It takes restraint to heal and it takes restraint to help. That means that healing and helping come with pain–for somebody. Somebody will always feel pain during the process of getting or being healed.

And helping a person pursue healing takes surrender to a process that looks miserable. Any empathic person wants healing to happen right away.

You want your wounds to close, scab over, and for those scabs to fall. You want the skin to recover it’s brightness and blend into the rest of you. You want to forget. And you want all that healing now.

But healing rarely acts like that. And it rarely comes without its own hurts, bruises, and pains.

For the persons being healed:

• You won’t get the plan of care you want.
• You have to do things that you wouldn’t choose to do.
• Something you disagree with is required.
• The best thing for you feels terrible for a while.
• Nobody understands your pain.

For the persons helping:

• Time slows all the way down.
• You doubt your effectiveness.
• The person you care for gets worse.
• Your own pains come alive in a new way.

You get the picture.

It helps me to reframe the pain. It helps me to describe the pain as a part of the process. I’m sure this has been said better by many, but it’s the pain of recovery, the pain of returning, which is not the pain of the injury or the sickness. The former hurts but somehow it feels better than the latter.