Growing through it: what healing actually looked like for me

If healing looked the way people imagine it, there'd be a moment — a breakthrough, a lightning bolt, maybe a montage — and then you'd simply be better.

That's not what it looked like for me. I want to tell you what it actually looked like, because I think the tidy version makes everyone feel like they're failing at something no one actually passes on the first try.

It looked small and boring, mostly

Real healing, for me, was a lot of unglamorous days. It was getting up and showering when it felt optional. It was eating something green. It was going to one appointment I didn't want to go to, then going to the next one. It was letting a friend see my apartment before it was presentable. Nobody claps for any of that — but from inside it, I know those small things were the whole staircase.

It looked like two steps forward, one back

Some weeks I felt like I'd finally arrived — lighter, steadier, done. Then a song in the grocery store, a date on the calendar, and I'd be right back at the beginning, wondering if I'd made any progress at all. Here's what I eventually understood: going backward doesn't erase the steps you already took. Grief and healing move like tides, not lines. The low day after the good week isn't a relapse. It's just a low tide, and the water comes back.

It looked like colors before words

Painting was the first place I processed any of it. I'd stand at the canvas without a plan, and whatever was in me would come out in color long before I had a sentence for it. I've watched the same thing happen to people in my workshops — hands moving, brush mixing, and something quiet loosening in the chest. You don't have to be an artist for that. You just have to be willing to make something, and let the thing hold what you can't say yet.

That's really where No Rain, No Flowers came from — not from loving rain, but from learning that the rain and the flowers aren't two separate chapters. They happen at the same time. Growth isn't the reward you get after the hard part ends. It's the thing the rain quietly does, even while it's still falling.

Where I am now

I'm not "fixed." I don't think that's a real place, and honestly, I've stopped looking for it. I still have hard days. But I've grown through things I once thought would end me, and I trust myself now in a way I never used to. That's what healing actually looks like: not a finish line, but slowly becoming someone who can hold their own life with both hands.

If you're mid-rain right now — keep going. Something is rooting. It just isn't above the soil yet.

I share more of these stories on the No Rain, No Flowers podcast, and we make room for all of it in my workshops. You're welcome at both.