Healing Isn't Always Pretty: Grief, Grit, and Grace

We like to imagine healing as a
radiant sunrise.
Soft light spilling in, warming our
faces as we exhale relief.
But the truth? Healing often comes
as a storm.

It arrives in moments you didn't plan for—
in the grocery store aisle,
in the quiet hours when the house is finally still,
in the words that catch in your throat
when some 1 says, “Are you
okay?”

Healing is grief.
It's the ache that stretches across
your chest like a sky too heavy to
hold.
It's the sudden rage, the bone-deep
sadness, the disorientation that
comes when an old version of you falls away
and you haven't yet met the new
one.

There is grit and healing—
a raw, steady courage to keep
walking through the middle.
To sit with your pain instead of
silencing it.
To unclench your jaw.
To feel it all and still stay.

This is not the kind of work that gets
applause.
No one sees the way you got out of
bed today.
No one knows how hard you tried to
be gentle.
But it matters.

Somewhere inside it all—
grace.

The quiet, glimmering presence that
reminds you
you are already whole, even as you
heal.

Grace isn't always soft.
Sometimes it roars like a fire that will
not let you forget your worth.
Sometimes it weeps beside you.
Sometimes it whispers, “Keep
going.”

If you're in the thick of it—
grieving, unraveling, becoming—
you're not doing it wrong.

You are doing sacred work.

Not because it's pretty.
But because it's real.