You don’t have to wait for good days, they’re allowed.
The healing journey is not for the weak. It can be hard, daunting, and sometimes painfully long. Just when you feel like you’ve overcome one thing and found your way back to yourself, another experience comes along and knocks you down.It can feel like you get 2.6 seconds to enjoy life before thinking, “Boom…here we go again.”
You may have asked yourself, When do I get to just be? When do I get to breathe? When do I get to just live? Friend, I’ve been there and I’m here to remind you that the day you get to be, breathe, and live is the day you decide it is.
Recently, on the Living Lite podcast, I sat down with Tamara Nagahiro, founder of La Femme Cinema, and we talked about what it means to reach a point where you stop living as though you are always in healing mode. Tamara shared something that really resonated with me: at a certain point, you have to live. I couldn’t agree more. We both recognize that healing is a process but we’ve also learned that you cannot postpone joy while waiting to become “healed.”
I remember being in meditation teacher training and asking my instructor, “Will I ever be completely healed?” His answer was simple: No.
He explained that there will always be something to grow through, something to learn about ourselves, and something to release or move beyond. There will always be seasons when we are healing, learning, and figuring things out but eventually, there comes a point when we must decide to move from suffering to healing but completely healed… no.
That distinction changed something for me- healing doesn't mean that nothing will ever hurt again it just means learning how to meet what hurts differently.
This is where we begin stepping into life knowing that we are doing the work and using the tools, wisdom, and lessons gathered to make today better than yesterday.
At some point, we all have to decide: Is today the day I actually use what I’ve learned, or will I return to the familiar patterns, chaos, self-sabotage, self-abandonment, doubt, and questioning.
Choosing to live requires courage, it requires trusting God, trusting yourself, and trusting the person you are becoming.
At first, that space between suffering and living may only be 2.6 seconds then you catch yourself before the old pattern takes over. You breathe you make a different choice and then, slowly, those 2.6 seconds become minutes then hours and eventually, they become a way of being.
There is more space between the ache of suffering and the resonance of a Lite life and sometimes actually most of the time your good days are more within your reach than you realize.
The energy you bring to your life as the leading woman or leading man is ultimately yours to choose and while yes there are people who can contribute to your joy, there are people who love you, support you, encourage you, and make life sweeter but they are supporting characters in your story. You are the main character.
One of the most beautiful parts of healing is recognizing that.
For me, coming to that truth has been some of the most daunting work of my healing journey. Many of the experiences that caused me pain were outside of my control. For a long time I carried anger, bitterness, and resentment toward the people who hurt me, but healing taught me something difficult: while I was not responsible for what happened to me, I was responsible for what I continued to carry.
It was okay for me to be hurt by what happened,it was not okay for me to remain in the suffering.
Healing revealed that contrast to me and so now, I practice forgiving myself. first, and I practice forgiving others. I practice choosing to move forward-to live.
But here’s the thing: knowing something and living it are two different things.
I can know the tools, I can understand the lesson, I can recognize the pattern but life will inevitably give me another opportunity to practice.
There will be another disappointment, another heartbreak., another trigger, another moment when I could default to what I’ve always done.
The question becomes: Will I default, or will I apply what I’ve learned?
This too is part of living.
Maybe this is what the saying , “You live and you learn” truly is.
You learn.
You practice.
You mess up.
You begin again.
You trust God.
You trust yourself.
And you keep living.
So if you’ve been waiting until you are completely healed to finally enjoy your life, consider this your permission slip: You don’t have to wait.
You can heal and live at the same time.
And honestly?
That’s where the magic begins.
Live Lite,