Alexa Babin

If you’ve ever been hurt—which if you’re alive and reading this right now, I think I’m safe to assume you have been—you’re familiar with the healing process. Whether physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual pain, there are steps we go through as we heal.

But how do you know it’s working? How do you know the healing is happening?

When I was in fourth grade, I nearly broke my nose at softball practice one afternoon. I missed a pop fly because the sun was in my eyes, and that ball knocked me straight in the face. Big pain. Very scary. Seared in my memory forever. It bled a ton, as you can imagine, and the pain came as soon as the shock wore off… which only took about ten minutes. The sight of all the blood probably made it feel worse than it did.

The doctor told me that by some miracle it wasn’t broken broken, but it would take some time to heal. What I remember most is his instruction not to run for a week (or maybe it was two?). He told me that if I ran, my nose would start bleeding again and that wouldn’t be good at all. So I needed to lay low and stay home from school for a day or two. He told me I’d probably have two black eyes as well, which, as a nine-year-old, I thought was funny since the ball hit my nose, not my eyes. Why would my eyes and cheeks bruise if they weren’t the part of my face that got hit? I was pretty bummed about abstaining from running, too. I was in running club at school, and I thought I was pretty good at it. I had a goal number of laps I was trying to hit by the end of the school year, and this certainly felt like a setback. I didn’t like it. A few days later when my nose wasn’t hurting so much, I remember wanting to run. But, as I’d learn later in life, a lack of hurt isn’t an indicator of completed healing.

I think there’s some clarity to be found in remembering the healing process and my experience of it as a kid rather than an adult. Parts of the journey make more sense when I go back to basics and simplify the way I’m looking at how healing works.

First—it can be scary even though it’s good. And that’s normal. Of course, we want to heal, but when we aren’t sure what healing entails, it’s easy to feel anxious about it. The unknown can bring fear, especially in the beginning stages.

Second—it won’t always make sense. Healing isn’t necessarily linear, and we won’t definitively know how it will feel until it’s happening and we’re right in the middle of it. I didn’t know why I should expect to have two black eyes from an almost broken nose, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw those blue-brown-green splotches on either side of my nose staring right back at me. It didn’t make sense, but it was true.

Third—you might have to pause something temporarily so that you can enjoy it fully later on. If I had jumped right back into running club two days after my injury, something tells me that would have made things worse than they needed to be. I didn’t like that I had to stop doing something I loved, but it was just part of the healing process at the time.

But what about other kinds of pain beyond the physical?

My grandma, Nana, died when I was a junior in college. She was one of my closest relationships. We had a special bond that I know I’ll never have again. That semester at school was one of my hardest because suddenly things felt so dim and out of focus without her presence in my life. She was one of my biggest champions—always calling, sending me mail, and finding ways to show how deeply she loved me. I was so proud to be her only granddaughter, and when she died, my life lost a lot of joy for a while.

There were days I’d sit in class, knowing the professor was speaking while not being able to comprehend a word she was saying. I’d hear my alarm go off in the morning, and I had to summon all the power within me to throw off the covers and get to my feet. I was exhausted. Down. Missing her something fierce.

Over time, I found ways to cope with my new reality that existed without Nana. I learned the power of routines, asking for help when I didn’t want to, calling on memories, and thoughtful friends.

In that season, the guideposts of healing included those from my almost-broken nose in fourth grade, along with a few more…

Healing took significant effort. It’s not a thing that happens on its own. You are active participant in your own healing process. It happens with you, not merely to you.

It was different than I thought it would be. Healing doesn’t always happen the same way, even to the same person. The journey of healing from the loss of Nana was drastically different than my healing in other seasons of hurt. It can be unpredictable, and just because you’ve healed before doesn’t mean the path will follow the same steps the next time. We are ever-changing people, so the way we heal can change, too.

It required a level of rebuilding, not just returning to what existed before. Healing wasn’t getting back to a place I was prior to the pain, but a route to something new. Often that can be hard to accept, but it’s honestly a really beautiful part of the process.

We’re all going to face situations that require us to heal from hurt and pain. Open your eyes and pay attention to what’s going on when you’re there.

For me, healing is happening when I’m a little scared, when I’m feeling the need to grow beyond what I have before, when I’m confused, when I’m pushed to a new normal, when I’m finding ripple effects of the pain in unexpected places, when I’m giving up the idea of how it should be, and finally… when I surrender to the process.

If you’re there—nervous, but accepting of your current state, ready to be drawn into what recovery from the hurt asks of you—your healing is already happening. Let it continue.