Onika L. Dainty

The healing process is not easy, it's hard work. It’s a decision you have to make daily to change the circumstance that is holding you back from being your best self and living the life you deserve. When we experience pain, loss or deep trauma we think that the best way to heal is to avoid the realities of our experiences and endure, bury the issues deep down inside and soldier on. However, when we choose this method over facing our pain, loss or trauma we lose a piece of ourselves and stand in the way of our own growth never becoming who we truly meant to be. We fill our subconscious with unresolved emotions and memories of traumatic experiences like a pressure cooker on the verge of explosion because the lid can’t stay on forever. 

Release is a part of the healing process. When you find healthy ways to release your pain, hurt and trauma it can begin the process of finding yourself. It’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together until you see a whole image, a whole you. When I started my healing journey  important pieces to my puzzle were learning to love myself, have self-compassion remembering my trauma was my circumstance not who I am. I developed self-awareness in my healing journey taking the time to re-learn myself, who I am, what I wanted out of this life, my dreams and my goals for the future and reflecting and reframing the often negative narrative I had been telling myself, a narrative that had kept me stuck.

Through the support of family, friends and my mental healthcare team I have been able to take the steps I needed to to address the experiences in my life that filled me with anxiety, fear, self-loathing and self-doubt. The process was long and arduous, there were watershed tears that cleansed me of my past, there were perspectives revealed that I never considered, there was grieving the loss of the girl I was but also of the woman the trauma turned me into, there were sleepless nights and even more uncomfortable moments. The biggest challenge with the healing process is remembering it's a process and healing doesn’t happen over night. 

I realized healing is an important part of my wellness journey. It's hard work and it’s painful at times but consider if going on your healing journey is worth the destination of being whole again.