Healing Isn’t Linear and Honestly That’s Incredibly Annoying

I really thought healing was going to look a lot more glamorous than this.

At one point in my life, I genuinely believed that if I worked on myself enough, read enough books, listened to enough podcasts, journaled enough, meditated enough, healed enough, eventually I would arrive at this magical destination where I became one of those incredibly calm women who wakes up peacefully at 5 AM, drinks lemon water in silence, answers every inconvenience with grace, and never gets emotionally triggered by anything ever again. Instead, healing has mostly looked like me doing deep inner work while simultaneously getting emotionally humbled because somebody responded “k” instead of “okay” in a text message. Apparently growth is not a one-time purchase. It’s more like a subscription service with recurring monthly fees and absolutely no option to cancel. And honestly, one of the most frustrating parts about healing is realizing there is no finish line. There’s no moment where a giant banner drops from the sky announcing congratulations, you are now fully healed forever. Some days I feel grounded, calm, emotionally aware, connected to myself, and genuinely proud of how far I’ve come. Other days my nervous system reacts like we are under active attack because somebody used the wrong tone in an email or life suddenly becomes overwhelming again. Healing really knows how to keep a person humble. One thing I’ve struggled with over the years is the way social media and self-growth culture can make healing look so clean and polished. Everyone seems to have perfectly curated routines, spotless homes, green drinks, balanced hormones, peaceful relationships, regulated nervous systems, and enough emotional intelligence to respond to every inconvenience like a licensed therapist. Meanwhile half of us are sitting in our cars in the Target parking lot listening to trauma podcasts while stress eating snacks we bought five minutes earlier after convincing ourselves that a new magnesium supplement and a weighted blanket might finally be the thing that changes our lives forever.

And honestly? I think that’s why transparency matters so much. Over the years, I’ve watched so many people online, including people I once followed or even previous coaches of mine, present their lives like they had everything completely figured out. Their content looked peaceful. Their routines looked disciplined. They spoke about healing and balance and self-growth like they had fully mastered it all. Then six months later or a year later they would suddenly come online talking openly about how their lives were actually chaos behind the scenes. They were burnt out, anxious, emotionally exhausted, disconnected from themselves, stress eating, overwhelmed, struggling in relationships, barely sleeping, or realizing they had spent so much time helping everyone else that they completely stopped taking care of themselves. And for a while that honestly confused me because I kept thinking, “Wait… I thought you already healed this?” But the older I get, the more I realize both things can exist at the same time. You can help people while still helping yourself. You can have wisdom and still struggle. You can be growing and still have hard seasons. You can be self-aware and still get emotionally wrecked by life sometimes. That’s not failure. That’s being human. I think one of the biggest problems online right now is that people feel pressured to present themselves like they have fully arrived before they’re “qualified” to help anyone else. But personally, I don’t think the world needs more people pretending they’ve mastered life while secretly falling apart behind closed doors. I think people are craving honesty. They’re craving transparency.

They’re craving someone willing to say, “Honestly? I’m still figuring this out too.” Because there’s something incredibly comforting about realizing you don’t have to become perfect before you’re allowed to grow, connect, help others, or share your story. And honestly, healing taught me that self-awareness is both beautiful and deeply annoying at the same time. I used to think becoming more self-aware would magically solve all my problems. Instead it mostly just means I now recognize in real time when I’m spiraling instead of realizing it three business days later. Growth. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned through all of this is that people cannot continue pouring into everyone else while completely abandoning themselves. Eventually your mind and body will force you to pay attention. You become the strong one. The dependable one. The helper. The fixer. The person everybody calls. The person who carries everything without complaining. Until one day your nervous system basically sits you down like an intervention and says, “Respectfully, we cannot continue operating like this.” And honestly, it usually doesn’t whisper. It screams. For me, healing became more sustainable when I stopped viewing self-care as something optional I’d eventually “get around to” and started treating it like maintenance for my mental, emotional, and physical health. Not performative self-care. Not the kind designed to look aesthetically pleasing online. Real self-care. The kind where you actually stop long enough to ask yourself uncomfortable but necessary questions. How’s my stress level lately? How’s my anxiety? Am I actually resting or am I just distracting myself? What’s helping me? What’s draining me? What habits are making me feel worse? What do I need more of? Do I even feel connected to myself anymore? I honestly think everyone should do some version of that every couple of weeks because life pulls us away from ourselves so gradually that sometimes we don’t even

notice it happening until we’re completely exhausted. We don’t usually lose ourselves overnight. It happens slowly. Responsibility by responsibility. Stress by stress. Disappointment by disappointment. People pleasing. Overextending. Ignoring your own needs. Staying busy. Staying distracted. Surviving instead of actually living. Until one day you wake up and realize you don’t even feel like yourself anymore. What helped me most was understanding that healing doesn’t have to happen dramatically. It usually happens through small choices repeated consistently over time. Maybe one month you focus on sleep. Then maybe you start protecting your peace more. Maybe you spend less time consuming things online that leave you anxious and overstimulated. Maybe you start listening to your body instead of constantly fighting against it. Maybe you finally stop believing exhaustion is proof that you’re productive or strong. Tiny things eventually become life-changing things. And honestly, trying to heal too aggressively can become stressful in itself. Nothing says wellness quite like giving yourself performance anxiety over meditation. Some days healing looks beautiful and inspiring.

Other days it looks like crying in your car while listening to a podcast about nervous system regulation and wondering if everyone else secretly feels this emotionally exhausted too. Spoiler alert: they probably do. I think the goal is less about becoming some perfectly healed version of ourselves and more about learning how to return to ourselves faster when life pulls us away. Learning how to recover quicker. Learning how to stop abandoning ourselves. Learning how to hold ourselves through hard seasons with a little more grace than we used to. Because maybe healing was never supposed to make us perfect. Maybe it was just supposed to help us suffer a little less while we learn how to live.