Unraveling Grace: A Meditation on Healing

Healing is never linear. I’ve told myself this countless times, and yet there are still moments—days, weeks, months—when it feels like, surely, I am caught in an unending loop of recovery. Like I am always patching myself back together, only to feel something else unravel completely again. Living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, there’s a near constant conversation I’m having with my body—a careful balance between movement and rest, between resilience and surrender. And I’ll admit, there are times when I feel utterly stuck.

But lately, I’ve been wondering: what if healing isn’t just about reaching an endpoint? What if it isn’t about arriving at a version of myself that is finally, permanently “whole”? What if healing is the practice of self-love itself—the way I soften into my body, the way I choose kindness and compassion toward it, even in the moments when I wish it were different?

Grace, I’m learning, is in the moments where I breathe through frustration instead of feeding it. It’s in the way I allow rest without guilt, in how I gently remind myself that slow does not mean stagnant. It’s in the recognition that even now, even in this season of limitation, I am not lacking. I am still growing, still deepening my awareness of myself. Healing isn’t just the body knitting itself back together; it’s also the heart learning to hold itself tenderly.

So I sit with that. I sit with the discomfort, the impatience, the longing to move freely. And I remind myself: Grace is here, too. I am still whole, even as I heal.