When it comes to healing, you can’t force the process. You can’t will the pieces of your broken heart back together again. No amount of willpower will dull the pain of sorrow. You simply have to be patient in the process.

The process of healing is a long one.

I wish I could tell you that you’ll be able to just “move on” from your pain, but you can’t. Your pain will follow you. It will tear a hole deep into your soul. It will cloud your brain until that is all you think about – constantly reliving the moments that pain entered your life.

You need to live in the pain, through the pain, and eventually past the pain.

Don’t let pain become part of you. Don’t let pain define you. Recognize it, give it a name, ask what it has done to you, and speak to those broken places. Speak to them like pouring water into the cracks of the desert ground. Speak life to them.

Speak softly to them.

The pain isn’t your fault. No matter what reasons people have given you or you’ve given yourself, it is not your fault. Pain is an awful terrible thing. No one deserves it. And yet it comes.

It comes, but it doesn’t need to stay.

Let yourself grieve. Let yourself rage at the injustice. Let yourself mourn the scars that have fallen into your life. Let yourself be angry at the way it tried to break you. But don’t stay there.

Some day, when you are ready, you’ll start to climb out of the gaping hole inside yourself. You’ll realize that pain is just pain. It doesn’t need to break you.

But it’s a long climb, my dear.

You’ll cut yourself open on rocks. You’ll gash your skin and you’ll bleed. You’ll burst open the deep chasms of pain that you swore you’d never open again. But this time, your pain will have a purpose. Your pain will have direction. The pain of healing is a pain that you choose – because it is the only path to wholeness.

This is what healing is like. Like climbing out of a pit. It isn’t easy or clean or beautiful. It is messy and it hurts like hell. But it’s a different kind of hurt. It is a healing hurt.

Healing is the most important kind of pain.

It is the pain you can’t bear to bypass. It strengthens you, it proves what you are made of. It empowers you as you look the ugly hurt straight in the eye and not let it win over, not today.

I wish healing was like walking through an open field and letting the sun melt all your broken pieces back together again. But it isn’t. At least not the beginning of it. But some day, darling, you’ll be out of the pit and you’ll never look back.

Embrace the pain of the journey. Fight for the healing. Let it empower you. And never look back.