When Healing Isn’t Aesthetic

Beyond the Filter: The Messy Truth About Healing

In the current digital landscape, healing has undergone a massive rebranding. We’ve turned the most grueling human process into an aesthetic: a minimalist bedroom, a perfectly poured cup of herbal tea, journals with gold-embossed covers, and the soft glow of a sunset. We’ve made it look like a destination—a state of permanent zen that can be achieved if you just buy the right candle or follow the right morning routine.

But let’s be honest: real healing often looks nothing like a curated Instagram feed.

Real healing is loud. It is inconvenient. It is deeply human and, more often than not, it is incredibly messy. If your journey feels less like a spa day and more like a construction site, you aren’t failing. You’re finally doing the work.

The Inconvenience of Growth

We talk about “rest” as if it’s a scheduled luxury, but real healing involves rest that interrupts plans. It’s the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t go away with a nap, requiring you to cancel the brunch, skip the workout, or step back from a project because your nervous system is finally screaming for the safety it was never afforded.

Similarly, the “boundaries” we see in infographics look like empowering slogans. In practice? Boundaries disappoint people. They create friction. They end friendships that were built on your compliance. Healing means being okay with being the “villain” in someone else’s story because you’ve decided to stop being a martyr in your own.

The Uninvited Guest: Grief

We often expect healing to be a linear ascent—a staircase leading up to a better version of ourselves. Instead, it’s often a spiral. You might feel “cured” on Tuesday, only to have a wave of uninvited grief hit you on Thursday because of a song, a smell, or a stray thought.

This isn’t a relapse; it’s processing. When we stop performing “wellness,” we give ourselves permission to feel the shaky strength that precedes true stability. It is the trembling hand that sets a limit; the quivering voice that speaks a truth. That shakiness isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s the sound of new foundations being poured.

Returning, Not Rebuilding

The greatest misconception about healing is that it’s about becoming someone “new.” It’s not. It’s about returning to yourself—without apology. It is the slow, painstaking process of unlearning the defenses you built to survive, and rediscovering the person who existed before the world told you who you had to be.

If your healing involves crying on the kitchen floor, having difficult conversations that leave your heart racing, or sitting in a house that isn’t perfectly tidy because you simply don’t have the energy, take heart. You haven’t done it wrong. You’ve stripped away the filter and chosen the truth.

Healing isn’t meant to be “pretty”—it’s meant to be free.