The Truth About Healing: It’s Not Linear, But It’s Worth It!

Healing Isn’t a Destination, It’s a Journey Back to Yourself

Healing gets spoken about like it’s a straight road: you hurt, you work on yourself, and one day you arrive at peace. But real healing is rarely neat. It’s a winding path with quiet progress, sudden triggers, and moments of breakthrough you didn’t see coming.

Healing isn’t about “getting over it.” It’s about returning to yourself after losing connection with who you are. It’s learning to feel safe in your own body again, to trust your voice, and to believe you deserve peace.

Whether you’re recovering from narcissistic abuse, heartbreak, family trauma, or burnout, healing is about building something stronger inside you, not pretending the pain never happened.

The Myth of “Being Healed”

There’s pressure to “move on” or “be healed” quickly. People mean well when they say it, but those words can sting. Healing has no finish line.

You don’t wake up one day and suddenly forget the past. You simply reach a point where it no longer controls you. You can think about it without collapsing, speak about it without shaking, and live without reliving.

Healing doesn’t mean you never hurt again, it means the pain no longer defines you.

Why Healing Feels So Hard

If healing were easy, everyone would do it. But growth is uncomfortable. When you start facing your wounds, you’ll meet resistance, from within and from others.

1. Your mind will fight for old habits

Your brain is wired for survival. Even if those old patterns hurt, they feel familiar. Healing requires breaking those cycles, and that can feel unsafe at first.

2. People around you may not understand

The moment you set boundaries or start choosing peace, those who benefited from your silence might call you “selfish” or “cold.” Stay steady. Their discomfort is not your burden.

3. Healing exposes grief

When you start to heal, you don’t only lose pain, you lose illusions, relationships, and old versions of yourself. Grieving those losses is part of growth.

The Phases of Emotional Healing

Healing doesn’t happen in order, but these stages tend to appear along the way:

1. Awareness

You stop minimizing your pain and start naming it. You say, “Something’s not right.” That awareness is the beginning of freedom.

2. Acceptance

You accept what happened, not in agreement, but in acknowledgment. You release denial and open the door to truth.

3. Release

You start letting go: of guilt that isn’t yours, of anger that drains you, of people who don’t choose growth.

4. Reconnection

You begin rebuilding, with yourself first. You learn what peace feels like in your body, how joy shows up quietly, how to trust again.

5. Redefinition

You rewrite your identity beyond the trauma. You become more grounded, more compassionate, and more protective of your energy.

Healing changes you, but it doesn’t erase who you were. It integrates your past into a wiser, softer, stronger you.

What Healing Really Looks Like (Even When It’s Messy)

• You rest without guilt. Rest stops being laziness; it becomes medicine.

• You cry without shame. Emotion becomes release, not weakness.

• You set boundaries. You stop explaining your “no.”

• You stop chasing closure. You realize peace comes from acceptance, not from answers.

• You forgive yourself. For staying too long, for not knowing better, for being human.

  
  

Healing is invisible most days, it looks like you choosing not to text them back, or getting up after a rough night, or speaking kindly to yourself in the mirror.

Those small acts are proof you’re doing the work.

The Role of Boundaries in Healing

Healing and boundaries walk hand in hand. You can’t truly heal in the same environment that broke you. Boundaries are how you protect your peace while rebuilding.

• They separate what’s yours to carry from what’s not.

• They teach others how to treat you.

• They remind you that saying no is not rejection, it’s direction.

Every boundary you set is a declaration: My healing matters.

Healing From Narcissistic Abuse

Survivors of narcissistic abuse face a unique kind of recovery. The emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and control can leave deep wounds. Healing here means reclaiming your reality, one truth at a time.

1. Validate your experience. You weren’t “too sensitive.” You were targeted because you have empathy.

2. Rebuild self-trust. Abusers teach you to doubt yourself. Healing means believing your instincts again.

3. Reconnect with your identity. Rediscover who you are outside their version of you.

4. Choose safety first. That includes emotional, physical, and digital boundaries.

5. Allow time. Narcissistic trauma recovery takes longer because it’s built on unlearning years of conditioning.

Healing from narcissistic abuse isn’t about revenge, it’s about peace. The goal isn’t to win, it’s to no longer need the battle.

Healing Is Not Weakness, It’s Power

There’s courage in choosing to face what hurt you instead of burying it. Real power is soft, quiet, and steady. It shows up when you decide you deserve better.

When you start to heal, you stop performing strength and start embodying it. You stop proving your worth and start protecting it.

Healing doesn’t make you perfect, it makes you whole.

How to Support Your Own Healing

Here are small, practical ways to nurture your journey:

• Journal regularly:- write what hurts and what helps.

• Move your body:- dance, walk, stretch; let the emotion leave through motion.

• Seek safe support:- therapy, coaching, support groups, or trusted friends.

• Create space:- unfollow, unsubscribe, unlearn what no longer aligns.

• Celebrate small wins:- every peaceful morning, every calm response counts.

The Strength Of A Queen Approach

At Strength Of A Queen, healing isn’t about perfection, it’s about progression. It’s about helping survivors of narcissistic abuse rediscover their voice, rebuild their identity, and rise again.

Our workshops, journals, and coaching spaces exist to remind women that healing can be both powerful and peaceful. You don’t have to rush your process. You don’t have to do it alone.

Healing isn’t a finish line. It’s a way of living where your peace leads, your boundaries stand tall, and your voice returns home to you.

If you’re still hurting, you’re not broken, you’re healing. And healing takes time, grace, and courage.

You don’t need to go back to who you were before it all happened. That version of you was surviving. The one you’re becoming is free.