Tonight, something as simple as seeing a picture brought back emotions I didn’t realize I was still carrying.
And surprisingly, it wasn’t just the hurt.
I remembered drawing together. Singing together. Car rides to the store. Watching him completely in his element when he created. I still remember this huge portrait he once drew of my mum. He was incredibly gifted, artistically and musically.
There were good memories. Real ones.
But there was hurt too.
And maybe part of healing is allowing yourself to remember both without feeling like one has to cancel out the other.
Tonight also made me realize that for a long time, I carried anger toward one person and unknowingly let pieces of it spill into other parts of my life—how I loved, trusted, protected myself, and even how I saw myself.
Sometimes we think because we survived something, we healed from it.
Those aren’t always the same thing.
So this is for the woman—or the little girl still inside her—who has ever wondered why someone didn’t choose her, stay, show up, or love her the way she needed:
Their choices were never a measurement of your worth. You were always enough.
We may not be responsible for the wounds people gave us, but eventually we become responsible for what we do with them.
We can’t rewrite our childhood or someone else’s choices. But we can decide those choices don’t get to write the rest of our story.
Maybe healing isn’t forgetting or pretending the good wasn’t good and the bad didn’t hurt.
Maybe it’s finally being able to say:
There were beautiful parts. There were painful parts. Both shaped me—but neither gets to decide who I become from here.
Still learning. Still unlearning. Still healing. 🤍
If you are too, keep going. There’s still so much life ahead of us.
From my own journey, I’ve found that healing is not a straight path but rather a winding road filled with unexpected moments of reflection and growth. When I first tried to move on from past pain, I thought survival meant I had healed. However, it wasn’t until I allowed myself to fully acknowledge the complexity of my feelings—the joy alongside the hurt—that real healing began. In those moments when memories resurface, it’s natural to feel a mix of emotions. For me, recalling the creative times spent with a loved one—the drawing, the singing, and even the car rides—reminded me that the past holds both light and shadow. Accepting this duality was liberating because it broke the misconception that healing requires forgetting all the pain or invalidating the good. Practicing self-compassion was key. I realized that the anger I carried was quietly influencing how I related to others and myself. Recognizing this spillover allowed me to take responsibility for my healing without blame. Instead of letting others' choices define my worth, I reclaimed my narrative and focused on how I could grow beyond those wounds. For anyone feeling stuck between the hurt and the hope, remember that your value isn’t tied to others’ actions. The journey of healing invites us to hold space for all parts of our story—the beautiful and the painful—without letting either dictate our future. It’s an ongoing process of learning, unlearning, and loving ourselves through it all. There’s strength in continuing forward, even when it’s hard. Embracing who you were, who you are, and who you want to become is the true essence of healing. Keep going—there is so much life ahead, and your story is still being written.