You can not heal as long as you do not acknowledge you have been hurt:
It is fall again, my daughter has just turned five – she is looking at our fridge where she points at an old picture of the boys, her father and me.
„Look, Mum, it is from back then when we were a real family!
When are we going to be a real family again?“
Damn, I feel as if I am going to cry, stay calm.
So I explain to her that there are many different kinds of real family- like our garden family, the neighbor kids, our friends- families with no parents just grandparents, families with two dads or two mums – families of people who love each other – no matter how they are connected. And I tell her that she is loved by both her parents – no matter where they live.
Still – she is sad and I can still feel pain. Why after so many years do I still feel that heart tearing pain. And then I realize I have never really accepted that I got hurt in first place- I had accepted that life had gotten so much more difficult, I saw that my kids ached. But I didn’t want to acknowledge that someone else had had the power to hurt me – because aren’t I a strong woman? I do not miss him so why should I still ache?
The answer is easy, right? Even you do not miss the person, you lost a huge part of your past identity or role and the gap left behind by the person.
Of course You are whole no matter if you are single or in a relationship but you need to fill the gaps and voids in your social system too- when we broke up, I lost much more than just one person – I lost contact with shared friends, neighbors and family too. And actually I lost my best friend with him leaving.
So the pain I feel … I think it is still there because I am still filling those gaps and it needs patience. I am not the most patient person in general, so sometimes it is easier to ignore those facts but it doesn’t help. Healing takes time, rebuilding your life, identity and social network can not happen over night.
So it is okay if I still keep struggling.
Pain can teach us to grow, we don’t need to carry it with us forever though. But to let it go we first need to face it is there.