Cried. Ate. Healed. Ate Again. (A Progress Report Nobody Asked For)
I would like to formally report that healing is going well.
This week I cried twice, once for a real reason and once because a dog on the internet looked very tired and I felt that. I ate an entire packet of crackers at 11pm standing over the kitchen sink, which I believe counts as mindful eating because I was very present for every single cracker. I also had one genuine breakthrough and then immediately watched four episodes of something I have already seen three times.
Progress.
I am being slightly sarcastic. But only slightly.
Because here is the thing nobody tells you when you start this whole healing journey. It is messy in a very undramatic way. The mess is not cinematic. There is no sweeping orchestral score. There is just you, on a Tuesday, eating crackers, wondering if this is what becoming looks like.
It is. It absolutely is.
What Progress Actually Looks Like
I used to think progress would feel like progress.
Like I would wake up one morning and notice, clearly and cleanly, that I had moved forward. That something had shifted. That I could point to the before and the after and say: there, that is where it changed.
Sometimes it is like that. Occasionally there is a moment of genuine clarity that arrives like a small gift and you think oh, I see, I understand something now that I did not understand before.
More often it looks like this.
You have a hard day. You cry. You eat something. You feel slightly better. You watch television. You sleep. You wake up and do it again, slightly differently, with marginally less drama than the time before.
That is it. That is the whole thing. That is healing.
The Crackers Are Part of It
I want to make a case for the crackers.
And for the cereal at 10pm. And for the third coffee when you said two was the limit. And for the afternoon nap that turned into an evening nap that turned into just going to bed. And for the cancelled plans and the unreturned messages and the days where the most ambitious thing you did was move from the bed to the sofa and consider that a change of scenery.
These are not failures. They are not evidence that you are doing it wrong.
They are evidence that you are a person. A tired one. One who has been through something real and is still in the middle of processing it, and who requires crackers and television and slightly too much sleep in order to do that processing.
The crackers are part of the healing. I am fully convinced of this.
The Unremarkable Days Are the Work
Everyone talks about the breakthroughs. The realisations. The moment in therapy where something finally makes sense. The conversation that changes everything. The morning you wake up and feel, for the first time in a long time, like yourself.
Nobody talks about the forty seven unremarkable days that made that morning possible.
The days where you did not have a breakthrough. Where you just got up and got through it and went to bed. Where you were not falling apart but you were not transformed either. Where you were just. There. Showing up for your own life in the quietest, most unglamorous way.
Those days are the work. Possibly most of the work.
They are the cocoon part. The part that looks like nothing from the outside. The part where you are doing something important that has no visible output yet.
Cried. Ate. Healed. Ate again.
That is not failure dressed up as progress.
That is just what it actually looks like.
What did your progress look like this week? The real version, not the one you would post about.
rise · believe · fly 🪶
From the Ashes She is for the woman in the middle of it. Not after. If this found you today, you are exactly where you are supposed to be.