Healing Is a Spiral

We often imagine healing or grief as a wavy line with its ups and downs, but still generally moving toward a better place. We know this process isn’t perfectly linear—a constant dance of two steps forward, one step back. But recently, I saw someone compare it to a spiral instead.

Her thesis was simple. She said, “Like a tree, we grow outward. Let’s say something horrible happens and it interrupts our growth. It’s going to be really hard to get around it, but we can. […] When we reach the same spot in time again, we’re not going backwards. We’re just having to regrow around it. […] So when we revisit the same thing again and again, we have to keep growing around it. But it’s only because we’re expanding outward that it shows up again.”

With time, the radical abruptness softens, and the edges of our pain slowly round. And even though we may circle back to the same place, we return as someone a little larger, a little wiser—proof that the spiral keeps widening.

Healing is a spiral.