THE MYTH OF GRACEFUL HEALING: WHY REAL RECOVERY IS MESSY

Josi
5 days ago
2 min read

A GinkgoMinds Blog by Jo Oswin

There’s a version of healing the internet likes to sell you. It’s tidy. Quiet. Aesthetic. It comes with soft yoga pants and herbal tea,sunlight through linen curtains, and a vague sense of becoming “your best self.”

But healing doesn’t look like that.

It looks like sobbing in the car because a song you haven’t heard in years cracks you open. It looks like rage that scares you. It looks like craving a person you know was never safe, but your nervous system still remembers them as home.

Real recovery is wild. It’s not something you present — it’s something you survive. It doesn’t make sense in a timeline. It doesn’t look good on social media.And most of the time, it doesn’t feel like healing at all.

THE BODY DOESN’T UNLEARN IN ORDER

Trauma doesn’t ask you what’s convenient. It doesn’t say: “Let’s deal with abandonment first, then move on to sexual shame, and finish with your people-pleasing.”

No.It comes like a storm.You think you’ve cleared something — and then you meet someone new, or lose someone old, and it all comes rushing back.

Healing isn’t linear. It loops. Spirals. Fractures. And some days, it hurts more than it did before you started.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. That means your system is safe enough to feel now.And feeling is messy.

🖤 COACHING TASK:

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT HEALING TO LOOK LIKE?

Take 10 minutes. Pen to paper. Ask yourself:

What was I secretly hoping healing would look like?
What have I judged about my own recovery process?
Where have I told myself I’m ‘failing’ because I’m not calm yet?
What parts of my healing journey do I hide because they’re not pretty?

Now reread it — and remind yourself: You’re not messy because you’re lost. You’re messy because you’re real. Because you’re moving.Because you’re not numb anymore.

🖤 INSIDE PATREON, WE DON’T PRETEND IT’S PRETTY

In Patreon, we talk about the parts of healing no one puts on Instagram. The rage. The flashbacks. The nights where your skin doesn’t feel like yours. The shame you still carry even though your mind knows better.

And in Who the Fuck Am I Becoming?, my 10-part workshop series, we make space for the grief, the spiral, the contradiction —and we honour the version of you who’s still rising, even when she’s covered in mud and screaming through her teeth.

There is no graceful way to come undone. But my god, there is beauty in the wreckage.

And you, love, are not here to be polished.

You’re here to be whole.

xx Josi