Healing happens even when you can’t see it

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what is left.” ~Marie Curie

I almost didn’t go to my cousin’s wedding.

It’s not because I don’t want to celebrate her. I did that. But the thought of walking into a room full of people who knew me from two years ago was unbearable.

They knew that version very well.

A person was crying in a bathroom stall at a family gathering. The one who spent the entire dinner smiling while silently repeating the argument from three days ago. No one drinks a little too much at Christmas because it was easier than feeling it all out loud in a room full of people who seemed perfectly okay.

I wasn’t feeling well at that time. And I didn’t even know if I was okay now.

So I stayed home most of the time.

But I went. Then, somewhere between the ceremony and reception, my aunt pulled me aside and said something unexpected.

“You seem different,” she said. “Lighter. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

That night, I drove home in silence, thinking about what she had said.

writer.

I didn’t feel any lighter. There were still tough days. I was still overthinking things. I still find myself falling into old patterns from time to time. The quiet background noise of people-pleasing, self-doubt, and long-held insecurities felt like part of my personality.

But from the outside, it was clear that something had changed.

And I completely missed it.

Over the next few weeks, I kept thinking about those words and wondering how other people could see the changes that I couldn’t see.

The problem with seeing yourself healed

Here’s what no one tells you about healing: You are the worst person to measure your progress.

If you are in it and live every day in it, you will not notice any change. I just see the gap between where I am and where I want to be.

It turns out that I had a panic attack last Tuesday. Not the fact that I was eating it three times a week.

I remember a night swirling around text messages. It’s not the last dozen times I haven’t done that recently.

You can tell when you’re about to apologize for something that wasn’t your fault. It’s not always about stopping yourself before the words leave your mouth.

Progress is hidden from those who are making it.

I worked on it for months, doing therapy, journaling, and sitting through uncomfortable feelings rather than running away from them, but I truly believed that I was getting nowhere and that I was fundamentally broken beyond repair. Others were cured, but perhaps I was an exception.

At the time, I was recovering from years of chronic stress and burnout. Learning to slow down became less of a self-improvement goal and more of a necessity. Going through a difficult period of major life changes and trauma caused me to reconsider how much pressure I put on myself every day.

During that time, I kept a diary. It’s not consistent and it’s not pretty. I only make sporadic entries when things feel particularly heavy.

About a year later, I read it again from the beginning.

I had to stop halfway through.

It wasn’t because I was bored. Because I could hardly tell who was writing those words. Devastating. Even in his private diary, he constantly apologized for having feelings for himself. The way she described herself was fundamentally too much and not enough at the same time.

I had that diary sitting in my lap for a long time.

Then I cried. Not exactly out of sadness. From something close to sadness to how hard she was on herself. And something else, something quieter too.

peace of mind. Because I wasn’t her anymore.

Healing does not declare itself

I guess I was expecting the healing to feel like an instant.

The before and after are also refreshing. I woke up one morning and felt really okay. A conversation where I finally said the right thing. The day my anxiety just…resolved.

That won’t work. At least, it wasn’t for me.

The following worked instead:

One afternoon, I realized that a friend had canceled her plans at the last minute, but I wasn’t devastated by it. I was a little frustrated, as most people are, but then went on with my day.

If it had been canceled six months ago, I would have been in a spiral. I would have thought I had done something wrong. That they were pulling apart. I was too much, or not enough, or somehow worthy of cancellation.

But that afternoon, I just…didn’t go there.

I ordered takeout and watched the show I was planning on watching. It wasn’t noticeable at all.

That was the point.

Another time, a colleague said something derogatory during a meeting. Something in my life before that I would have lived rent-free in my head for weeks on end. I would replay it endlessly, trying to figure out what I had done to deserve it, creating reactions that I would never actually say.

This time I thought about it in the car on the way home. I decided that said more about them than it did about me. And then let it go.

That’s exactly right.

I didn’t even realize I had done anything different until later that night when I realized I wasn’t thinking about it anymore.

That is what real healing looks like. It’s not a grand revelation. You just quietly do things differently without realizing that you have changed.

The yardstick was wrong

For a long time, I measured my healing against the wrong things.

I was measuring against perfection.

Don’t overthink it again. Don’t feel anxious. Never fall into old patterns, have a tough day, or say yes when you mean no.

By that standard, I was always a failure.

But healing is never about becoming a person who doesn’t struggle. That meant becoming a person who faced different hardships than before.

Who will recover faster? Someone who caught themselves in the middle of a spiral and chose not to end it. Who feels the pull towards old patterns and recognizes it as fear rather than truth?

A friend of mine who has been a recovering alcoholic for several years said something that stuck with me.

“People always ask me if I’m cured,” she says. “I tell them that’s not the right question. The right question is, am I living better than I was before? And the answer to that is yes, day in and day out.”

I thought about it a lot.

Have you cured yourself of overthinking? No. Am I living better than before? absolutely.

And somewhere along the way, I no longer felt the need for them to be the same thing.

what I wish someone had said

I wish someone had told me first that healing is invisible to me most of the time.

I was working and nothing seemed to be changing, until one day a stranger, or my aunt who was at my wedding, said something that stopped me in my tracks.

If you go looking for evidence of your own progress, you won’t find it, because the biggest changes are not so dramatic that you notice them in the moment. It’s just… the agony that used to be constant is gone.

I wish someone had told me that the goal is not to get to a place where difficult things no longer happen. It’s about getting to a place where when hard things happen, you don’t completely collapse like you used to.

I wish someone had told me to stop comparing my current chapter to the worst and declaring that I am not healed enough. It’s like judging a book by comparing the middle chapters to the darkest opening pages and deciding it hasn’t improved.

I wish someone had told me to turn around every now and then. To reflect on the path we have already taken, rather than just looking at how far we still have to go.

turn around

Last month, I pulled out that old diary again.

I’ve been having a rough week. It was a day when old anxiety crept up on me, kept me up for a few nights, and I found myself people-pleasing in ways I thought were gone.

I felt like I was back at square one. So I read some entries from two years ago. And just like before, I could barely recognize her.

It wasn’t because she was weak. She wasn’t. She was doing the best she could with what she had. But the weight she carried – the constant apologies, the fear of taking up space, the way she talked about herself – it was so heavy.

You will never carry your weight the same way again. There are still days when it is displayed. There are days when I still feel that edge. But I don’t live under it like I used to. And it’s not for nothing. That’s all.

If you’re in the middle of it right now, and you’re working and you feel like nothing is changing, I would like to gently ask you to change direction. Don’t stay there. Don’t live in the past. This is to see how far you have already walked.

Because you are not the starting point. Even if you don’t feel like it. Even if no one has said it yet.

You are different. It’s been quiet in a good way. Even stronger in important ways. It’s just not visible yet.

But it will.