have spent the last few reckoning with the great revelation of being a beautifully flawed human: healing is not a finish line. It is less ruler and more slinky.
My experience has shown me that healing circles back far more often than you’d like. It is not unusual to revisit old wounds from new angles. Like an obsessive detective in a crime procedural, you return to the scene again and again — only this time with new tools, a bit more breath in your body, and the faint hope that maybe, this time, you’ll be able to put something to rest.
I think healing is a quiet hope that we’ll survive these re-visits. At first, setbacks feel like monumental failure. I have started therapy sessions with a sigh and a frustrated, “I thought I was past this.” But these days, I’m convinced Shrek was right all along. We really are onion people, layered and tender in places we didn’t know were still sore.
To be patient with the spiral nature of healing is to celebrate the difference between surviving something… and beginning to understand it. So now, instead of panicking when I find myself back inside a familiar ache, I pause. I try — gently — to hush the self-blame and ask my inner critic, “Why is this memory asking for attention right now?” And I have to say, that alone feels like progress. Sometimes, making that small pause meaningful feels like a kind of healing.
I’ve come to understand that healing doesn’t mean the pain is gone. It means that I tend to the places that still call out when touched. I sit with the memory that hurts. I spend time reframing the story. Sometimes, I even rewrite it.
As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to humbly ask for softness around the spaces within that still echo. I’ve stopped asking for permanent freedom. Instead, I ask to return — next time — without shame.
I ask for light to meet me again at the next appointed spiral point.