The Paradox of Healing

I remember a time when I couldn’t see my past as anything other than something to survive. A weight I carried, a story I wished I could rewrite. There was no gift in it—only grief, struggle, and the exhausting work of untangling all the ways it shaped me.

But something shifted.

Not in a single, dramatic epiphany, but in the slow, sacred unfolding that healing demands. And in that unfolding, I began to see the paradox:

The grief and the gratitude. The wound and the wisdom. The struggle and the sovereignty.

I would never wish my pain on anyone. And yet, I would never trade what it forged in me.

Healing isn’t just about moving forward. It’s about honoring what was lost—the innocence, the ease, the life that might have been if things had gone differently.

For a long time, I thought accepting my past meant forgiving too quickly, skipping over the rage, the sorrow, the very real ways it shaped my fears and patterns. But the truth is, grief is a sacred act of self-honoring.

• Grieving the child who had to grow up too soon.
• Grieving the years spent proving, striving, surviving.
• Grieving the version of me that didn’t yet know she was free.

And yet, even in the grief, something else quietly emerged:

For all that was taken, something was also given.

Resilience. Depth. A devotion to truth that runs deeper than fear.

My pain didn’t just break me; it initiated me. It burned away illusions and left behind something raw, real, and sovereign. It led me to the exact place I stand today—not in spite of it, but because of it.

I used to think healing meant erasing the past’s hold on me. Now I know healing is integrating it—letting it be part of my story without it defining me.

I don’t wish it had been different anymore. Not because it was easy, not because it was fair, but because it made me who I am. And I wouldn’t trade this version of me for anything.

This is the paradox:

• We can grieve the pain while honoring the power it gave us.
• We can rage at what was unfair while embracing who we became through it.
• We can feel the loss without losing ourselves in it.

Healing isn’t about choosing between grief or gratitude—it’s about learning to hold both.

And so, I no longer ask why it happened to me.

I ask: Who did it allow me to become?

And the answer is always: Someone I would never trade.

Do you feel this paradox in your own healing? I’d love to hear—what have you grieved, and what has it given you in return?

In sovereign pleasure,
Sharon

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