I’m someone who has repeatedly wanted to know how long my healing will take. 

Not because I wanted to rush it, necessarily – though I have absolutely wished that it would go faster – but because I wanted reassurance that I was moving in the right direction. I wanted to know that all of the effort, discomfort, and uncertainty would eventually lead somewhere. I was also eager to regain my capacity to simply “do life”. 

I think the discomfort I felt around all of this was partly due to the world I grew up in. 

We’re used to quick solutions. Take the medication. Follow the treatment plan. Check the box. Most of the time, the problem goes away and there are usually steps you can take next if the problem doesn’t go away.

Sometimes inner healing really is like that. Sometimes one conversation, one realization, or one breathwork session changes everything. I’ve heard about that happening but it hasn’t been my experience and I don’t think that’s how it unfolds for many of us.

Lately I’ve been thinking about healing like a log jam. Imagine a river that’s been blocked by years of fallen trees. Every log represents something we’ve carried: old beliefs, protective patterns, nervous system conditioning, unresolved emotions, ways of relating that once helped us survive. Sometimes you find the one log that’s holding everything together. Pull it free and suddenly the whole river begins to flow again.

That happens for some people.

But for me, healing has felt more like removing one log at a time. Each one creates a little more movement. A little more space. A little more flow. 

It has felt extremely frustrating at times because the process can be so slow that it’s difficult to determine whether anything has changed at all. Until I look back and realize that the river is flowing in ways it never could before.

I’ve also found myself comparing healing to physical therapy.

If I had been in a serious accident and had to learn to walk again, I don’t think I would question why it was taking months or years. I’d probably still be frustrated – I know myself well enough to know that – but I would understand that rebuilding something so fundamental takes time.

I haven’t always offered myself that same compassion with inner healing.

Because there is no X-ray showing my nervous system becoming more regulated. No MRI showing decades of conditioning slowly loosening its grip. No physical therapist measuring how much more connected I feel to myself than I did six months ago. The changes are happening, but they’re often much harder to see than physical changes would be, which has made it difficult to recognize how far I’ve actually come. 

I’ve realized that much of the work I’ve been doing over the past several years has felt like relearning things that seem so basic that it feels like I’m learning to be human again.

Learning how to listen to my body.

Learning what my feelings are trying to tell me instead of immediately trying to change them or to think my way out of them.

Learning how to recognize my boundaries and honor them.

Learning how to be in relationship with friends, family, and future partners from a place that’s grounded rather than driven by old survival patterns.

Learning how to trust myself.

And learning that I am someone I can trust.

In many ways, it feels like relearning how to walk through life.

When I look at it that way, it’s easier for me to understand why it has taken as much time as it has. 

For a long time, I kept hoping I’d eventually find the answer.

The modality.

The insight.

The missing piece that would finally explain why I felt disconnected from myself, why I had so many health problems that wouldn’t respond to treatment and seemed to keep morphing, and why I’ve always felt stuck and like I’m somehow doing life wrong.

Looking back now, there was never one answer.

There were many.

Therapy helped me understand how my past was shaping my present and to have more self-awareness around my thoughts and behaviors.

Hypnotherapy began waking me up. Before then, I often felt like I was sleepwalking through my life, making choices without really understanding why. Looking back, I remember feeling angry with myself, wondering, Why did I do that?

The answer was simple: I wasn’t consciously choosing. I was living on autopilot.

Ayahuasca opened the door to spirituality and helped me experience an interconnectedness of all things. It also helped to soften my relationship with myself and others, and it eventually led me to breathwork.

Breathwork, as well as neural retraining, helped me to begin clearing the clutter that had been carrying throughout my mind, body, and nervous system. 

None of these modalities made me someone new. And even though sometimes I secretly hoped they would, they did something much better.

They helped me uncover the person that had been there all along.

As I became more connected to myself, I also became more aware of what no longer fit.

Relationships that once felt normal began feeling deeply out of alignment.

Ways of relating that I had accepted for years no longer felt sustainable. 

The closer I came to my core self, the less willing I became to tolerate relationships and ways of relating that required me to override my own feelings, needs, and boundaries. 

One of the biggest things I’ve learned through all of this is that my healing has been about slowly removing everything that has kept me from being who I’ve been all along.

Layer by layer.

Pattern by pattern.

One log at a time.

And while that process can be slower than I’d like, every log that’s removed allows a little more life to flow through me.

More choice.

More freedom.

More capacity to remain present with my experience instead of automatically reacting to it.

To me, that’s what embodiment really is. Not achieving a perfect state of peace or always feeling grounded. It’s developing the capacity to remain in relationship with my experience as it unfolds.

I don’t think that’s something we learn in a single breakthrough.

I think it’s something we practice, over and over again, until one day we realize we’ve become someone who can stay with ourselves even while the river is still clearing.