The truth is — healing is not linear. There are going to be days where you wake up and your bones are full of light. There are going to be days where it feels like your heart has finally settled into its new form, has finally mended the wounds. There are going to be days where you leap towards something you would have run from in the past. And those moments will be so gratifying, it will all feel beautiful and hopeful and bathed in growth. But there will also be days where you take ten steps backwards. Where the wound is scratched, where the hurt resurfaces. You will feel like you have moved on, and then you will hear a certain song, or you will realize that you have forgotten what your mothers voice sounded like, or you will see something that flashes nostalgia into your chest, and you will realize that the ache is still there. That it is still tender. And that is okay. It is okay. Healing happens in waves. It is a process. You peel back the layers. You move forward. You find new rooms within your healing, within your heart, that you are scared to go into, and you learn how to face those new obstacles, you learn how to open the door. Healing is a lifelong journey. We aren’t ever actually void of the experience, or the memory. But slowly, we learn how to control the way those memories affect us. Slowly we learn how to approach the hard days, we learn how to not let them convince us that this season of learning has been for nothing. We let those emotions pass through us like rain. We learn how to believe in the foundation we have built within our healing, how to remind ourselves just how far we have come, how to have compassion for ourselves, how to believe in our growth, even when we cannot feel it. At the end of the day, you should be proud of the way you have fought to be here. You should be proud of the way you have tucked hope into yourself for safekeeping, of the way you have believed that there is more to experience at the hands of life — that the beauty you have yet to feel exists in this world. At the end of the day, you should be proud of the way you survived. You should be proud of the person you are becoming. Keep going. 🤍