top of page

The Crisis Isn’t Being Broken—It’s Thinking We Shouldn’t Be


We have been taught that suffering and 'healing' is a personal project. That when exhaustion, heartbreak, disillusionment, or a deep sense of something is not right settles in, it is our job to fix it. To work through it, process it, integrate it, and emerge on the other side wiser, stronger, more whole. We are told that if we do this well, if we are diligent, if we commit to the right practices, we will find ourselves restored. Healed.


And so we set out, believing that healing is the path back to worthiness. That if we can just do the work, if we can just get rid of the ache, we will finally be good enough. But what if healing is not a destination at all?


What if being healed is not only a myth, but a misunderstanding of what it means to be alive?


The Shape of the Wound

Somewhere along the way, we began to speak about suffering as if it were something that, with enough effort, could be undone. Have you processed it? Have you done the work? Are you healed? As if there is a finish line. As if we ever truly arrive at a place where our losses don’t shape us, where our longings don’t stretch us, where we are no longer marked by the things we have loved and lost.


We have come to believe that the wound is a problem. That it is something temporary, something that—if we are disciplined enough, self-aware enough, whole enough—will one day disappear. But what if the places where we are cracked open are not mistakes, but proof? Proof that we have lived, that we have felt deeply, that we have been shaped by something beyond ourselves. What if the wound is not something to overcome, but something to honor? What if being “healed” takes away the very worthiness of what we have been through?


An Endless Cycle

Not only do we tell people they must heal—we expect them to do it alone. Pain is theirs to handle. Growth is theirs to achieve. If they are suffering, they must go inward. If they are struggling, they must find a way to self-soothe. If they turn to others, they might be given tools. Advice. A list of resources. A gentle nudge toward therapy, mindfulness, a self-care routine. But rarely will they be given what they actually need—someone to sit in it with them. Someone to recognize that this is real and this is hard and this is not something they should have to carry alone.


Instead, we offer polite encouragement from a distance. You should go to therapy. Have you looked into your EAP services? There are great resources for this kind of thing. And just like that, the weight is pushed back onto the one who is already carrying too much. This is not care. This is the polite severing of responsibility. A soft, well-intentioned exile. And so people set out, convinced that healing is something that must be done. That it is a necessary part of becoming worthy again. But the longer they walk, the more they realize there is no arrival—just an endless road stretching out before them.


The True Crisis of Our Time

What if the real crisis of our time isn’t that people are broken, but that they believe they shouldn’t be? What if the tragedy isn’t that people hurt, but that they feel unworthy because of it? What if the real wound isn’t in the pain itself, but in the loneliness we have built around it? What if healing was never the point? What if we have been measuring it all wrong?


What If We Never Had to Heal?

What if, instead of striving to fix what aches, we learned how to carry it with reverence? What if, instead of asking people to overcome their suffering, we asked the world to recognize it, to make room for it, to understand that being whole does not mean being unmarked? What if, instead of handing people tools and sending them off on impossible solo journeys, we just stayed?


Stayed when the ache does not pass quickly. Stayed when the sorrow is unwieldy and inconvenient. Stayed when there is nothing to fix, nothing to solve, nothing to move through. Because maybe the problem isn’t that we need to heal harder. Maybe the problem is that we were never meant to heal at all. Maybe the problem is that we were meant to be held.


Commenti


Subscribe to get exclusive updates.

Our workshops and offers are launched to our mail list first and are usually full before offering to the market so please, join the mail list and stay tuned!

TORONTO, ON

ONLINE & EVERYWHERE

  • LinkedIn

PRIVACY POLICY

©2024 by Grief Advocacy

bottom of page