Not Everyone Is Going To Heal The Way You Did, And They’re Not Supposed To

At this moment, everyone you know is having the exact experience that they need to have.

This is hard to accept sometimes.

When we see someone we love in pain, all we want to do is throw ourselves into the pits with them and use every last ounce of our strength to get them out.

This can trigger old wounds.

When you are someone who has overcome a lot in your life, it can be challenging to see people mirror your old patterns back to you. You just want to scream and show them the way. You think that if only they could follow your footsteps, they, too, could fix their lives.

Healing and recovery are not linear processes. We did not one day stumble upon a few magic answers and turn it all around.

Healing is unique, it is personal, and no two people will go through it the same way.

It’s easy to think this now that we’re out of the darkness. But getting here was not matter of someone just handing us a few answers and then it all falling into place. We gradually had to learn for ourselves, we had to experience for ourselves. We needed to feel something, see something, know something before we could move on.

The truth is that not everyone is going to heal the way that you did, and they are not supposed to.

Everyone is exactly where they need to be, and having the exact experience they need to be having. This is true even if you do not understand it. This is true even if you think they are doing it wrong or falling behind. This is true even if you think you know a better way, and this is true even when you are right.

You cannot and are not the judge of someone else’s process.

You can’t be, you just don’t understand exactly what their life is like or precisely what they need to go through.

If you think back to your own journey, you can probably recall a number of instances in which you knew what you needed to do in order to heal or improve your life, even when nobody around you understood your choices.

Not everyone is headed to the same destination is you.

Not everyone wants the same outcomes as you.

Not everyone has had the same experiences as you.

Not everyone needs the same healing as you.

This is tricky to misunderstand, especially when it seems so similar, and so simple, on the surface.

But nobody is going to heal the same way that you did, and believing this is actually just a sign that you have more healing to do.

When we can see and honor each person’s journey for exactly what it is, we also give ourselves grace to meet ourselves where we are — right here, and right now.

In the end, we have to learn to trust the process.

We have to learn to trust consciousness, to trust life. In the same way that our process wasn’t always fast, and didn’t always make sense, we likewise cannot decide for another person what theirs should be.

What we can do instead is have grace.

What we can do instead is acknowledge where they are today.

And maybe, in the process, we can do the same for ourselves.