What I’ve Learned About Healing-Four Years Later #MyConfession #Reflection
Since 2013, October has been my least favorite month of the entire year. It was the month everything changed. Everything. That change was heart crushingly painful. I can tell you four years later, October and I are still working out our discord. That’s how healing works though, with time and effort. Maybe in a few more healing cycles we will be able to come to an agreement with things. I can already see the beginnings of that breakthrough.
Facebook has a wonderful way of reminding you of things with that “Memories” feature. Sometimes that feature invokes aww moments, sad tears, happy tears, and moments of wow.
These past few days I’ve been struck with many moments of wow. Those moments remind me of my progress in this healing journey. Living in the past is not a useful tool; however, revisiting it from time to time has become a tool of great encouragement. It has allowed me to give myself perspective on my interior self and all the ways I’ve changed inside and how those changes reflect on the outside.
What have I learned about healing and the healing process?
The healing process doesn’t stop. This can be seen as encouraging as much as it is irritating. If you have the overachiever disease like me or if you tend to lean on the side of impatience, this can sometimes drive you batty! (Halloween pun totally intended.)
Confession: I’m very competitive and get incredibly irritated when I don’t feel like I’ve hit the level of supreme awesomeness. I’m always aiming for a few ticks above the bar.
This can be a good thing or this can be a really bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best version of yourself and to strive for growth and success BUT there is a problem when you set unrealistic expectations and then berate yourself for not hitting the mark. This overachiever disease as I call it, is how I’m wired internally. This “disease” has kept me moving forward when I wanted to quit and has also sent me back into the throes of darkness more times than I prefer to count. It pushes me forward, propels me backwards, and at times keeps me from moving at all. The whole fear of failure issue (which sometimes can be referred to the fear of doing the wrong thing) can have quite the crippling effect on your life.
But the good news is the healing process continues as long as we keep engaging in it, even if it’s not as quickly as we prefer or as easy as we’d wish for it to be.
Sometimes you have to feel the pain. No one wants to be in pain let alone acknowledge the depth of his or her throbbing wound but it’s necessary. Think about it. If you fall and scrape your knees, do you walk around with blood running down your leg pretending like nothing ever happened? Maybe you do BUT if you don’t acknowledge the wound and clean it, infection sets in. Acknowledging your pain is one difficult task but then cleaning the wound, actually working through the hurt is a whole other level. BUT if you don’t do it, the infection sets in and the pain lingers showing up at unexpected moments. It can cripple you. Cause you to feel like you’re completely losing your mind. You start blaming other situations on your pain rather than the root of your “infection.”
I’ve come to learn my wounds are far more numerous than just the loss of my husband including but not limited to hurts from my childhood. Digging through the trail of bloodstains and scars has been tough but as each pain begins to heal it has grown me, released me, and allowed me to polish my shine. Seriously, if this keeps up one day you guys are going to need sunglasses to talk to me. Hahaha! 
