Why Does Healing Hurt So Much?

A note before you read: This post contains my personal account of childhood abuse and medical neglect, described in detail. If you're in a tender place right now, please take care of yourself first. You can always come back to this when you're ready. 🤍

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I'm writing this from my honeymoon.

I know. Timing. But stay with me.

Two days ago I was lying in bed in Venice, Italy — arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth — when something made me look at my right hand. Specifically, my right pinky.

I hadn't looked at it. Not really. Not in over two decades.

The tip of my pinky is missing. Not dramatically — just the corner of it, sliced off in a smooth line that most people would never notice. My father cut it off when I was nine years old.

I had an infected finger. I begged him to take me to a doctor. He told me doctors would just do the same thing anyway and that he would handle it himself. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. He is not a doctor. He has never been a doctor.

He told me my finger was dying. He told me if he didn't remove it I'd lose the whole finger. He made me choose: box cutter or lighter. I was nine. I didn't understand that those were not the only options. I didn't understand that what was happening was not normal. I cried. I tried to run. He had a vice grip on my wrist that I couldn't break no matter how hard I pulled.

Cut it off, I wailed, because I was terrified of fire.

He used the flame to sterilize the blade. I screamed. He told me to hold still or he'd cut the wrong part. He pinned my hand down and sliced off my fingertip.

I don't remember if it hurt. I had so much adrenaline I can't access that part. What I remember is bursting into sobs the moment it was done, and him dropping my hand and walking out of the kitchen like it was another Tuesday.

My mother was home. In the next room. She never came to check on me. I sat on the kitchen floor alone and sobbed.

That was twenty-four years ago.

And two days ago, on my honeymoon, in Venice, I touched it for the first time. Felt the smooth edge of where it used to be. And cried like I was nine years old again.

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Why Does Healing Hurt So Much?

Because your brain and body have to feel safe enough first.

When trauma happens — especially childhood trauma, especially repeated trauma — your nervous system makes a decision in real time: I cannot process this right now. It is not safe to feel this right now. So it takes the experience and puts it somewhere. Locks it away. Not gone — just inaccessible. Compartmentalized in the back closet of your mind where it can't overwhelm you while you still need to function, still need to survive, still need to get through the next moment and the one after that.

Your brain does this to protect you. It is an act of mercy.

But the closet doesn't disappear. And when you finally reach a place of safety — real safety, felt safety, the kind that lives in your body and not just your mind — the door starts to open. Because now the brain thinks: okay. Now we can look at this. Now we're far enough away. Now we can finally grieve what we didn't get to grieve when it happened.

That's why healing hurts. Not because something is wrong with you. Because something is finally right enough.

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Why It Happens When It "Shouldn't"

Major life transitions are notorious for this. Weddings. Honeymoons. New babies. Promotions. The moments that are supposed to be purely joyful — those are often the moments when old grief surfaces most unexpectedly.

Because those moments carry emotional weight. Your nervous system knows something significant is happening. And in that significance, in that slowing down, in that finally exhaling — the locked door creaks open.

There's also something specific about intimacy and commitment. Being truly loved by someone — being chosen, being held, being seen — can activate old attachment wounds in ways that nothing else quite reaches. Not because the love is hurting you. Because the contrast between what you're experiencing now and what you experienced then is suddenly, viscerally clear.

You are safe now. And your body knows it. And so it finally lets you feel the things it held for you until you were.

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What This Doesn't Mean

It doesn't mean your healing moment is ruined.

It doesn't mean you're broken or defective or too much or doing it wrong.

It doesn't mean the good things around you aren't real — the beauty, the joy, the love, the progress. Those exist at the same time as the grief. Both things are true simultaneously. That's not contradiction. That's being human.

When I looked at my pinky and cried, I wasn't broken. I was finally safe enough to grieve a nine-year-old girl who sat on a kitchen floor alone and sobbed while her mother stayed in the next room and never came.

She deserved someone to come. She deserved a doctor. She deserved a father who protected her instead of one who held her wrist down with a vice grip and made her choose between a box cutter and a lighter.

She didn't get any of that.

But I can grieve it now. On a canal in Venice, in a life I built for myself, next to someone who chose me and means it. That grief doesn't cancel the beauty. It lives alongside it, the way all real things do.

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What To Do When It Surfaces

Let it come. Trying to push it back down works until it doesn't — and then it comes harder.

Name what you're feeling without judgment. I am grieving something that happened a long time ago. My body is processing. This is what healing feels like.

Tell someone safe. Not everyone will understand. Some people will tell you you're overreacting — usually because they don't know how to hold something that big, not because you are. Find the person who can sit with you in it without trying to fix it or minimize it.

Remember that feeling it is not the same as being stuck in it. Grief moves when you let it. It gets stuck when you push it down.

And if you need more support — call or text 988. Free. Confidential. Available anytime. You don't have to be in crisis. You just have to be hurting.

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The Part I Want You to Hold

You are not broken because healing is hard.

You are not broken because it surfaces at inconvenient times.

You are not broken because a moment that was supposed to be joyful got complicated by something old and heavy.

You are healing. And healing is the most courageous, painful, nonlinear, necessary thing a person can do.

The fact that your body finally trusts you enough — and your life enough — to start opening those locked doors?

That's not a sign that something is wrong.

That's a sign that something is finally, finally right. 🤍

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If you're struggling, call or text 988. Anytime. You are not alone.

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