07/20/2025
What It Means to Heal.....
by Rosalyn C. Fulton, LCPC, LCADC
Healing is not a destination. It’s not a finish line you cross, waving a victory flag and declaring, “I’m finally done.” Healing is a layered, deeply personal journey—one that asks us to return to ourselves, again and again, with tenderness, truth, and courage.
To heal means to become aware. It means turning inward and listening to the quiet whispers of your pain, your patterns, and your power. It’s looking in the mirror and being honest about the stories you’ve been told—and the ones you’ve told yourself. Healing means unpacking those stories, pulling apart what was inherited from what is truly yours, and rewriting the narrative in your own voice.
Healing Is Not Linear
Despite what social media or self-help books might suggest, healing is not a straight line from broken to whole. It’s a spiral, often circling back through familiar wounds, but with new wisdom each time. You might think you’ve “moved on,” only to find an old trigger waiting for you in a conversation, a smell, or a memory.
That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re still human.
Healing is often two steps forward, one step back. It’s the dance of grief and grace, of setbacks and breakthroughs. Real healing makes space for all of it—especially the messy middle. The days when your heart aches for something you can’t name. The nights when your body remembers what your mind has tried to forget. The moments when tears become a form of release, not weakness.
Healing Is Remembering Who You Are
When we are wounded—whether by trauma, loss, betrayal, or shame—those experiences can distort how we see ourselves. We begin to believe we are what happened to us. That we are unworthy, unlovable, or somehow broken beyond repair.
But healing asks us to reclaim our original identity. The one beneath the pain. The one that existed before the world told us who we had to be.
To heal is to return home to yourself. To rebuild trust with your body, your instincts, and your inner knowing. It’s learning how to hold yourself with compassion instead of criticism. It’s choosing to see yourself through the eyes of love, not judgment.
Healing Requires Community
Though healing is an internal process, it rarely happens in isolation. We are relational beings, wired for connection. Often, the wounds that hurt us most were inflicted in relationships—by family, partners, communities, or systems. And it’s through relationships that those wounds begin to mend.
Healing may require setting boundaries, speaking your truth, or walking away from environments that keep you stuck. But it also means allowing yourself to be witnessed, to be held, and to be supported. Whether through therapy, spiritual mentorship, or safe friendships, we need spaces where we don’t have to perform, where our stories are honored, and where our pain doesn’t have to be hidden.
Healing Is a Choice—Every Day
You don’t have to feel “ready” to begin healing. You only need to be willing. Willing to sit with discomfort. Willing to ask for help. Willing to believe that something better is possible.
Every time you choose rest over self-punishment…
Every time you name what hurts instead of pretending it’s fine…
Every time you practice forgiveness, even if it’s just toward yourself…
That is healing.
It’s in the little moments, not just the big milestones. Healing is a series of small, brave choices that accumulate over time. It’s progress, not perfection.
What Healing Isn’t
Healing is not pretending nothing ever happened.
It’s not suppressing emotion or bypassing pain.
It’s not always graceful or beautiful.
Healing is gritty. It’s raw. It’s work.
But it’s also the most liberating, life-affirming work you will ever do.
Closing Reflection
To heal is to remember that you are worthy—not someday, but now. Worthy of peace. Of safety. Of joy. Of love that doesn’t hurt. Of a life that feels good to live.
And even if no one ever apologized, even if you never get the closure you wanted, you can still choose to heal. Because healing isn’t about them. It’s about you. Your future. Your freedom.
So let healing be your rebellion. Your sacred act of self-rescue. Let it be your soft revolution—the one where you rise not because you’ve “overcome,” but because you chose to care for yourself like never before.
You deserve to feel whole again. You deserve to come home to yourself.
And you don’t have to do it alone.
