💔 Why Healing Scared Me More Than the Pain

We assume the hardest part of healing is facing the pain.
But for many of us—including me—what’s even harder…
is facing what healing might cost us.

I remember quietly thinking:
If I actually heal… I’ll have to leave my husband.
If I grow, my family won’t stand for it.

As I started to feel the freedom of healing, I realized something painful:
The very thing I was trying to heal had been holding us together like distorted connective tissue—tight, tangled, and strained.

I had only shrunk myself because I had evidence these relationships couldn’t withstand my full reality.
And the truth is—those relationships only worked because I made myself small enough to fit them.

I didn’t guess that. I tested it. I had evidence.
Every time I stood taller, I felt the shift. The resistance. The pushback.

So I stayed small.
And I resented that they weren’t doing the work.
They kept doing the same things—even when it hurt me.

But the deeper truth?
I wasn’t growing either.
I was afraid of what would happen if I did.
Because what if I healed—and he didn’t?

I see this all the time in my clients.
Some say it outright. Others start to back up, get scared, or shut down the moment deeper healing starts to emerge.
Sometimes I hear it in the sighs, the pauses, the stuck places they don’t want to budge from:

If I become whole, I might lose the people I love.

And it’s complicated.
Many of us—myself included—have walked away from our growth thinking we were being good, kind, loving, even altruistic.

But here’s what I’ve learned:
You can’t truly love others if you’re disconnected from the love inside yourself.

What we don’t realize is that when you’ve spent years bending, dimming, and softening your edges to preserve love…
you start to believe that shrinking is the only way love can survive.

And then… the pain becomes too much to carry.

One person finally chooses to heal—from the core.
And when that healing is real, it’s not performative.
You stop trying to get the other person to change.
You just… stand.

And you stay standing—even when the unhealed person tries to bring you back down to the size that’s more comfortable for them.

They’ll often keep doing what they’ve always done—sometimes even louder.
They kick it up a notch when they don’t get your attention the first time.

But now, something’s different.
There’s nothing inside you that attaches to the chaos.
Like a well-rooted tree in a storm, you stay standing—calm, steady—while the winds die down like fireworks: loud at first, but unable to last.

Because dark can’t keep standing in the calm, consistent presence of light.

And now, your healing isn’t against them.
It’s for you.

From that grounded place, something powerful happens.
Your peace begins to speak louder than your pain.
And often, the other person changes—not because you asked them to,
but because your wholeness quietly invites them into their own.

Or… they don’t.
And if the relationship ends, it’s not explosive.
It’s quiet. Like dried leaves falling in autumn.
Unnourished. Complete.

Just like Marianne Williamson said:    

“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

You don’t have to collapse to stay connected.
You don’t have to suffer to stay loved.
You don’t have to keep rehearsing your pain to prove your devotion.

You get to be whole.
You get to be free.
And you get to let your healing lead.

An excursion to Little Islands in Manhattan with the sibs