The quiet ways we heal

There is a lot of talk about healing these days. People talk about breakthroughs. Big moments. Crying on the floor and rising transformed. A retreat that changed everything. One decision that rewrote a life.

Sometimes healing does look like that. However, a lot of healing happens quietly.

In little choices you make over time that don’t seem important in the moment.

For me, healing looked like going on a solo trip to the beach. It looked like sitting by the ocean with all the parts of me I didn’t know what to do with. It looked like buying a skirt I absolutely loved. A turquoise ring I never would have worn before.

Small things. But they mattered.

Healing is not only about what you release. Sometimes it is about what you allow yourself to want.

For me, healing also looked like going gluten free because I was tired of being bloated, uncomfortable, and miserable all the time. It looked like finally listening to my body after years of pushing past what it was trying to say.

It looked like moving my hips until my abs were sore.

Dancing.

Feeling joy in my own body again.

Feeling life in places that had gone quiet.

Healing can take years. It can be slow. It can look like starting back something you used to love:

Writing.
Dancing.
Laughing more easily.
Having a cup of tea by yourself in the morning before the house wakes up.

It can look like choosing yourself in tiny ways over and over again.

We can think we are fine and still have places in us asking for tenderness. Still have old wounds that flare in certain moments. Still have younger versions of ourselves waiting to be noticed.

Healing is not proof that you were broken.

Healing is proof that you are listening now.

And sometimes it does not arrive like lightning.

Sometimes it arrives as tea.

As movement.

As the ocean.

As a skirt you love.

As food that finally makes you feel well.

As one small decision that says:

I matter too.

That is healing.

And it counts.

-Mare