What healing actually looks like (from someone in it—not looking back from the other side):

It’s not always peaceful or pretty.

It’s not candles and journaling and yoga every day.

Sometimes healing looks like:

— Waking up with anxiety and choosing to show up anyway.

— Crying on the kitchen floor because your body finally feels safe enough to release what it’s been holding.

— Questioning your reality because gaslighting ran so deep you started to believe it was all your fault.

— Feeling exhausted, distant, or foggy and realizing… this is what trauma recovery feels like.

— Outgrowing people who once felt like home, because now you finally see the patterns.

— Learning how to trust yourself again—even when you still hear their voice in your head.

— Going back and forth between feeling strong and feeling broken—and knowing both are part of it.
—It's more crying..and more crying.. and crying with your child because he also knows how unfair it is to have two homes.. It's sitting in that hurt knowing there's nothing I can do to fix that pain.
—It's seeing the childhood wounds and feelings I've ignored and now want to address.
—It's the stages of seeing where I went wrong and sitting in the discomfort but not letting it consume me.
—Being OK with being sad but also feeling proud of yourself because you can feel these two feelings at once and it be OK.

Healing is messy. It’s layered. It doesn’t always make sense.

But it’s work that I must do to create something new, something safe, something that's truly ME.

It’s saying:

“I don’t want to live in survival mode anymore.”

“I want to feel joy again—real joy, not performative peace.”

“I want to create something new, even if I’m still grieving what was.”