What Healing Looks Like

I thought that I would write a blog on what healing looks like, because it is something that I wish I had known, over the years.  First, I want to describe what healing is NOT like, because I have learned the wrong expression of what that would be and have seen many describe it to others.  

Healing is not adequately trashing another person that "hurt" you.  I put that in quotes for a reason, because while the pain is real it is often not exclusive to you, nor is it always objective.  My experience has always been in all of my breakups that both sides are hurting to some degree, even if the breakup is valid and important. Adding more pain to the other person is not going to cause you healing.  It is only going to deepen the wound. 

Let me pause for a moment to reflect on the valid and important point.  This is something that as a single person it can take years to fully understand and implement.  You cannot get hurt behind tall guarding walls, because you are already hurting yourself.  So, you have to take a chance, but you cannot know if something will work without taking a chance.  There will be pleasure and good moments, even in the situations that do not ultimately work.  And, I HOPE you are the kind of person that puts your heart into everything that you do, but that will result in pain, when it does not.  But, here's the thing about that.  If that does not work, it does not mean you are broken or that the process FAILED you.  It did exactly what it was designed to do.  It succeeded at showing a match that did not work, as it was currently formed.  It does not mean that years down the road, after people grow, things might not be different.  However, the failure of an attempt has nothing to do with the value of the attempt, as I have often said.

Healing is not about hurting someone else... EVER.  You cannot be healed by causing pain.  In Harry Potter, that is how the dark lord ended up making several copies of himself, because of the damage caused in creating pain in another.  Healing is also not caused by replacing one pain with another.  Yes, it can cause you to think less about the first pain, and maybe that is a good stepping stone towards healing.  But, all you really did was create two wounds.

From my experience, healing is not found in competition or blame.  It is found in confession and surrender.  It is found in admitting your own part in a failure, accepting the failure as a learning tool, and choosing to make better choices and in forgiveness of those that wronged you.  Then, it is not about proving you are right, proving someone else wrong, assigning blame, or assigning pain.  Rather, it is about all of that becoming so unimportant that it no longer holds sway over you, and you can focus on the here and now.

Healing does not mean that everything is solved in your life.  Healing does not mean you found an adequate replacement.  That comes after healing.  Healing means that you are restored to the point that existed before the wound.  That point may be messy and unsure.  However, that is healed.

For myself, I am enjoying my days, day by day. I validate the good moments found in the past, but I live my life by the good moments in my days, today.  I choose not to blame anyone for my path choices, and I choose to love myself for doing the best that I knew to do and know to do.  And, THAT I believe is what healing looks like.