{"id":1665,"date":"2025-08-11T20:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2025-08-11T20:25:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:25:16","slug":"the-perpetual-circle-of-healing-and-the-occasional-menty-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/?p=1665","title":{"rendered":"The Perpetual Circle of Healing (aka the \u201cMenty B\u201d)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Healing is endless.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We like to imagine healing as a straight path. You start in one place, move forward, and one day you reach the end with everything neatly resolved. No jagged edges. No aching spots. No unexpected emotions sneaking up on you. But healing is much more circular and perpetual than that. Something I like to call a spiral…a mental breakdown (or a \u201cmenty b,\u201d if you will).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get caught up on the whole moving on<\/em> thing and put a timeline on ourselves, deciding how long something \u201cshould\u201d take before it stops making us feel so much. But healing doesn\u2019t work like that. I like to think of it as something we move forward with<\/em>, not move on from<\/em>. Healing is individual to each of us, shaped by past wounds, our support systems, and our own resiliency. And yet, we are so hard on ourselves…How dare we feel our emotions and sit in them for a while?! (cue the sarcasm).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that circular part of this mental spiral (the menty b moment) can sneak up on us. You loop back to places you thought you\u2019d left behind. You revisit memories you were sure you\u2019d already processed. You feel emotions you thought you\u2019d outgrown. And sometimes, it\u2019s disorienting. You might catch yourself thinking, Why am I here again? Haven\u2019t I already dealt with this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it doesn\u2019t make sense, or we can\u2019t figure out why we keep returning to this place, why something is still lingering, or why healing takes so much time. It can feel like starting over. But you\u2019re not. And it\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, during one of the toughest seasons of my life – juggling way too much, making big life decisions, and, true to form, putting on a tough exterior (because as someone who shows up for others every day, doing that for myself feels foreign and unfair…I am working on it in therapy, okay?!), I came across a quote that changed my life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

You let time pass. That\u2019s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun, and you close your eyes and lean your head back and realize you\u2019re okay.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That…is healing. And whenever I\u2019m struggling to move through something, I remind myself that someday I will be okay, and that it\u2019s okay to be patient with the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each time you return to that \u201cWTF am I doing back here?\u201d<\/em> place, you\u2019re standing there with more insight, more resilience, and maybe a little more compassion for yourself. What once felt like an unmovable wall might now be something you can lean on, walk around, or even chip away at. We may just need a good cry and to sit in those feelings for a minute…Anytime someone calls me crying, I give them a huge, “LET IT OUT<\/strong>“. Sometimes we feel like we need permission to just feel through this shit. You don\u2019t, but if it helps, picture me yelling “LET IT OUT<\/strong>” at you, thus giving you the permission you need. Crying is healing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my work, I see this often. People circle back to parts of their story they thought were closed chapters. Not because they failed at healing, but because they\u2019ve reached a place where they can see it differently. It\u2019s not regression. It\u2019s new perspective. It\u2019s a trigger or a wound they didn\u2019t know existed. It\u2019s a lightbulb moment that brings them back to that place of emotion and healing as they grow and move forward. It\u2019s a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s not just about big, life-altering traumas. This perpetual circle, the mental spiral, this menty b shows up in everyday moments, too. Maybe you thought you were over a breakup, but a song still catches you off guard. Maybe you forgave someone years ago, but a familiar situation stirs up feelings you didn\u2019t expect. Maybe you\u2019ve learned to manage stress, but a small trigger leaves you rattled in a way you can\u2019t explain, bringing you right back to a place you thought you were safe from returning to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We just can\u2019t help it sometimes. For me, it\u2019s situations in general that catch me off guard…almost like life is testing parts of me I thought I had moved through. A certain person or circumstance brings me back to a chapter I thought I\u2019d closed. When I realize I\u2019m \u201cnot healing,\u201d it becomes a conversation with myself: What am I supposed to be learning here that I\u2019m going through this again?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When this happens, it\u2019s easy to judge ourselves, to label it a setback or a weakness. But what if it\u2019s neither? What if it\u2019s proof that we\u2019ve grown enough to handle a deeper layer of the same wound? Or that this time, we identified it whereas before, we stuffed it away into Pandora\u2019s box or kept living in our cute little bubble of denial. Maybe this time, we are able to handle our emotions differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time you\u2019re brought back into healing, you\u2019re not in the exact same place, you\u2019re a little higher up. You\u2019re seeing things from a slightly new vantage point. Yes, the landscape is familiar, but your view has widened. It\u2019s valuable for us to go through these times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve thought of at least one big moment that\u2019s taken, or is taking, a lot of time to heal. Think about all you\u2019ve gained from that. Think about where you are today because of it. Maybe we don\u2019t like the memories or the pain we went through before the healing, but it\u2019s part of our journey. It\u2019s how we see the beauty in the world; because we have experienced something that we needed to heal from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what progress really looks like. Not erasing the past or moving on, but moving forward and meeting it again with more strength, more tools, and more understanding than before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, sometimes healing is work. Therapy, journaling, exercise, couples counseling, making a big change… But sometimes, healing isn\u2019t about a grand plan. It\u2019s about small acts of care that quietly stack over time. It might look like letting yourself sleep without guilt, trusting your body\u2019s need for rest. It might be walking outside just long enough to feel the sun on your face (not to \u201cget steps in\u201d or check a box, but because warmth reminds your nervous system that safety exists). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Healing can be in conversations where you allow silence instead of rushing to fill it. In the way you breathe deeper before answering an email that tightens your chest. In choosing to listen to your favorite song twice because today is hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also in what you let go of; the pressure to be productive every moment, the habit of saying yes when your body screams no, the belief that healing has to be visible to be real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe healing is simply recognizing that you\u2019re still here. Still waking up. Still trying. Still allowing yourself to believe that, with time, light can filter into even the darkest places. Remembering that one day you will find yourself alone on a bench in the sun, and you close your eyes and lean your head back and realize you\u2019re okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you find yourself back where you thought you\u2019d already been, remember:
You are not starting over. You are spiraling upward.
And that, too, is healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHealing doesn\u2019t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

-keep shining
Find me: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, Pinterest<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Healing is endless. We like to imagine healing as a straight path. You start in one place, move forward, and one day you reach the end with everything neatly resolved. No jagged edges. No aching spots. No unexpected emotions sneaking up on you. But healing is much more circular and perpetual than that. Something I like to call a spiral…a mental breakdown (or a \u201cmenty b,\u201d if you will). We get caught up on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[342,1],"tags":[33,44,633,414,105,67,97,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/swsecrets.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}