Healing is Messy & It's Okay

Reclaiming the Paintbrush

Award-winning educator, author, founder, artist, and community builder

Healing Is Messy & It's Okay

We have a strange tendency to expect healing to look beautiful.

We want the before-and-after story. The breakthrough. The moment someone finally lets go, moves forward, finds peace, and becomes the person they were always supposed to be.

But anyone who has lived with long-term trauma knows that healing rarely happens that way.

Healing can be messy.

It can be one step forward and three steps sideways. It can mean feeling strong one morning and sitting on the floor crying that afternoon. It can mean believing you have finally put something behind you, only to discover another layer years later.

It can be anger. Grief. Laughter. Exhaustion. Creativity. Silence.

It can be all of those things in the same week.

And perhaps we need to stop treating that messiness as evidence that someone is healing incorrectly.

Long-Term Trauma Doesn't Follow a Timeline

When trauma happens repeatedly over months, years, or even decades, it can become woven into how a person experiences relationships, safety, trust, identity, and the world around them.

That kind of healing cannot always be neatly divided into a beginning, middle, and end.

There may not be a magical day when someone wakes up and announces, "I'm healed."

Instead, healing may happen quietly.

Setting a boundary you once would have been afraid to set.
Recognizing a situation that no longer feels safe.
Learning to rest without feeling guilty.
Creating something simply because it brings you joy.
Trusting someone again.
Saying no.
Saying yes.
Laughing more often.
Discovering who you are when you are no longer constantly responding to someone else's needs.

These moments may seem small from the outside.

For someone reclaiming a life after long-term trauma, they can be enormous.

Being Seen Is Part of Healing

Sometimes people don't need someone to immediately tell them how to fix what hurts. They need someone willing to see them.

Not as a diagnosis.
Not as a collection of symptoms.
Not as a case.
Not as a tragedy.
As a human being.

There is tremendous power in being able to tell your story and have another person listen without immediately questioning, correcting, judging, minimizing, or trying to reorganize your experience into something easier for them to understand.

Being heard doesn't mean someone agrees with every decision we make. It means our experience is allowed to exist.

For someone whose voice may have been dismissed, controlled, ignored, or silenced for years, that matters.

Healing Should Not Become Another Place Where We Lose Control

This is where conversations about healing need to become more nuanced.

Professional knowledge matters. Therapy matters. Medicine matters. Research matters. So do experienced practitioners who have dedicated their careers to understanding trauma and helping people recover.

But there is another kind of expertise in the room: The person who lived it.

A survivor knows what it feels like to live inside their own body. They know what makes them feel safe. They know when something feels wrong. They know when they need space. They know when they are ready to talk. And sometimes, they know when a particular approach simply isn't helping.

Healing should therefore be something we create with people rather than something we do to them.

Because if someone's trauma involved repeatedly having control over their body, choices, relationships, or environment taken away, we should be very careful not to recreate that loss of autonomy in the name of helping them heal.

Give Them Back the Paintbrush

I think about healing much like painting.

Imagine your life as a canvas. Some of the marks are beautiful. Some were made by people you loved. Some came from experiences you chose. And some marks were put there without your permission.

There may be scratches. Dark places. Colors you never would have chosen. Paint running in directions you didn't intend.

Perhaps, for years, other people even held the brush.

Healing does not require somehow returning that canvas to its original, untouched condition. You cannot make the canvas blank again.

But you can reclaim the paintbrush.

You can decide what happens next.
You can paint over something.
You can leave another mark visible.
You can add colors that weren't there before.
You can turn an accidental streak into the beginning of something unexpected.
You can step away from the canvas for a while.
You can come back when you're ready.
You can ask someone to paint beside you.
And you can tell someone else to put the brush down.

The goal of healing isn't to return the canvas to the way it looked before the trauma. It is to reclaim the paintbrush and decide what happens to the canvas now.

That is autonomy.

Sometimes the Mess Becomes the Art

As an artist, I have learned that beautiful things don't always begin beautifully.

Paint gets everywhere. Colors bleed into one another. There are mistakes. Sometimes something doesn't work and has to be painted over. Sometimes what looked like a disaster becomes the most interesting part of the entire piece.

And sometimes you have to walk away, make a cup of tea, come back tomorrow, stare at the canvas, and ask:

What does this want to become?

Why shouldn't healing be allowed the same grace?

We don't need to be ashamed of the messy middle.
We don't need to hide every tear.
We don't need to pretend anger doesn't exist.
We don't need to rush grief because someone else is uncomfortable watching us experience it.
And we don't need to turn healing into another performance where survivors prove how well they are recovering.

Sometimes we simply need permission to make a mess.

Then pick up the paintbrush.

There Is More Than One Way to Heal

Healing may happen in a therapist's office. But it may also happen in a garden. Beside an animal. At an easel. Around a kitchen table. Walking through the forest. Writing in a journal. Making music. Dancing. Studying. Praying. Meditating. Cooking. Building community. Sitting quietly beside someone who doesn't require you to explain yourself.

For many people, healing may involve several of these things alongside professional care.

Human beings are complex. Why would we expect healing to be simple?

The question should not always be: Are you healing the right way?

Perhaps we should ask: Are you finding your way back to yourself?

Walk Beside Me

There is a profound difference between leading someone through their healing and walking beside them.

Walking beside someone says:

I will listen.
I will offer what I know.
I will respect what you know.
I will support you.
I will tell you when I am concerned.
I will encourage you.
But I will not take ownership of your journey.

Families can do this. Friends can do this. Communities can do this. Educators, coaches, healthcare professionals, spiritual communities, and therapists can do this.

We can stop asking, "How do we fix this person?"

And start asking: "What does this person need in order to feel safe enough to create again?"

Your Canvas Is Still Yours

Long-term trauma may leave marks. That truth doesn't have to be inspirational or pretty. Some experiences hurt. Some losses cannot be replaced. Some scars remain. Healing doesn't require pretending otherwise.

But those marks do not give anyone else permanent ownership of the canvas.

It is still yours.