The Strange Grief That Comes With Healing

You don’t expect to grieve when you finally begin to heal.

You expect relief.

You expect light.

You expect strength to arrive like a sunrise, warm, certain and obvious.

Instead, something quieter happens.

Something lonelier.

You begin to lose the version of yourself that survived.

And that loss feels like grief.

WHEN YOU START STANDING UP, SOMETHING FALLS AWAYS

I’ve been married for half my life this year. That just doesn’t seem possible. 

There is no dramatic betrayal here. 

No villain. 

No cruelty done with intention. 

Just years of slowly adapting. Adjusting. Years of learning who I lost, who I was, and who I was becoming. Softening my own edges so my life would remain calm and boring. 

Emotional neglect isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just absence. Sometimes it’s two people doing their best while one of them slowly disappears. 

And sometimes that disappearance isn’t something the other person does to you. Sometimes it’s something you do to yourself. 

Sometimes emotional neglect comes from the inside. From the way you silence your own needs before anyone else can. From minimizing what you feel. From convincing yourself you’re ‘too much' or 'too sensitive'. From abandoning your own voice to keep the peace. The peace within you. 

No one has to ignore you for you to begin ignoring yourself. 

I didn’t mean to disappear.

I just didn’t want to ruffle feathers.

It felt easier to keep things to myself. To tell myself what I was feeling wasn’t that important. To convince myself, I was “fine.” To overwork. To carry the mental load. To keep the house moving. The schedules organized. The emotions regulated.

I became exceptional at functioning.

Over-functioning.

And somewhere in that competence, I slowly abandoned myself. Now I am learning to stand up.

To say what I need.

To put boundaries in place.

To ask for help.

To admit I am tired.

And as I do, something inside of me aches.

Because the woman who survived by staying small is fading. And even though she exhausted me, she kept everything stable. There is grief in losing her.

THE IDENTITY SHIFT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT

Healing isn’t just about recovering from pain. It’s about an identity shift. You are moving from victim to survivor.

And YES, that shift sounds empowering until you realize how much your identity was built around surviving.

When you are the one who carries everyone else, you feel needed.

When you overwork, you feel worthy.

When you stay quiet, you feel safe.

When you don’t ask for help, you feel strong.

So what happens when you stop? What happens when you say:

“I can’t keep doing this alone.”

“I need more.”

“I don’t want to shrink anymore.”

The ground shifts. The nervous system panics. The old identity whispers:

Don’t ruin this.

Don’t be dramatic.

You’re overreacting.

You should be grateful.

And then grief moves in and begins to take over. Not because you want to go back. But because growth requires you to let go of who you were. Even if she was the one who kept you alive.

WHY THERE IS GRIEF IN GROWTH

Just like everything else in the healing process, there are layers to this grief.

You grieve the years you tolerated more than you should have.

You grieve the conversations you swallowed.

You grieve the exhaustion you normalized.

You grieve the version of you who thought love meant endurance.

You grieve the time spent believing your worth was tied to productivity.

You grieve the invisible labor.

You grieve the silence.

And you grieve the realization that you are stronger than you thought, because strength means you could have asked for more. That realization stings. Healing doesn’t just reveal your power. It reveals how long you didn’t use it. That is a strange ache.

When you start setting boundaries, your body might feel unsafe. You aren’t used to these boundaries. 

Your heart races.

Your stomach tightens.

You feel guilt before relief.

You question yourself immediately.

This is not weakness. This is nervous system reconditioning.

For years, your body learned:

Stay small = safe

Over-function = love

Silence = stability

Carrying everyone = control

Now you are teaching it something new. Something that isn’t a habit built on survival, but a completely new way of living. Of becoming more than the woman who just survives, but instead thrives. 

Voice = safety

Rest = worth

Boundaries = connection

Help = strength

Of course, there is turbulence. You are rewiring decades of survival.

RITUALS FOR WOMEN LEARNING TO BE MORE THAN A SURVIVOR

Healing isn’t just mental work. It needs embodied practice. You cannot think your way into safety if your body still believes it needs to brace for impact. The nervous system has to be included in the process, or you’ll keep reliving patterns even after you understand them. 

Growth becomes sustainable when your body begins to feel what your mind already knows. That you are allowed to take up space, to rest, to need, and to speak. Here are a few gentle rituals to support this identity shift.

1. The Who I Was Letter

Write a letter to the woman who survived. Not with shame, but with gratitude. 

Thank her for keeping the peace. For carrying the load. For protecting you in the only way she knew how. Then gently release her from the job. Tell her she doesn’t have to hold everything anymore.

This creates closure instead of rejection.

2. The Boundary Breath

When guilt rises after you say what you need:

Place one hand on your chest.

Inhale slowly for four counts.

Hold for four.

Exhale for six.

Whisper internally:

I am allowed to take up space.

Do this three times.

This signals safety to your nervous system.

3. The Daily Truth Practice

Each day, answer this question in your journal: What do I actually want today?

Not what your family wants.

Not what would make things easier.

Not what avoids conflict.

Just the truth.

Even if the answer is small.

Even if it scares you.

Your voice needs rehearsal.

4. The Load Inventory

Write down everything you carry in a week.

Appointments. Planning. Emotional management. Schedules. Decisions.

See it on paper.

Then circle three things that could be shared or delegated.

Healing isn’t just emotional. It’s logistical.

Exhaustion is not a personality trait.

It is a signal.

The way that I started doing this was I would take a journal, and in it, I would write what I did every single day. Before I knew it, my pages were full of every task that I did. I would then show it to my family. To show them that when they would complain about doing a simple task, how many simple tasks I did in a day. 

5. Regulating Through Movement

In February, I set a goal for myself to walk 20,000 steps a day. I have not yet reached that goal. For the first few days, I did great! I was hitting about 16,000+ steps in a day. And then I stopped. Not because I didn’t want to do it or achieve it, but because I felt heavy. Grief hit hard, and I stopped. 

I noticed a difference in how my body and mind felt on the days I walked versus those days that I didn’t. There was a huge difference. 

When the grief feels heavy, move your body.

Walk without music.

Cold water on your wrists.

Stand outside and breathe deeply.

Not to escape the feeling, but to let it move through you instead of freezing inside you.

There is a lie many women carry:

If I stop over-functioning, everything will fall apart.

It might wobble.

It might get uncomfortable.

But you are not responsible for holding up the entire emotional architecture of your life.

You were never meant to be the nervous system for everyone else.

You are allowed to need.

You are allowed to want.

You are allowed to say: This isn’t working for me anymore.

That sentence is not destruction. It is alignment.

There is a moment in healing where you realize something dangerous. You don’t actually have to stay where you are.

Not emotionally.

Not relationally.

Not professionally.

Not internally.

You can grow.

You can change.

You can build support.

You can ask for more.

You can decide you don’t want to keep shrinking.

And that realization brings both freedom and fear. Because once you know, you can move, you can’t unknow it.

The grief comes from realizing how long you believed you couldn’t. The deepest shift isn’t victim to survivor. It’s abandonment to presence. You are learning not to leave yourself anymore.

Not in conflict.

Not in exhaustion.

Not in loneliness.

Not in doubt.

You are learning to sit with your own needs instead of dismissing them.

That is brave.

That is disruptive.

That is healing.

And yes, it is sad because the woman who survived by disappearing is watching you step forward. She is unsure. But she is proud.

If you are reading this and your throat feels tight, I want you to hear something clearly:

You are not broken because healing hurts.

You are not ungrateful for wanting more.

You are not dramatic because you are tired.

You are not selfish because you are setting limits.

You are transitioning.

And transitions are rarely clean.

There is shedding.

There is shaking.

There is grief.

But there is also emergence.

You are not becoming someone else.

You are becoming someone who no longer abandons herself.

And that shift, even when it aches, is sacred in its own way.

Stay with yourself.

Even here.

Especially here.