when healing my feminine didn't look soft or beautiful

I recently came across a piece of writing from someone I really like. He was talking about how healing the feminine does not always look soft, calming, beautiful, or graceful. It does not always feel relaxing.

And I felt that deeply.

Because I think this is one of the things wellness industry and the way it is promoted in social media has done to us.

We see healing shown through candles, rituals, baths, meditation, soft music, beautiful morning light falling across the floor. We see women looking serene and radiant, moving slowly and gracefully through their practices.

And I don’t think there is anything wrong with any of this. I love beauty. I love candles and incense. I love rituals. I love aesthetics. I love creating spaces that feel sacred and beautiful.

I am not against that at all.

But I think that is only a very small part of the picture.

Yet it is the part we see the most. I think many of us have quietly absorbed the idea that healing is supposed to feel good. That if we are healing, we will feel softer, calmer, lighter, more whole. We will start glowing.

But from my experience, sometimes (or maybe even often times?) healing does not look like that at all.

Sometimes it looks like discomfort. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it is grief rising at the worst possible time. Or being completely thrown off balance and not knowing when you will feel like yourself again.

This has been my experience these past months since I had my miscarriage.

Going through a second pregnancy while breastfeeding and then having a miscarriage really threw me off. And I also injured my shoulder in the middle of it all. It threw off my body, my hormones, my balance, my sense of self. Since then, I am still trying to find my way back to myself again. I am still trying to heal. And so much of it feels messy, frustrating, and uncomfortable.

Often I don’t like the way I look.I feel heavy and sluggish.My hormones still feel out of balance.I injured my shoulder twice.I hurt my back recently.I have felt weak in ways that are both physical and emotional.

And there have been moments where it all made me feel like I was failing, no matter how hard I have been trying.

But deep down, I know I am not failing.

I know I am healing. I am just realizing this is what healing looks like.

It just does not look nice. It does not feel pretty. It does not resemble the polished version of healing we are so often shown.

Honestly, a lot of the time it feels yucky to me.

It feels uncomfortable in my body. It feels frustrating. It feels humbling. It feels angry. It feels like standing in the center of a fire.

Because all of these physical discomforts have not only asked me to tend to my body. They have also pushed me toward something deeper. They have brought me face to face with emotional patterns, feminine wounds, family wounds, ancestral wounds. Parts of myself I would have rather avoided.

I started seeing more clearly the ways I keep myself small. How I apologize way too often because I think my injury, illness or healing is inconvenient to our family life. How I am afraid of conflict and try to avoid it at all costs -mostly at the cost of my boundaries. How I do not speak up because I cannot stand the tension. How I do not fully stand up for myself if I think it will lead to a fight. How I want to stay soft, even at the cost of abandoning myself.

And when I do that, there is anger. Oh, the mama rage.

Of course there is, because when I do not protect my own boundaries, something in me knows it.

So for me in this season, healing doesn’t only look like trying to recover physically.

It also looks like changing the emotional patterns underneath my physical symptoms. It looks like learning to speak up for myself. Learning to show up for myself. Learning to receive without guilt -this part feels especially tender for me.

Can I receive without guilt? Can I ask for space without guilt? Can I rest without guilt? Can I stop carrying everything without feeling like I have failed or abandoned someone? (which my injuries have forced me to do)

These past months, I have seen so many patterns in myself that are no longer serving me. But seeing them is one thing. Changing them is another.

Because patterns become familiar. They become part of who we think we are. Part of the role we have learned to play.

And then one day you realize: I do not want to live this way anymore. I do not want to keep shrinking. I do not want to keep overgiving. I do not want to keep betraying myself just to avoid discomfort.

Yet letting go of these patterns is not simple.

It is a dance between acceptance and change. Between compassion and staying firm in my truth. Between loving myself as I am and also admitting that something needs to change, for me.

And this dance is not easy.

For me, healing in this season has looked like fighting more with my husband. It has looked like feeling a lot of built up anger. It has looked like tension in our family life.

It has looked like taking space from my baby and then sitting with the grief and guilt of that.

It has looked like forgiving myself for being human.

Asking for more support.

Then again feeling guilty for needing it.

Then staying with that guilt long enough to ask what is underneath it.

Can I let myself receive? Can I let myself rest? Can I believe, not only in my mind but in my body, that I deserve space? And when I take that space, it doesn’t feel within my body as if I’m asking too much.

This is the kind of healing I do not see spoken about enough.

Yes, sometimes healing can be candles and incense and rituals. And I still love those things. I still do those things. They help me. They nourish me. They remind me of the beauty in sacred.

But healing is also arguments. Boundaries. Tears. Rage. Recognizing the sneaky guilt. Asking. Receiving. Not knowing. The moment you realize you do not want to keep living the old way.

The moment you see a pattern and can no longer unsee it.

The moment you understand that becoming whole may require becoming inconvenient.

I don’t think healing the feminine in us necessarily makes us softer. Or calmer, prettier, more pleasing, or more graceful.

I believe it makes us more honest. It makes us more of who we truly are.

And in this age, for many of us, that can look more like anger, firmness, boundaries, speaking up, reclaiming our bodies, refusing to conform the beauty standards, and not giving a heck about what everyone else is thinking or saying about us.

This is what I am learning.

I am learning to be more truthful to myself. To create space to feel all my emotions, in all their intensity. To stop abandoning myself. To honor the anger that rises when a boundary has been crossed. To ask for help. And be willing to receive without guilt.

I am still in it. I am still struggling. My shoulder is still not fully healed. I still feel weak sometimes. I am still meeting the wounds and the patterns as they come.

But I can also say this:

I have been holding myself with more love through this season. Not perfectly, but more than before. I have been trying to meet myself with compassion. I have been witnessing myself more honestly. I have been learning that healing can look ugly and be sacred at the same time.