WHEN YOU HAVEN'T HEALED

I attended a Conference for women and teens the other day, it's something that one of the guest speakers said that brought this specific piece to light for me. You know those moments when you listening to someone speak and it lights a bulb in your head and heart and brings to the fore something you didn't necessarily not know before but they say it in such a way that it forces you to look at your life and face things you may have swept under the carpet.

How many of us are walking around broken and bruised and don't even realise it? Something happened in your life and you put on a brave face and convinced yourself that it didn't matter and then something that someone said revealed to you that you hadn't healed. I think so many of us are preoccupied with not falling apart that anything that vaguely tries to bring unbalance in our lives is ignored. We never let the wounds of what happened heal themselves in a natural way instead we try and speed up the process by numbing ourselves. We all have different crutches that we use,  for some it's alcohol, ensuring that we are so busy we never have time to think about our hurts or just plainly refuse to acknowledge that we are in pain.

So we go on about the day, pretending not to have a care in the world. We almost succeed at playing it cool and showing the world that we have it all under control. Until something very minor happens and sets us off on a downward spiral into the depth of depression. What happens when you haven't healed? You live a superficial life, one where you playing a role that's not a true reflection of all that is burning inside of you. You have answers to anything and everything but never to the troubles that make you toss and turn at night, in public you are the epitome of strength and yet in private you barely know your left from right.  You haven't healed.

You took what was bothering you and put on a band aid and turned the other way in the hope that the wound will go away all by itself. But it doesn't. It may appear to be gone for a short period but I guarantee you that anything you have not dealt with will one way or the other find its way to the surface again. What happens when you haven't healed.

Just as physically the body is able to heal itself, we need to allow our emotional scars the time to go through the healing process in a natural way. That means not rushing the process and trying to pretend that what hurt you didn't. I am in no way saying that one should wallow in self pity and give in to their circumstances but know that healing is a process and the time frame for all of us is different. It's okay to admit when you have not healed and to realise that,  trying to fake it will only delay the process. Embrace your hurt and how it makes you feel, give yourself time and when you have gone through the motions, you can truly move on without looking back. When you haven't healed, you deny yourself the opportunity to live a full life and when you are walking around bruised and broken, you risk hurting others you come across. Only when we have dealt with our pain and allowed time to heal us can we give ourselves the best and ultimately those we interact with too.