Day 220 (Two-Hundred & Twenty) of 365 days
Healing has no timeline, no deadline, and no concrete measure like pills in a cup forcing yourself to heal or comparing your healing to others is a prescription for poison rather than a cure. Sometimes healing comes in a quiet silence or a less shaky breath when you speak. Sometimes it’s the courage to walk outdoors and confront the demons that don’t exist. Sometimes healing comes in the tiny moments that no one ever thinks to say ‘thank you for. And sometimes, the best way to heal is to know that some things cannot be healed, won’t be healed or aren’t meant to be healed in the ways we think they are – they’re meant to be channelled and transformed.
I believe broken-hearted humans are wildly misunderstood. The heartbreak that comes from losing someone cannot be put into words, try as we might make sense of it. No, when a soul has been bruised and battered to the point that it is unrecognizable, you cannot accurately describe the war zone that it has become. There are no appropriate adjectives or verbs in the English dictionary to properly convey the damage that has been done to you.
Early in the grieving process, the pain of loss can feel intense. It can feel as if we have lost our capacity to feel joy again. This fresh stage of grief can last for weeks, months, and a year or more. Eventually, we do start coming out of this acute stage of grief. We begin to have hope once again. Our feelings of despair or sadness are triggered less frequently. Rather than feeling grief for long periods, we might feel it for just a day or minutes.
Society is intent on placing time frames on any sort of recovery; it rates suffering and decides what’s an appropriate time frame for healing. It seems odd to me people who have never experienced something feel entitled to decide how long recovery should take because I’ve come to believe no two people experience pain in the same way. Some folks think I’ve wallowed too long and I’ve been told more than once just to “move on.” People have pointed out nothing can change the past, so I should give it no energy. I’ve been lectured about living in the moment because that’s all we have, which is true.
Still, I am pulled back. No matter how disciplined I am during the waking hours when I’m busy practising mindfulness and gratitude, my dreams are haunted by the past. I don’t like labels. I don’t like thinking of my experience as trauma because it seems wrong to compare what I went through to the cataclysmic experiences of others. I fear giving my experience a name, or perhaps a diagnosis gives it power. But at the same time, I know if I continue to see what happened as something I should be able to move through and get over, I may always feel defeated by it.
And trust me when I say that mistakes will happen – you will fuck up on your journey of healing and unearthing and self-discovery. And while you walk this path, keeping yourself occupied, picking up the discarded pieces of your heart and soul that the ones who could not love you tossed away, you will feel it all. Your chest will feel as if it is going to break wide open because as you heal, your body will begin to reject all the hate, fear, resentment, low self-esteem, and heartsickness you’ve become accustomed to. All of the toxic emotions and feelings that have made a home inside of you will officially receive their eviction notice. It will be uncomfortable to release the toxicity at first, but then you will experience freedom and light that you didn’t think could exist for you in this lifetime.
Nursing a broken heart is excruciating; you feel as if your tear ducts will dry up because of all the crying you’ve done – and this is so normal. It is so damn human of you, to allow your pain to exit your body in the form of big, purposeful tears. Crying needs to be normalized because it is seen as a sign of weakness by so many when in reality it is the opposite. Acknowledging the hurt you’re holding inside of you, and then allowing your emotions to spill out instead of suppressing them further, is a beautiful testament to your commitment — a commitment to yourself, and your healing.
I just want all of you to know that healing doesn’t come with a timeline sweetie, if only the soul knew how deep are its cuts, it could put a band-aid on it. It might take days, it might take years, it might evade completely and return back suddenly, the healing of the soul doesn’t come with a schedule. And it pretty much sucks to be standing at the same point you thought you had moved away from. So, the best thing you can do for it is let it work on its own and let others do the same as well.
It’s gonna be hard, but eventually and gradually, with the help of faith, no matter how deep the wound, it will be filled, no matter how long it takes, you will be Healed.
There is no timeline for healing. Feel your feelings deeply, understand what you’re going through completely, let the pain move through your mind, body and spirit gently, and you will begin the process of healing. Take your time and be patient and loving with yourself.
