Healing isn’t peaceful - it can be scary and painful.
Most people don't heal, they collect healing experiences which keep the body and mind busy but nothing really changes because actual healing isn't a ceremony - it's a collapse.
Comfort rots away and everything you’ve hidden behind disintegrates.
But they don't tell you that because its not sexy to sell. Who wants to sign up for something where side effects include rage, isolation, insomnia, night terrors, grief, brain fog, withdrawal symptoms, shaking, sweating and near-death experiences?
So they package it prettier. They sell you spa treatments and inner peace, but peace doesn't come first.
Decay does.
The Dreaded Swamp.
Some of the pain that you are in right now isn’t even from a former wound. It's from losing who you were when you had it.
The version of you that lived in that trauma had a role, but healing peels that version of you away layer by layer.
In a way, healing kills off parts of you. That's why it feels like grief - because it is. No-one wants to face this, no-one wants to be the one to say that healing is like entering into a metaphorical unfamiliar swamp at night - it’s terrifying and gross and you don’t want to be there.
You think after a couple of days or weeks in the “swamp” that you should have crossed it by now. That you’ve sat with your thoughts and emotions enough so you should feel better.
But the swamp is often so much larger, deeper and more wild than you could have ever imagined. There might be days and nights where you don’t want to be here anymore, that it's too hard and your tired.
People with chronic symptoms such as Fibromyalgia, Dysautonomia, PTSD and CPTSD need to be managed daily. Life can often feel like the level in Nintendo’s Mario where the road is collapsing and the lava is rising and you can’t stop, you can only go forward and if you rest for too long or trip up too many times, it might be game over.
No one speaks about the months or even years that they couldn't get out of bed, not because they were lazy, but because their nervous system was crashing and rebooting like a dying machine.
No one talks about the relationships you lose when you can no longer serve others - because not everyone will respect your needs, honor your new boundaries, or celebrate this new version of you.
Some systems only liked you when you were obedient. Some relationships only survived because you didn't know your worth yet. So when you start healing, you lose more than pain.
