Healing and Recovery: Learning to Come Back to Myself

Healing and Recovery

Healing and recovery didn’t start with a breakthrough. It started with small moments that didn’t look like progress from the outside—like the first time I noticed I wasn’t bracing my shoulders in the grocery store, or the first time I said “I need a minute” and didn’t apologize for it. It was subtle. Ordinary. Almost easy to miss.

For a long time, I thought recovery would feel like relief—like one day I’d wake up and the weight would be gone. But the truth is, healing and recovery has felt more like learning how to live in my own body again. Less like a finish line, more like returning home—room by room.

Some days, I’ve wanted to rush it. I’ve wanted a timeline. I’ve wanted proof that I’m “better.” But what I’ve learned is that the part of me that demands proof is usually the part of me that’s still afraid.

And fear doesn’t respond to pressure. Fear responds to safety.

The Way I Used to Survive

Survival taught me to be useful. Pleasant. Quick. It taught me to read a room before I took up space in it. It taught me to anticipate needs before they were spoken—because in some seasons of life, that kind of vigilance feels like protection.

But survival skills don’t always come with an off switch.

When my life finally got quieter, my body didn’t immediately believe it. I could be sitting in a safe place, with safe people, and still feel like something bad was about to happen. That’s the strange thing about the nervous system: it doesn’t run on logic. It runs on history.

So I stopped asking myself, “Why am I still like this?” and started asking a gentler question:

“What is this part of me trying to protect?”

That question didn’t fix everything. But it softened my relationship with myself, and softness is a form of strength I didn’t know I was allowed to have.

The Quiet Grief That Came With Getting Better

No one warned me that healing and recovery might come with grief.

Not just grief for what happened, but grief for what didn’t. Grief for the version of me that had to grow up too fast. Grief for the years I spent being strong in ways that didn’t leave room for tenderness. Grief for the moments I can’t get back.

Sometimes, healing has meant letting myself admit the truth without rushing to redeem it.

It happened.It hurt.It mattered.

And I don’t have to dress it up in inspirational language to make it valid.

When “Better” Started Looking Different

At some point, I realized I had been measuring recovery the wrong way.

I thought “better” would mean I never got triggered. Never got overwhelmed. Never had a hard day. But healing and recovery has looked more like this:

• I notice what I’m feeling sooner.

• I come back to myself faster.

• I don’t abandon myself just because I’m having a moment.

• I’m learning to pause instead of perform.

The wins have been quiet. The kind you don’t post online. The kind you feel in your chest when you realize you’re not drowning—you’re breathing.

Learning to Live Without Bracing

One of the biggest shifts in my recovery has been this: I’m learning how to stop bracing.

Bracing is what I did when I was waiting for the next shoe to drop. Bracing is how I walked through life with my jaw clenched and my stomach tight, telling myself I was “fine” because I didn’t have time to be anything else.

But now, the question that keeps finding me is:

“What would it look like to live like I’m not about to be punished?”

That question has been both terrifying and holy.

Because if I’m not bracing, I have to feel. And feeling means being present. And being present means I can’t outrun what’s true.

So I’ve been practicing presence in small ways: a slower morning. A longer breath. A moment outside where the sky doesn’t ask anything of me. Sometimes it’s as simple as noticing my feet on the floor and reminding myself, You’re here. You’re safe enough right now.

Boundaries: The Place I Stopped Betraying Myself

I used to think boundaries were something you set when you were confident. Like a luxury for people who weren’t afraid of being disliked.

But I learned boundaries in the middle of shaking hands and a racing heart.

I learned that healing and recovery often requires you to disappoint people who benefited from your silence.

I learned that saying “no” can feel like danger at first—not because it is, but because my body remembers what it once cost me to have needs.

So I started small. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just honest.

“I can’t do that.”“I’m not available.”“I need time.”

Every time I kept my word to myself, I felt a little more trustworthy to me. And that trust—slowly built—has been a kind of medicine.

The Hope I Can Actually Believe

Hope used to feel like a fragile thing, like it might jinx me if I held it too openly. So I kept it quiet. I kept it small.

Now I understand: hope isn’t pretending things didn’t break. Hope is believing something can still grow.

And sometimes healing and recovery is nothing more glamorous than choosing the next right thing without punishing yourself for not being “over it” yet.

It’s the choice to drink water.To take the shower.To make the appointment.To rest without earning it.To try again tomorrow.

If You’re Still In The Thick Of It

If you’re reading this while you’re still carrying a lot—if you feel tired, or behind, or like you should be farther along—please let me say something plainly:

You’re not failing because you’re still healing.You’re not weak because you’re still tender.You’re not “too much” because you need time.

Healing and recovery isn’t a straight path. It’s a return. A remembering. A slow rebuilding of safety inside yourself.

And even if it doesn’t feel like it today, the fact that you’re still here—still reaching, still reading, still looking for language for what you’ve lived—means something in you is fighting for your life.

Not the loud kind of fight.The brave kind.The staying kind.

And that counts.

Adriene Caldwell, author of Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines

210-347-4959 Mobile & WhatsApp

@UnbrokenCaldwell (FB/Insta/LinkedIn)

www.UnbrokenCaldwell.com (Visit to read Prologue, Chapter 1, Photos, CPS Case Files, Psych Evals, and more!)