Healing is not losing ourselves.

Nor is it forgetting about our pain too.

I want you to know that you are not alone in this feeling.

Though this feeling will have profoundly different meanings for me and you.

In fact, this post was inspired by someone I spoke to a week or two ago.

Who amidst her struggles, thoughtfully questioned to me the below.

She wondered:

"What if I've grown so comfortable in this pain? That if I chose to heal, I'll lose all that I am?"

And her words stroke a chord in me, inevitably making me reflect on a past of my own.

A time when I was filled with so much hurt, past the verge of despairing.

But yet, a hurt that was so familiar.

The sadness and anger of that time uncontrollable, uncomfortable, but all parts of me that I've come to known.

Back then, the uncertainty of change scared me.

How could I embrace a different version of myself previously unimaginable?

But the truth is this, if I stayed in that state, you probably would never know me as of this day.

Nor I know you too as well.

---

So to that person, I gathered my thoughts and pondered the question.

And the answer is this, to those who wonder the same.

Healing is NOT losing parts of ourselves.

Nor are we abandoning them in the depths of our memory.

This part of me I mentioned above? I still carry it every single day.

And in all honest truth I can tell you this, it's a part of me that I know even better now.

For healing was when I decided to stopped fighting myself, to start doing all the things that mattered.

And this part of me that's there, is pretty much the same but still different.

For in the process of healing, it told me this instead.

It wanted to turn its despair into something good, much like empathy for others, kindness and strength.

And that's what we've been journeying on. Even on this night I can feel its presence there.

Knowing it's not forgotten, but proud of us instead.

And I gladly bring this part of me, doing all the things we wanted to do.

Thriving? Perhaps. Still healing, of course.

Along with all the parts of me that I own :)

Take care,

Hernping