The Quiet Growth of Healing
Photo by Aleksandr Ledogorov on Unsplash
I used to think healing would feel like arrival — or maybe finished somehow. I thought I’d just know when I got there. Like crossing a line and realizing I’d made it to the other side finally— steadier, clearer, maybe finished in some way. I imagined there would be a moment when the work was done, when the ache softened for good, when I could finally stop paying such close attention.
Instead, healing has felt more like movement. Forward, yes — but also sideways. Sometimes back. Sometimes still. There are days I feel grounded and deeply okay inside myself, like I’ve got it all figured out; and others where an old feeling rises without warning, familiar and unwelcome, as if it never left at all. For a long time, that confused me. I wondered what I was doing wrong.
What I’m learning now is that I wasn’t doing it wrong. Healing isn’t a straight line — it’s a relationship. One that asks me to sit fully in the present moment — something I practice every single day. It doesn’t unfold according to effort or intention. Trying to rush it usually lands me right back where I started. It unfolds when I feel safe enough to let it. They say time heals all wounds. Can somebody please tell me how long that takes?
There are moments when I catch myself thinking I should be past this by now. More regulated. More resolved. More untouched by what’s already been lived. And then there are quieter moments, when I realize that the very act of noticing — of staying in the raw, real moment as it is, instead of forcing myself forward — is the work itself.
What makes this especially difficult is how quietly we’re taught to measure healing. By how little it shows. By how unaffected we appear. By how rarely we bring it up. Somehow, we are supposed to walk through these emotions quietly, and on our own. There’s an unspoken expectation that growth should look like composure — that if we’ve truly healed, the past won’t reach for us anymore. When it does, it can feel like failure. Like we’ve undone something we worked hard to build.
But I’m starting to see that these returns aren’t regressions at all. They’re invitations. Moments when something inside me is ready to be met again — not to be fixed or resolved, but acknowledged with more capacity than I had before. Each time I stay instead of turning away, something loosens — feels freer…lighter. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just enough to remind me that healing doesn’t erase what happened. It changes how gently I can hold it.
One thing I’ve learned is that healing can feel like a rollercoaster at times — moments of genuine lightness followed by sudden drops into discomfort. The highs can feel expansive and freeing, to the point of being pretty sure you’ve moved past; the lows heavy and disorienting, and they show up when I least expect them. For a long time, I thought the goal was to smooth the waves, to stay elevated and avoid the drop. A sweet soul taught me otherwise. What actually helps is letting the ride happen — letting the uncomfortable emotions surface, staying with them as they pass through, and trusting that this, too, is part of the process. Not something to bypass, but something to sit in, and truly feel.
Some mornings I wake up and the world feels heavy. Divorce, reimagining my life, and actively creating what comes next can feel all-encompassing. There are so many plates in motion at once — raising kids and trying to stay truly present with them, building a career I care deeply about after twenty years at home with the kids, holding an engineering degree and still wondering what now. There’s the quiet logistics of single motherhood layered underneath it all: school events, play dates, meal planning, budgets, permission slips, appointments, birthdays and holidays I want to make meaningful, not just managed. On days like that, the weight isn’t emotional in a dramatic way — it’s cumulative. And it reminds me that healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens while life is still asking things of us.
And then, almost always, something else arrives — gratitude. Have you felt that quiet gratitude that settles the restless mind, and softens the “what-ifs”? Not the kind that dismisses the weight, but the kind that sits beside it and truly warms your soul. I let myself feel the heaviness, and then I’m overtaken by how thankful I am for these very plates I’m holding. Every single one of them. Three incredible kids I get to raise and move through life with. A family I love deeply. Friends who show up, steady and loyal. A small home filled with conversation, shared meals, laughter, games, and the ordinary magic of being together. There is food on the table, a roof over our heads, and a sense of contentment that runs deeper than any single hard moment. That gratitude doesn’t erase what feels heavy — it lifts it just enough to carry on, to notice the small things, and to move through the day with an open heart and settled soul.
This is what healing looks like for me now. Not the absence of hard days, but the ability to hold them alongside everything that’s good. To feel the weight when it arrives, let gratitude meet it where it is, and keep moving without needing either one to disappear. I no longer measure healing by how little I feel, but by how much I can stay present with what’s here.
Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t about reaching a place where nothing hurts anymore. It’s about building the capacity to live fully — with tenderness, responsibility, joy, and depth — all at the same time. Some days are lighter. Some are heavier. Neither means I’m doing it wrong. They simply mean I’m living.
And for the first time, that feels like enough.
