At The End Of My Therapy Journey

I’ve been seeing her for almost three months now, meeting every other week. That’s been about 6 sessions in total. Which means 6 hours of my life that have been focused solely on healing.

Do you know what a gift to myself that is?

That in this busy season of life - five kids, house renos, starting a business, Nic working on his dreams - I have taken the time to go to these sessions. To show myself that I matter, that I am willing to put the work in. Because I don’t want to wake up 20 years from now, still being stuck in the same patterns.

It’s easy to think that I should have this all figured out by now. But how grateful I am that I’m figuring it out now rather than waiting many more years. It can feel hard, like it’s too much effort to break the habits that I’ve formed and replace them with new ones. Even though I know it will be better once I do. My brain tells me Oh you’ll be fine. It’ll go away. You’re messed, but you’re probably not messed enough to go see a therapist. It’ll figure itself out with time.

It’s all lies.

And now that I have these months behind me of healing, I feel more sure than I did before. I’m realizing that there isn’t one big fix that needs to happen. No wave of a magical wand to make everything perfect again. Instead, it’s all of the little shifts. It’s literally taking a couple deep breaths when I feel my patience running thin. It’s sitting down at the beginning of a new month to think about what I want to focus on in the weeks to come. To reflect on what worked or not in the last month. To check in with myself and see how I am doing, instead of letting life just blur by in a whirl. It’s paying attention to what emotions I’m feeling, and allowing them to be. Paying attention to what emotion I am acting from - it matters.

Before therapy, I had started telling myself that I’m not broken, that I’m whole. But I didn’t really believe it. My brain would always add well, maybe.. but I don’t know. There’s probably something broken about you.. I can say that now I feel whole. I am still healing, still learning, still growing, but not from a place of brokenness and needing to be fixed. It’s from a place of love. I know that I am enough, because I am enough for myself.

The next time that I will probably see her is around six week postpartum with my next baby. (Because there’s another shift - I am going to take as many steps as I can to set myself up for success instead of failure.) It feels mostly exciting to be able to close that chapter and start a new one. I had a moment of - wait! I still need you! To tell me that I have value, that I can do this, that I’m not going crazy, to remind me of all the progress I’ve made. But I am ready. She was able to guide me back to the path I want to be on.

And now it’s me, just like it’s always been. It’s my job to keep choosing me.