This Ain’t Healing

Some wounds don’t heal. They’re meant to be carried.

You don’t walk away from a sword fight unmarked. The language of healing has softened everything it touches. But the truth is sharper. What happened to you is in the past — you can’t change it, can’t erase an experience. You integrate it. You carry it, and if you’re lucky, it gets woven into your posture, your humor, your discernment, your love, what you can give others. What we call “healing” is often just hiding, and either way it misses the gold — growth. It doesn’t mean you glow; it means you build the strength to hold what you couldn’t before. You don’t become light. You become real.

There’s a myth we don’t tell enough: the one where the wounded hero keeps going. Not redeemed, not triumphant. Just… moving. Scar tissue hardened into spine. Pain metabolized into perception. It humbles them just enough to be of real service in the real world.

You can see it when someone walks into a room. There’s a presence to those who’ve done their work. A gravity. They don’t rush to offer advice or talk about their trauma. They know something now. Something they can’t — and wouldn’t — put into words quickly.

In narrative therapy, we might call this reauthoring the story — shifting the meaning of pain rather than erasing it. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), it’s about expanding psychological flexibility: choosing values-aligned action even in the presence of pain. Different names, same arc. The wound doesn’t vanish. You just stop needing it to.

That’s the work I care about. Not healing. Becoming.