Healing takes Time! She once believed that healing was supposed to be quick. After all, that’s how it always looked in the movies. Someone goes through heartbreak or disappointment, spends a few days crying, then suddenly bounces back, smiling and stronger than ever.
That’s what she expected for herself, too. But real life didn’t turn out that way. Her healing didn’t come wrapped in a neat little timeline. It came in fragments, slow and scattered, and often so painful that she wondered if it was even happening at all.
Her breaking point came after a season that seemed to strip everything away at once. A relationship she thought was unshakable ended without warning, leaving her questioning her worth. The career opportunity she had prayed for slipped right through her hands after months of sacrifice, and just when she thought her heart couldn’t handle any more loss, someone she loved deeply passed away.
It was as if life had conspired against her, piling wound upon wound until she no longer recognized the person in the mirror. Nights were the hardest. She would lie in bed scrolling through her phone, watching friends share smiling pictures, new jobs, engagements, travels, all the milestones that screamed “moving forward.” But she wasn’t moving. She was stuck, drowning silently in grief that no one could see.
On the outside, she looked fine. She showed up at work, she cracked jokes at family gatherings, and she posed for pictures at events. People around her probably thought she was strong, but inside, she was falling apart.
Every day felt heavier than the last, and sometimes she admitted to herself that she didn’t even want to wake up in the morning. The loneliness of carrying invisible pain wore her down. Friends would tell her, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” but those words never reached her heart. They felt shallow against the weight she was carrying. Healing, at least the way she thought it should happen, wasn’t happening at all.
Then one day, she stumbled across a quote online that shifted something deep inside her:
“Healing is not linear. Some days you’ll feel like you’ve moved on, other days you’ll feel like you’re back at the beginning. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re human.”
For the first time in months, she exhaled. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with her after all. Maybe she wasn’t weak. Maybe the only mistake she had made was believing that healing had to be fast.
That realization became the first step. She stopped pretending that everything was fine and permitted herself to actually feel her pain. She cried without apologizing for it. She wrote in her journal even when her thoughts were messy and scattered. She pulled away from people who made her feel unseen and leaned more into those who gave her quiet comfort. Progress was slow, painfully slow, but for the first time in a long while, she allowed herself to breathe.
Her healing didn’t come as a grand breakthrough. It showed up in the smallest ways, the kind of things most people would miss if they weren’t paying attention. One morning, she realized she was humming a song she hadn’t listened to in months.
On another day, she laughed so hard at a silly joke that for a brief moment she forgot her pain. Then one evening, she looked in the mirror and saw not someone broken, but someone surviving. Those little wins didn’t erase the hurt, but they whispered that life was still in her, and that maybe, just maybe, she was moving forward after all.
Looking back now, she says she finally understands that healing was never meant to be rushed. It’s not about proving strength to the world or hiding scars so no one knows you were hurt. It’s about giving yourself the space to mend at your own pace.
Yes, she still has scars. Some memories still sting when they surface, and maybe they always will. But she has learned to live with them, not as marks of weakness, but as proof of survival.
Her story is a reminder to anyone who feels like they will never be okay again: you are not failing because it’s taking time. You are not weak because it still hurts. Healing is not about speed; it’s about honesty. It may be slow, it may feel endless, but every little breath you take, every small step you manage, is progress. And sometimes, progress is enough.
