When Healing Feels Like Breaking

Healing is peculiar.

Because when we heal, we’re choosing to let go of what’s hurting and no longer serving us. When we heal, we’re choosing to inch closer toward our truest most vulnerable self.

You’d think the reward for making such a courageous and bold decision would be to feel… better. 

What they don’t tell you is, you often feel… worse. Almost as if it’s some form of punishment for going against the societal grain. This can make you doubt why you started this journey in the first place. 

But please know, this isn’t a punishment, and this isn’t any indication that you made the wrong choice. Rather, it’s an indication of how deeply your pain and dysfunction were rooted within you.

How choosing the “right thing” won’t always feel good at first. 

How grief comes in waves, and how choosing a new path and new way of being, is choosing a new you.

And how choosing a new you— forces you to grieve the old you. 

Old relationship styles. Old coping mechanisms. Old conditioning. Old comfort zones. Old mindsets.

The undertaking is far beyond what we can see, we only know there is more healing to be done. All you can do is take each step as it comes and wander down each new path as it presents itself to you. 

I’ve heard it said before, that when you turn on an old facet that hasn’t been used in years, it will spit out brown muck-filled water. This is much like your healing journey. You’re finally turning on an old and unused facet – only this time, the brown muck is your grief, sadness, anger, and trauma needing to clear out before the water runs clean and clear. The beauty is, you’ll no longer be storing that muck inside of you anymore.

On my own journey, I was deeply discouraged by all the “muck” that surfaced in my life after finally choosing myself. But now, looking back, I can tell you it was definitively worth it. And I’d do it all over again if given the choice to remain stuck in the muck or to heal.