Healing Hurts (the part no one warns you about)

Healing hurts.
That’s the bare truth.

We talk about healing like it’s a glow-up, a breakthrough, a before-and-after photo. But what we don’t talk about enough is the middle - the part where everything aches.

Because healing isn’t about pretending things didn’t hurt.
It’s about finally letting yourself feel the pain you’ve been avoiding.

For a long time, many of us survive by staying busy, staying strong, staying numb. We push past grief. We minimize heartbreak. We tell ourselves, “I’m fine,” because stopping to feel feels dangerous. Overwhelming. Like it might break us.

But unprocessed pain doesn’t disappear.
It waits.

Healing begins the moment you give yourself permission to feel what you’ve been carrying.

The sadness you never had time to sit with.
The anger you swallowed to keep the peace.
The loneliness that crept in when life shifted and no one needed you the way they used to.

Feeling it doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you’re brave enough to stop running.

There will be days when healing feels heavier than the hurt you’re trying to move through. Days when old memories resurface. When tears come out of nowhere. When you question whether opening that door was a mistake.

It isn’t.

Pain acknowledged is pain that can finally move.
Pain avoided is pain that stays.

Healing hurts because you’re touching wounds that mattered. Because you’re honoring versions of yourself that survived without the tools you have now. Because growth often feels like grief before it feels like freedom.

So if you’re in that tender in-between space - where you’re not who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming - be gentle with yourself.

You’re not falling apart.
You’re breaking open.

And on the other side of that honesty…
is relief, clarity, and a deeper sense of wholeness than you’ve ever known.

Healing hurts.
But feeling is how you heal.