When Expression and Healing Become Entangled
Learning the difference between finally using my voice… and still hoping to be understood by people who already decided who I was...
For a while, I thought expression and healing were the same thing.
And in some ways, they are. Because after years of shrinking myself, overthinking myself, filtering myself, adapting myself, and trying to stay emotionally “manageable” for everyone around me… finally speaking honestly has felt freeing in a way I don’t even fully know how to explain yet.
Not polished honesty.
Not curated honesty.
Not “I’ve fully healed and now I’m here to teach you” honesty.
Just… real.
And some things I’ve never said out loud before.
The kind where you stop performing as yourself and start actually living as yourself.
“I think people are hungry for a different way of being human.”— Maria Bamford
And honestly? I think part of why it feels so big to me is because I spent a lot of my life being emotionally aware of everyone else before myself.
Emotionally aware of the energy in the room.
The moods.
The reactions.
The tensions.
The unspoken dynamics.
The subtle judgments.
The versions of myself that made other people more comfortable.
I became very good at adapting.
So now that I’m expressing myself personally and publicly in ways I never have before, there’s a huge part of me that feels alive and proud of myself.
Creative again.
Connected again.
More myself without performance… just truth.
But I’m also realizing something else.
Sometimes expression and unresolved pain can become tangled together.
And I don’t say that with shame. I think it’s actually a very human part of healing.
Because when you spend years feeling misunderstood, dismissed, emotionally unsupported, or afraid to fully say what’s true for you… finally expressing yourself can feel like oxygen.
Like finally breathing after holding your breath for years.
But I’ve also noticed that sometimes underneath my expression was still a quieter hope:
Maybe now they’ll understand me.
Maybe now they’ll see what I was carrying.
Maybe now they’ll understand how this shaped me.
Maybe now I’ll feel fully seen.
And I think that’s the part I’m learning to separate.
Not because I want to stop being honest.
Not because I regret expressing myself.
And definitely not because I want to go back to silencing myself.
But because I’m starting to understand there’s a difference between:
expressing yourself… and unconsciously tethering your healing to whether other people finally understand how you got here.
That realization has been uncomfortable. But freeing too.
Because I can feel myself slowly shifting from:
“Do you finally see me?”
to:
“I see myself.”
And maybe that’s the real beginning of healing.
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.”— Brené Brown
Not winning the emotional trial in your head.
Not getting everyone to agree with your version.
Not perfectly correcting every misunderstanding.
Just becoming honest enough with yourself that you stop abandoning yourself trying to be understood by people committed to misunderstanding you anyway.
I also think healing gets oversimplified online sometimes.
People say:
“Speak your truth.”
“Tell your story.”
“Use your voice.”
And I agree with all of that.
But what nobody really talks about is how vulnerable it feels after years of emotional hyper-awareness and adaptation to suddenly exist publicly as your real self.
Especially when you’re still untangling grief.
Family dynamics.
Identity.
Loss.
Conditioning.
People pleasing.
Old survival patterns.
And all the versions of yourself you became just trying to emotionally survive environments that never fully felt safe to land in.
Sometimes I still catch myself wanting to explain everything perfectly.
Wanting people to fully “get it.”
Wanting my intentions understood correctly.
Overthinking it all…
But I’m slowly learning that healing may not actually come from finally getting everyone else to understand me.
It may come from no longer needing to build my entire life around proving that my experiences were real.
And that’s a very different kind of freedom.
The interesting thing is… the more I reconnect to myself, the more life itself starts returning too:
Cooking well again.
Creating again.
Writing again.
Dancing in the kitchen again.
Yoga that feels private and personal instead of performative (even though I video myself, it started for me first and then branched onto social media).
Slower mornings.
Beach walks.
My dogs.
Humor.
Breathing deeper.
Feeling moments of peace without immediately waiting for something to ruin them.
Actually loving myself from the inside.
Less survival. More self.
And maybe that’s the real work now.
Not becoming someone untouched by pain.
But becoming someone whose entire identity is no longer organized around the wound.
“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”— Hannah Gadsby
XOXO,
C