Healing Doesn’t Mean Back to Normal

Good morning, beautiful 💋

One of the things I am learning about healing is that it rarely happens the way we imagine it will. We tend to think there will be a moment when everything suddenly feels normal again. A moment when the pain is gone, the scars have disappeared, and life picks up exactly where it left off. This week, I was reminded that healing is often much more complicated than that. Sometimes healing is not about returning to who you were before. Sometimes healing is about learning how to move forward as who you are now.

Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment with my surgeon. I went in with no real expectations. I was simply curious about what the next phase of recovery would look like. The appointment itself was straightforward. The surgeon looked at my foot, said everything looked good, and informed me that I no longer needed to wrap or bandage it. I remember looking at him and saying, “Excuse me… explain more please.” While he saw progress and healing, I was still looking at a very visible scar, significant scar tissue, and a foot that is still very much recovering. The medical clearance surprised me because from my perspective there is still so much healing left to do.

When my husband and I left the appointment, he was excited. To him, this was wonderful news. He immediately began talking about life returning to normal and all the things that could now resume. The problem was that nothing about the experience felt normal to me. Better? Absolutely. Healed? Yes. Finished? Not even close. Recovery still requires care. Recovery still requires patience. Recovery still requires listening to my body. As the day went on, I found myself overwhelmed by the expectations attached to being “better.” By the end of the day, I had completely crashed and needed more rest and more medication than I have needed in quite some time.

As I sat with the experience, I realized something important. There are seasons in life where everything can look healed from the outside while still requiring tremendous care on the inside. Sometimes the world sees progress and assumes the work is complete. Sometimes people celebrate our growth before we have fully adjusted to it ourselves. Sometimes others focus on how far we have come while we are still aware of how much recovery remains. None of those perspectives are wrong. They are simply looking at the same situation from different vantage points.

What felt most significant to me was the choice I made when I got home. Even though I had been given permission to stop wrapping my foot, I chose to wrap it again. Not because I was rejecting the surgeon’s guidance. Not because I was refusing to move forward. I wrapped it because it felt supportive. It felt safe. It felt aligned with what my body needed in that moment. And for someone who is spending this month exploring self-trust, that decision felt important. I listened to the information. I considered the expert opinion. And then I trusted myself enough to make the choice that felt right for me.

So if you find yourself in a season where everyone around you thinks you should be back to normal, I want to remind you of something. Healing is not a race. Progress does not eliminate the need for care. Growth does not mean you stop honoring your needs. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is acknowledge how far you have come while still giving yourself permission to continue healing. The scar may no longer need a bandage according to everyone else, but you get to decide what healing looks like for you. And there is something incredibly magical about trusting yourself enough to know the difference.

Love,

Your Most Magical Self 💋✨