I talk about mountains a lot.
Obviously.
They photograph way better than therapy appointments.
There’s something much more interesting about standing on top of a mountain I just climbed than saying, “I went to therapy on Tuesday and came home to reorganize my cabinets.”
But lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much of healing actually looks like the second one.
Because healing has some really shitty PR.
We love breakthroughs. The big realizations. The moment you finally leave. The boundary you finally set. The morning you wake up and realize something doesn’t hurt quite as much anymore.
We love the before and after.
I certainly love the mountains. There are milage numbers. A beginning and end. There is usually some mildly concerning decision I made somewhere in the middle.
But healing in regular life is much less impressive.
Sometimes it’s just maintenance. It’s going to therapy when there isn’t a crisis to talk about. It’s realizing your house doesn’t work for the life you actually live now, so you spend a weekend moving furniture around. It’s cleaning out the closet. Doing the laundry. Answering the email you’ve been avoiding.
It’s noticing that something small has been making your life harder and deciding you don’t actually have to keep living that way.
None of this makes for a particularly compelling story.
Nobody is standing in my kitchen applauding because I finally figured out a better place to keep my hiking shit.
There is no dramatic soundtrack playing while I fold socks.
And yet, this might actually be where a huge amount of healing actually happens. Not in the moments where we completely change our lives but rather in the moments we maintain the life we’ve already changed.
Healing isn’t linear and it doesn’t stop. I’m guilty of thinking healing had a finish line. Like eventually I would process enough, forgive enough, climb enough mountains, to to enough therapy and finally arrive at some imaginary version of myself who required no further upkeep.
Turns out, that woman doesn’t exist. I don’t think she’s supposed to.
A house can still be beautiful and still need to be cleaned.
A car can run perfectly well and still need an oil change.
A life can be good and still need maintenance.
Maybe especially then.
Because once you’ve worked really hard to build a life you actually want to live, you start caring about the little things that help you keep living it.
You notice what makes your mornings easier.
You organize the cabinets.
You make the therapy appointment before everything falls apart.
I will always write about the mountains, they are my home and they’ve given me too much not to. But the woman climbing them isn’t only built on the trail.
She’s built on random Tuesdays. In therapy offices. In grocery store aisles. Standing in front of an open cabinet wondering why the fuck she owns this many water bottles.
She’s built in all the tiny, boring ways she continues to take care of herself when nobody is watching.
The summit is just where you get the picture.
One response to “Healing Has Terrible PR”
I love this! What an incredible reminder. I’m so glad I’m not the only one wondering “where is my mountain top view and theme music?” I want to get better at realizing the healing in the small moments.