When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal

by Brianna Wiest

Actually, things are really right, which is why you finally feel safe enough to feel what you really feel. Stop projecting. Stop telling stories. Those dull, unsettling feelings are not in the future—they’re in the past.

What if you realized that they are under no obligation to be who you think they should be, and the most loving thing you could do would be to set them free of the expectations you hold in your own mind?

Stop having hard conversations with people who don’t want to change. Stop showing up for people who are indifferent about your presence. Stop prioritizing people who make you an option. Stop loving people who aren’t ready to love you.

If you’re left out, subtly insulted, mindlessly forgotten about, or easily disregarded by the people you spend the most time with, you’re doing yourself an incredible disservice by continuing to offer your energy and life to them.

…But the longer you stay small, tucked into the familiarity of the people who use you as a cushion, a back burner option, a therapist and a ploy for their emotional labor, the longer you keep yourself out of the community you crave.

You are not responsible for saving people.

you are accepting the love you think you’re worthy of.

Stop trying to invalidate them with positivity. That will arise on its own once your subconscious is more clear.

Note what you struggle with the most, within this is a key to what you’re here to heal.

Nobody—not one single person alive—is thinking about you more than you are thinking about yourself.

The reality is that you exist in so many different forms and images and beliefs and stories—and yet, the only one that is ever really going to matter is the one you tell yourself.

You have done more, seen more, and meant more to others than you could ever know.

You’re forced out of denial. The thing about things we lose is that they weren’t working for a very long time, we just didn’t realize it.

You’re using self-reflection as an escape mechanism, rather than a way to actually change your life.

Letting go is not an event, it is a practice.

We aren’t really letting go. We are just accepting what’s already gone.

I hope that instead of wondering and worrying how you will ever move forward, you can simply recall all the other times you feared you never would…and did.

I hope you will break loudly, fail toward what matters, let yourself know deep love even if it means you could lose it.

Maybe the kindest possible thing you could do for yourself right now is just be honest with yourself. Trust yourself. Know that your feelings are valid and maybe they’re trying to move you somewhere you’ve never been before.

“My feelings are messengers, but I don’t have to act on every one of them.”

Instead of responding to our emotions impulsively, we can observe them and then question them. Is this helpful? Is this truthful? Is this coming from a place of clear perspective, or a lingering past wound?

“I am allowed to express and process deep emotions.”

When we don’t allow ourselves to have these very vulnerable, very human moments, it turns us into hypersensitive robots constantly trying to control our lives and the lives of those around us out of the fear that any trigger might unleash the avalanche.

You build your idea of success around the ultimate vision of what would make you most loved. That is until you realize it’s a fruitless endeavor. Eventually, you reach the peak of that particular mountain only to find that you’ve fulfilled someone else’s vision while you yourself feel empty inside. It’s no place to be, and yet, somewhere we all must usually arrive before we know how to redirect.

Make the best of yourself — right here, and right now. “The best” doesn’t mean “the most perfect.” It just means that instead of passively letting life happen to you, you show up in each moment and you work with what you have, instead of just complaining about what you don’t.

“I do not need to feel guilty over what I cannot control.” There’s no sense in holding onto what you can no longer change. You don’t have to feel guilty for the sake of it. Guilting yourself doesn’t make you a better person, it makes you a bitter person, which inevitably results in less-than-admirable behavior.

Instead of trying to bully yourself into better character, seek a deeper understanding of why you acted the way you did, and what blind spots led you there.

When you realize that your words, your actions, and your beliefs deeply impact not only your reality but the realities of those around you, you start taking yourself a lot more seriously.

You are destined for what you most desire. The truths that pull you deeply do so for a reason.

we show up humbly, with our hearts wounded but open.

you’re too attached to things that aren’t right for you.

Stop waiting for perfect circumstances. I know that it feels like your life is on an indefinite pause. If you wait for perfect circumstances to take the leap, start the business, build up what you already have, make a life change, move, course-correct, go on an inner journey, travel, start investing, find peace, be grateful, enjoy what you have or begin your new adventure — you will be waiting forever.

The way you use your energy each day plants the seeds of the harvest you’ll reap in the future. Spend them wisely.