Healing Is a Journey, Not a Destination
The Book of Balance’s Soft Launch
Author’s Note: If you’re wondering about the weird subheading, this article is part of my broader Book of Balance series and this article is the soft launch, the first article I finished, but is absolutely not the chronological first part of the series
Recently, The Midlife Mystic (one of my new Substack friends) asked me a question that really got me thinking…
“I … wonder why you say people don’t truly heal?”
It was a really good question, with the added musing of…
“… I wonder if this is just a function of the programming of society, advertising that’s designed to convince us we’ll never feel truly whole, etc.”
My answer was simple enough…
“I don’t really believe anyone is ever truly “healed,” and I’m wary of people who word things in a way that suggests they are, or that they have a universal answer to everyone's problems. Those people are usually trying to sell you snake oil.”
But I began to think about it more and this old comic from Matt Inman (AKA The Oatmeal) about “happiness”—and how people treat it as an attainable goal, and how absolutely ridiculous of a goal it is—came to my mind.
The more I thought about the concept of healing, the more I realized that I think about these two concepts in similar ways…
Both healing and happiness are journeys, not destinations!
Emotional Wounds Are Not Linear
Included in the response to my comment, the Midlife Mystic also asked…
“If you scrape your arm do you believe you then have to carry some degree of the wound for the rest of your life?”
That’s such a great question, but there’s a key distinction that needs to be made…
First of all, yes, actually… some of our physical injuries leave permanent scars.
But on a more practical and logical note, physical and emotional wounds do not heal the same way.
A simple physical wound is commonly a linear thing. If you scrape your arm, ideally you clean it, bandage it/get stitches, and then care for it for X number of days before all you’re left with is the scar, if even that. When my cats accidentally scratch me, I don’t carry that burden for longer than it takes for the immediate pain to fade.
Emotional wounds are not linear in the same way, even when we “treat” them properly. There is no universal answer to an individual’s need to heal that we can give to all people and expect them to accept it and make the necessary changes to move on in a healthier, happier manner. We people are fickle. Half of us will reject the message just on principle of not wanting to be told what to do or how to live.
If you examine the 5 Stages of Grief, for example, nobody tells you that you always follow the pattern of Denial → Anger → Bargaining → Depression → Acceptance. Nooo, no no no, we ping-pong back and forth all over the place with those. Our scars last years… decades even. True, sometimes this is because of our refusal to accept things and move on, but sometimes it’s because the wounds taught us something that we really need to remember.
When I learned that my adoptive son had passed away, I started with acceptance, weirdly enough. I am endlessly in and out of acceptance because, in the end, I cannot fault that poor boy his peace. If he had lived on, he would have struggled so much. He would have had to do so much work to undo the hurts he did. It would have been very hard. I can’t blame him for taking the road of destruction instead of redemption. It would be an insult to him if I did, nothing more than a pandering to my misery and loneliness for a world without his physical presence. Acceptance was the easiest state to reach for my mental health.
However, after the initial acceptance, I went on to cycle through anger and depression repeatedly. I had to reconcile everything left unsaid and unresolved between us. I had given him time and space to gather himself, but instead of doing that, he spiraled and eventually ODed. It took a year of extremely intense inner work before I understood everything that happened, why, and how it wasn’t all my fault. I still return to these feelings once in a while. The hurts are deep and it’s been less than 2 years since he passed away.
There was even a period where I wasn’t even 100% sure he was dead, wondering if it was just another cruel joke to hurt me (it wasn’t until Facebook made a memorial page for him, and then seeing the marker on his family grave that I truly believed it). Okay, honestly? Maybe even now some part of me still struggles to believe he’s gone without having seen his body.
I am under no impression that I will ever heal from the loss of him. Part of that is, simply, because I don’t think I want to. There’s no world in which I want to forget what he taught me about life, relationships, parental abuse, drug abuse, love, compassion, healing, and so much more. He was the light in my heart, the weight on my soul, my most wonderous muse, my greatest destructor, and the person I loved more purely than anyone else.
Why would I ever want to get over that? I would rather be in pain and carry him in my heart forever than purge it of the place I made for him in it. He earned that home in my heart, it is his, and it is not for me to eradicate him from it.
That’s a personal choice, of course, but there are some wounds that, I think, don’t even need to be fully healed. They were powerful learning lessons. They serve too great a purpose.
Stop Rushing to the “Healed” Goalpost, Please?
Putting effort into healing is extremely important, but the thing that I see most people “doing wrong” (I say that in quotes because I do not believe this is inherently “wrong,” it’s more that I think this mindset holds us back) is getting gung-ho AF about their healing and forgetting that time is needed to let new information sink in.
Have you ever seen the student cramming before an exam, getting a decent grade, and then forgetting everything once it’s over? Same principle here.
If you don’t take the time to rest, recuperate, and let everything you’re learning sink in? You’re still just oppressing yourself and creating a burnt-out hellscape for yourself to exist in. You’re running, escaping, not embracing.
The student who crams for the exam isn’t actually learning the material. If you cram “healing” into your body without actually letting it sink in, your body and brain aren’t really learning either.
One of my newer friends is online every day, talking about her therapy, sharing relevant important memes and reels, fighting the good fight for the minorities and underdogs out there, and dedicating a lot of herself to healing from her trauma. I had to ask her roommate (who I know her through)… “Does she ever rest? Does she ever let the work sink in?” The answer wasn’t a full “no,” but was neither the “yes” I was hoping I had missed.
When I was a CrossFit coach, one of the most common things we preached to our classes was the importance of rest. Even hardcore CrossFit tells you to work out Monday through Wednesday, take a break on Thursday, work out Friday and Saturday, and rest on Sunday. Yup, even the fitness bros of the world know that rest is important. Your muscles need time to accept what has happened, and in that time, that is when they grow.
Why is this relevant? Because all of the hard work in the world won’t matter if you don’t let it rest and sink in. It’s literally why we sleep at night. We need time to recharge, to let lessons sink in, and so on.
If you’re powering forward in your healing journey like a runaway train and never stop to refuel, you’re just going to oppressively burn yourself out. That’s not self-care, that’s just another way of patriarchally oppressing yourself.
True Healing Takes Time… Sometimes Lifetimes
The Midlife Mystic asks great questions. Is a state of healing an impossibility, or is it a lie society has taught us to prevent us from pursuing it?
I would challenge this by saying that things like a “state of being healed” is also a lie that is told equally commonly. If we are constantly in pursuit of an unattainable state of existence (like happiness), we will never stop to just enjoy life, regardless of what state we’re in. We’re always pushing for something. An audience. Success. Healing. Truth. Ourselves. And in our pursuits of these ever-fluctuating things, we forget to be ourselves. To enjoy life. To live it and live in its messes. To experience it.
Have you ever enjoyed a sunset, a nice meal, or a cute cat while being utterly depressed? I sure have.
I don’t think life is about being perfectly healed. Otherwise, we could all just go to a Zen Buddhist Temple for a year and come back enlightened and totally detached from the world around us. So if people out there know the answer, why don’t we all just go learn it?
I posit, because we like to learn things ourselves… and we like to do it the hard way.
What Is Life Really About?
The meaning of life is deeply individual, which is why I don’t believe anyone, anywhere, has a universal answer, unless that answer is to “pursue your individuality.”
I personally believe that life is about having experiences. I’ll write about more on why I believe that in further Book of Balance articles eventually, but I genuinely and enthusiastically believe that the entire point of life is to live it fully and authentically. As quoted in a truly brilliant song…
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning
Go too fast, move too slow
Restore the balance between thinking and feeling
Open up and let it flow…”
— “The Sixth Extinction” by Ayreon
I can’t say it better myself. Doing new things, having new experiences, meeting new and different people? It is the spice of life. If you can approach new experiences with an open mind, rather than forcing things into your bubble of expectations, life can be an amazing adventure.
We rarely have great stories to share when everything in our lives is cushy and nice. My recent road trip with my girlfriends wouldn’t have been half as fun if 90% of it hadn’t been madness and chaos. The messy parts of existence are what help us grow and evolve.
Perspective, IMO, is far more important than perfection or pleasantness.
If we were to attain a state of “healed,” it would be a destination that one reaches and remains in, should they so choose, much live traveling to a city. It obliterates the possibility for forward motion.
Experiences are inherently messy. But they’re also how we learn.
Final Thoughts: A Healed Heaven Is My Hell
Ultimately, I think a world wherein we are all healed is a pretty goal on the surface, but an unrealistic one, at least per how our society functions. I mean, if the world gets a hard societal factory reset where our global collective minds decide to reject patriarchy and embrace compassion, then perhaps I might believe in a better world where being healed is possible.
However… I also think that world might be kind of boring to exist in. Imagine the Christian image of heaven: everyone in white, flying with white wings in white clouds, wearing white robes, being perfect all the time.
I dunno about you, but their vision of heaven is my vision of hell. Uniform colorless conformity and samey perfection for all eternity? Count me the absolute fuck out. I’d rather take my chances in hell and see if I could seduce the devil into my way of thinking. At least Satanism respects the individual above all else (a little too much, even).
So, ultimately, the way our world is, I do not believe that “healed” is a goalpost that is possible to reach, nor do I believe it is a goalpost that anyone should really be in pursuit of.
Healing, ultimately, is about understanding. Understanding what has happened to us, why, and how we can move on. And as things continue to happen to us, we will continuously need to grow and heal. This is not something to be avoided, it is something we can embrace and experience, for better or for worse.
Personally? I’m broken as hell, but I’m okay with that. I love overcoming a challenge.
Note from the Author: If you enjoyed this, perhaps you might enjoy reading life stories set in a fictional world where deep healing journeys are central to the narrative. If that sounds interesting, please check out my novella series, The Vitmar Chronicles… a slice-of-life coming-of-age series that follows two brothers as they navigate life’s ups and downs.
Read the free sample here — Learn about the series here — Find it on Amazon (EU link, but you can find it in all countries), Google, Kobo, and the Draft2Digital Network! Volume II is coming this summer!
I would rather be a broken and painted over hospital-turned-work-of-weird-art than be perfect and healed
