Healing Is All About Grieving

It's not just about shedding old layers - we need to grieve them too

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

We already know healing isn’t a straight line. It’s messy, painful, and sometimes, it feels like it’s taking forever.

But there’s something we often overlook in this process – something we rush past because it feels too heavy to carry or too uncomfortable to sit with.

Grieving.

We associate grief with the loss of loved ones or the end of significant relationships, but it’s much more than that. Grief is the emotional response to any form of change or transition – it’s how we acknowledge and honor the parts of our lives that have shifted, even when they are no longer visible.

Most of the time, we want to bypass this part of the journey because we’re so eager to become who we’re meant to be. We crave the transformation, the new chapter, the sense of arrival… But rushing through our grief is like trying to heal a wound before it’s properly tended to.

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We talk a lot about growth and shedding old layers. You know the drill: “outgrowing” toxic environments, “releasing” unbalanced relationships, “letting go” of what no longer serves you.

But every time we shed a layer, we leave a part of ourselves behind. A version of us that once held meaning, that once felt safe, even when it wasn’t.

In the rush to move forward, we forget that those pieces of us deserve to be mourned. They deserve our time, our tears, and our honest acknowledgment.

Because grief isn’t just for loss in the obvious sense. It’s for every goodbye. You don’t just grieve people who have passed or relationships that have ended. You grieve your past selves, the dreams you didn’t follow, the beliefs and identities you once held onto so tightly.

When you walk away from a toxic relationship, there’s a deep sadness for the parts of you that stayed too long, for the version of you who believed love had to hurt to be real. When you break old habits, you mourn the comfort they brought, even if those habits were self-destructive. When you heal childhood wounds, you grieve the innocence lost, the child who had to grow up too fast, and the safety you never truly had.

That’s how healing works. It doesn’t ask us to just move on - it asks us to move through.

Moving through isn’t just about removing these layers. We need to deeply feel their absence and acknowledge the loss. We need to feel their weight as they fall. Otherwise, we’re just pretending we’ve moved on while dragging that baggage behind us.

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There’s a quiet sadness that lingers in the moments of transformation – a kind of bittersweet feeling that something is gone for good. And maybe you’re not even sure what that ‘something’ is, but you feel it in your bones, that hollow ache where something used to be.

The truth is, the space left behind when you heal doesn’t immediately fill with light and joy. It stays empty for a while, echoing with the memories of who you once were.

It’s easy to think that if we just focus on the new, the exciting, and the hopeful, the pain will dissolve on its own. But grief doesn’t work that way. It demands to be felt. And the longer we try to push it away, the louder it knocks at our door.

There’s no skipping this part of healing - we have to sit with it.

Maybe that means crying for the version of yourself that stayed quiet when you should’ve spoken up. Maybe it means journaling for hours about the childhood you never had. Maybe it’s having a conversation with your past self, telling them it’s okay to let go, but also acknowledging that they served a purpose, that their pain and coping mechanisms helped you survive.

However you choose to grieve, make sure you give yourself the space to do so.

There’s no shame in grieving what no longer fits.

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Healing is grief.

Grief for the selves we’ve left behind. Grief for the illusions we carried. Grief for the life we thought we’d have.

But through that grief, we also find freedom. Freedom to heal fully, to grow without the weight of unacknowledged loss pulling us back. Freedom to become who we’re meant to be, not by abandoning our past selves, but by honoring them – and letting them rest.

So if you’re in the thick of it, if you’re feeling the weight of change and wondering why it hurts so much, know this: it’s because you’re grieving. And that’s okay.

Feel it. Sit with it. Honor the layers you’ve shed.

Grieve them, because that’s how real healing takes place.

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