Breaking Free from the Healing Loop

What happened when I stopped searching for what was wrong with me.

I spent a lot of years trying to heal myself.

And when I say a lot, I mean decades!!!

I read the books. Took the courses. Learned the modalities. Looked at my childhood, trauma, relationships, beliefs, patterns, ancestry, past lives... you name it.

And some of that work helped me enormously.

There were things about myself I needed to understand. Experiences I had carried for years without realizing how deeply they had shaped me. Patterns I couldn't see until I finally had the courage to look at them. That work helped me make sense of so much of my life, and I'm genuinely grateful for it.

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing that no matter how much I understood or how much work I'd done, there always seemed to be something else. Another pattern to understand, another belief to change, another wound to tend, another layer to clear.

I'd become incredibly good at examining myself. I could tell you why I reacted the way I did, where a pattern probably came from, which childhood experience it connected to, and what I thought I needed to work on next.

And if I looked hard enough, I could almost always find something.

Eventually though, I was exhausted!

I had spent so much time trying to understand why I was the way I was that I began to wonder if I'd lost sight of who I actually was.

Somewhere along the way, I'd started seeing myself as an endless collection of issues that needed healing or fixing.

I began wondering who I would be if I stopped looking at myself through the lens of everything that had happened to me...

Who was I underneath the trauma, the coping, the conditioning, and all the identities I'd created to survive, belong, be loved, and find my place in the world?

For years, I'd been asking myself, Why am I like this? Where did this come from? What do I need to heal?

But now there was another question I couldn't stop thinking about.

Who am I underneath all of this?

And the truth was, I didn't really know.

I'd spent years learning about my wounds, my patterns, and all the ways I'd adapted myself to the world. But there were parts of me I'd barely given any attention to.

The sensitive, creative, loving little girl who felt everything so deeply. The one who was a little weird, endlessly curious, and fascinated by things she couldn't explain.

The girl who wanted to sing and paint and dance and dream. Who saw magic and meaning in the world around her and had a natural connection to Spirit

And the woman who wanted to speak freely, trust what she knew, and stop measuring every part of herself against what other people might think.

I started remembering how much of myself I'd quieted over the years. How often I'd set aside the things I loved, questioned my intuition, or hidden parts of my spiritual nature because I was afraid of being judged, misunderstood, or rejected.

And I began to understand just how much of my life I'd spent trying to become someone who would be accepted, while slowly losing touch with the woman I actually was.

She hadn't disappeared. I'd just learned to live without so many parts of her.

Around that time, I wrote something that still brings tears to my eyes.

I didn't need fixing. I only forgot.

I forgot who I was. I forgot what I was. I forgot where I came from.

I forgot the sound of my own voice beneath all the voices telling me who I should be. I forgot the things I knew before I learned to doubt myself. I forgot the parts of myself I'd silenced, hidden, or tucked away because somewhere along the way, I'd learned it was safer to keep them contained.

And perhaps most of all, I'd forgotten something that had been true long before this life taught me anything about who I was supposed to be.

I was a child of God.

I don't think I can fully explain what remembering that meant to me.

It changed the way I saw myself, my experiences, and even the parts of me I'd spent so many years trying to change.

I began to see that so many of the ways I'd learned to protect myself had developed around something precious. My sensitivity, my tenderness, my desire to love and be loved, my need for freedom, my willingness to trust.

Those qualities were still there, even when they'd become buried beneath fear, expectations, and all the ways I'd learned to survive.

Of course, remembering who I am hasn't magically made all my old patterns disappear.

I still have moments when I catch myself reacting in familiar ways, getting caught up in an old fear, or trying to control something because uncertainty feels uncomfortable and scary.

And sometimes I catch myself and think, Oh, for fuck's sake... we're doing this again?!?!

But my relationship with those parts of myself has changed.

I'm less interested in endlessly analyzing what's wrong with me and more interested in understanding what I've been protecting, what I've been afraid to express, and what I've forgotten about myself along the way.

I'm learning to recognize when an old survival pattern has taken the driver's seat, and to make a different choice. Sometimes I manage that beautifully. Other times, I realize what's happened about three hours too late!

And I'm beginning to understand that this journey isn't about reaching some point where I've finally healed everything and become the best possible version of myself.

It's about learning to trust myself again. Allowing the parts of me I've kept hidden to have a place in my life. Remembering my connection to God and the knowing I've carried within me all along.

For so many years, I believed that if I could just heal enough, understand enough, or change enough, I'd finally feel whole.

But the more I remember who I am, the more I realize how much of myself was never missing in the first place.

I had simply forgotten how to be her.

And now, little by little, I'm learning to live as the woman I came here to be.