What no one tells you is that when you are healing from past traumas and experiences is both the fear and the freedom that you experience. Fear and discomfort at the unfamiliarity of the situation, fear that somehow this will change or be taken away, discomfort at breaking new patterns and experiencing new ones. Every step forward away from those traumas and negative experiences breaks the pattern and helps to create new ones, or at least space for new ones. This past year has had a multitude of them for me and I find myself frequently in a space of not knowing what to do. I know ultimately what I want, but the path to achieving what I want, believing that what I want will occur, and making those steps often has me stumped. How do I accept this new place when everything to this point has told me otherwise that it simply is a pipe dream? What do I need to do here to believe otherwise enough to make a change in my own self?
These moments are taxing, they are breaking, but they have been worth it. The moments of "I don't know what to do with this" are usually my first indicator that I'm standing at a precipice with a choice to trudge back down the familiar path or jump forward into this new space and existence. I wish that I could say I have jumped with each of these opportunities but I have not; fear, anxiety, habit, and the safety/comfort of the familiarity of retreat have overtaken some of these. For the times that I do leap I am filled with a nervous energy and excitement, overwhelmed in the moment and sometimes startled to find myself in this new space. Sometimes these are important transitions, and others are simply small ones, but each new one still unknown. What they don't tell you is that these are often scary, they present their own fear. In breaking my patterns, leaving the comfort of the unhealthy I have to face myself, my history, my previous choices and give grace to that woman so that the one in this moment is free.
What no one tells you about healthy and healing is that the path is not linear, nor is it a staircase; it is a trail through the woods and mountains, winding about, often times reversing back on itself. Finding myself continually challenged with ideas, experiences, choices that I think I have changed and accepted, yet they reappear as the trail winds. Making the changes internally is a process, one that is nearly as intense as experiencing the initial traumas. It has a depth and complexity to it that is difficult to explain. In learning to be vulnerable and trust I have to acknowledge the previous moments where I was vulnerable and was left stranded on the path. I have to find the courage to believe and accept that this moment is different, or I find myself retracing steps, repeating, and allowing the fear of healthy overtake the security of unhealthy.
When you have experienced such intense time periods in your life moving into something that is stable and healthy feels unstable, feels unsafe. While it is the thing you crave, the thing you desire, and the thing that society thinks should be an easy acceptance, "simply choose it and it will be so;" those of us who have walked this can speak to the challenge. Moving from a pipe dream to facing the reality that it is no longer a pipe dream is it's own challenge. Grappling with your own sense of worthiness, ability to be loved, and to be seen and accepted for who you are- not what you can provide is difficult. That movement into accepting each of these components it's own journey, it's own path in healing and growth that can be just as violent and life-altering as the times that took those away from you.
welcome to the other side of healing
