We often imagine healing as a staircase. You climb, you rise, you leave the pain behind—each step taking you further away from the wound. It’s a comforting image. But real healing doesn’t work that way. Not in the body. Not in the heart. Not in the soul.
True healing is more like a spiral.
You don’t leave the pain behind; you return to it. Again and again. But not to suffer. Not to relive it. You return to meet it differently. With more awareness. With softer hands. With eyes that no longer flinch.
The wound doesn’t always disappear. But your relationship to it changes. That’s the healing.
One of the hardest things to accept is that you will revisit things you thought you were “done” with. A feeling you thought had settled will rise up again—unexpectedly, sometimes unkindly. A grief you thought you’d buried will resurface in the middle of laughter. A part of yourself you thought you’d transcended will whisper: I’m still here.
And in those moments, it’s easy to panic. To judge yourself. To wonder if you’ve regressed.
But this isn’t failure. This is the spiral in motion. It’s how we deepen.
Each return is not a setback—it’s a second chance. To meet the old pain with new compassion. To walk back into the same room you once ran from—and sit down. To hear the same story with a different heart. To stop fighting what hurt you, and start listening to what it’s still trying to teach you.
Sometimes healing looks like dancing. Sometimes it looks like resting. And sometimes it looks like weeping again—only this time, without shame.
We forget: healing is not about erasing the wound. It’s about integrating it. It’s about becoming someone who knows how to carry the scar with reverence. It’s about becoming someone who no longer fears their own depths.
In this way, healing is not a place we arrive at. It’s a practice. A daily decision to meet ourselves—raw, unfiltered, honest—and stay.
We don’t heal to become someone new. We heal to remember who we’ve always been underneath the armor.
And yes, the spiral may bring you back to the pain. But with each return, you’ll find you’re standing taller. Holding it more gently. Seeing yourself more clearly. You’ll realize the pain didn’t shrink you—it shaped you. It carved space for more truth, more strength, more grace.
So if you find yourself back in a familiar ache, don’t despair. You’re not going backward.
You’re going deeper.