I no longer need my healing to look pretty

Dear Delyara, One of the quietest freedoms I’ve found is this: I no longer need my healing to look graceful in order to trust that it’s real. Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it is angry. Sometimes it is slow. Sometimes it is full of contradiction. Sometimes it is less “transformed” than I wish it sounded. But it is still healing. I think I used to put too much pressure on recovery to look wise, poetic, spiritually mature, or emotionally clean. Now I’m more interested in whether it is honest than whether it is beautiful. That shift has made the whole process less performative and more true.