We’ve all done enough bleeding, but what does healing feel like? Healing looks like acceptance and feels like gratitude.

Healing means owning the pain without pushing it away.

Healing means embrace it, accept it, keep going.

Healing means, “I assume they did the best they could with who they were and what they knew, and I did, too, and that’s all I can ask for.”

Healing is recognizing that sometimes your best just isn’t enough to make it work out, stop hurting immediately, or end peacefully.

Healing means, “I can’t change the past, so I’m choosing to clasp it, clutch it, and love it.”

Healing is knowing the path forward is paved with surrender, and falling down still counts as progress as long as you’re falling forward, as long as you get back up again.

Healing means, “Yes, that nearly destroyed me, but it made me who I am and I know I’ll be stronger because of this even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

Healing is defined by an alchemized mixture of perspective and time.

Healing means, “Damn, that was terrible, but I learned a lot and I made it through.”

Healing is the firm foundation upon which to build a stable future and healing means, “I don’t care whose fault it was, only that it’s done and it’s time to move on.”

Healing is the lone dim star in the big night sky that catches our eye when the darkness swallows everything else around us.

Healing means, “I forgive myself, and I forgive them, too, even if they never apologized because forgiveness is a gift I give myself and a choice I make for me, not them.”

Healing means forgiving, and what does forgiveness mean?

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”

Buddy Wakefield said that, and he’s not wrong.