When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal

by Brianna Wiest

Healing is not a one-time event.

Life contracts before it expands, and pulls back before it leaps forward.

If we don’t finish processing our emotional experiences, they stay with us like the food we can’t metabolize, or old clothes we never get around to packing up and putting out at the curb. Sometimes, they hold within them nourishment, wisdom and guidance. Other times, they’re debris from a chapter long closed.

What if, in the moments you feel most alone, you begin to realize that you are also free?

Give yourself permission to rest. If all you were able to do today was wake up and keep breathing, that’s okay.

Infinite versions of you exist. There’s the person you were yesterday and the person you are today. There’s the person you were five years ago and the person you will be in another ten. There’s the person you were this morning and then the person you’ll be tonight. There’s the person that exists within the minds of each person you know and meet and come across and love. Every single one of them has a unique image of you in their minds, informed by their own experiences and preferences and beliefs and feelings they have about their own selves.