Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed

I was talking to a friend recently. He was sharing stories from his childhood, and at one point, he paused and said, “But you know, I’m over it.”

And I just looked at him and said, “No, you’re not.”

Not in a confrontational way. But because… we were talking about it. And the way he brought it up, the words he used, the small shifts in his voice. They told me something different. There was still weight there. Still emotion. Still something unspoken underneath.

He insisted he’d processed it. That he wasn’t angry anymore. And maybe that’s true ... maybe the anger had subsided. But that doesn’t mean peace has taken its place.

That conversation stuck with me.

Because I think we’ve confused “getting over something” with healing. We think that once we stop crying, once the rage quiets, once we can mention it without breaking down ... we’re done. We close the box. Put it away. Move on.

But that’s not how it works.

At least, not for me.

The difference between over it, and at peace with it

When I went through my divorce, people asked me if I was “over it”. As if it were a milestone to tick off. But being “over it” always felt like the wrong benchmark. At one point, sure, I was over the daily crying. Over the gut-punch grief. Over the shock. But I wasn’t at peace with it yet. Not by a long shot.

Being at peace came much later.

It came when I no longer had the need to explain what happened. When I didn’t feel compelled to tell the story every time it came up. When it could live quietly in the background of my life, no longer begging for attention.

It’s not that it stopped mattering. It just stopped taking up so much space.

Healing isn’t about erasing the past

That’s what I wish we’d talk about more. Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means it no longer controls your life.

You might still feel things. You might still remember. There might still be waves, now and then. But it’s no longer the loudest thing in the room.

To me, real healing means being able to carry the story without needing to retell it. It’s knowing it shaped you ... without needing to prove how. It’s having the memory, without the ache. Or at least, without the constant ache.

It’s when something becomes part of your life, instead of running it.

Let’s stop rushing to “closure”

I don’t like saying I’m “over” something. And I don’t really like the word closure either. It makes it sound like something has been wrapped up, put away, and filed under “resolved.”

But some things don’t need to be closed. They need to be accepted. To be given a place in your life where they can simply exist, not constantly, not loudly, but without stirring everything up each time they’re remembered.

To me, healing isn’t about forgetting or shutting the door. It’s about no longer needing to open it all the time. It’s when the story stops taking up all the space. When you no longer feel the need to explain it, defend it, or relive it just to make sense of it.

It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.

It just means it no longer controls you.

That, to me, is healing.