The Strange Math of Healing

Day 27 – December 20, 2025

Healing has the weirdest math.

One day can feel like ten steps forward. You wake up and the air feels breathable again. You drink your coffee and actually taste it instead of using it as emotional life support. Your thoughts move slower. Softer. You even catch yourself thinking something dangerously optimistic like maybe I’m turning a corner.

Then the next day arrives like a drunk toddler with a baseball bat and smacks you directly in the nervous system.

No warning. Just wham.

Suddenly the memories are louder. The anger is sharper. The grief walks into the room like it owns the place. And you’re left standing there wondering if the progress you thought you made yesterday was some kind of elaborate hallucination.

Today felt a little like that.

Not catastrophic. Not a breakdown. Just fragile.

I found myself thinking about things I didn’t ask my brain to revisit. Certain moments replaying like a film reel my mind refuses to retire. Not even the biggest moments either the smaller ones. The weird little sentences people say in traumatic situations that somehow get stuck in your memory like gum on a shoe.

It’s amazing what the brain chooses to archive.

I keep circling the same thought lately: how wildly different my life looks now compared to a year ago.

A year ago I was still settling into my body. Still marveling at the quiet miracle of becoming myself after so many years of pretending to be someone else. Still figuring out what my life might look like as a woman who had finally stepped into her own story.

I was hopeful.

Not naive exactly but hopeful in that bright, forward facing way that makes you think the next chapter of life might actually be beautiful.

Then life decided to rewrite the entire script. Which is rude.

But the strange thing I’ve noticed lately is even on the fragile days. Even on the days where my brain insists on replaying memories I’d rather pack into a rocket and launch directly into the sun. There’s still this tiny thread of steadiness running underneath everything.

A quiet voice that keeps saying, “You’re still here.”

Not triumphant. Not inspirational. Just factual.

Still here. Still breathing. Still making coffee in the morning. Still arguing with Roger about whether socks count as toys.

And apparently that counts for something.

Healing doesn’t look heroic from the inside. From here it mostly looks like brushing your teeth, feeding your dog, crying in the kitchen for a few minutes, then getting back up and continuing the day like a very emotionally complicated raccoon.

Grace in one hand. Chaos in the other.

Which, if we’re being honest, has become my entire brand lately.