This Isn’t the Glow-Up They Promised

I didn’t know that healing would feel less like a glow-up and more like a demolition site with great lighting.

It’s sold to us as a tidy arc: breakdown, breakthrough, soft lighting, thriving.

A before-and-after montage with just the right filter and a sudden yoga habit.

But real healing? Real transformation? It’s messy. It’s confrontational. It strips you bare and leaves you staring at yourself with no makeup and no metaphorical bang trim to hide behind.

Lately, I’ve been in it. Not spiraling. Not crashing. Just… cracking open.

For me, it looked like crying in the car after a ten-minute interaction that cracked open a ten-year pattern.

Not in a cinematic way. More like slowly realizing how many of the things I used to call strength were actually survival strategies. How much of my shine was performance. How long I mistook endurance for worthiness. How often I melted myself down to reform into a form more pleasing.

Healing has meant being honest about all the ways I’ve contorted myself to be lovable. To be palatable. To be chosen.
Like deleting the text I used to send to curate connection, just to feel a flicker of closeness.
Like making plans for myself instead of staring at an empty weekend, hoping they might ask, and calling that hope “openness.”

It’s meant grieving the version of me who thought she had to earn rest. Who thought her softness was a liability. Who thought love meant staying even when her needs were never met.

Transformation, for me, hasn’t come from doing more. It comes from letting go. From saying no. From leaving space instead of rushing to fill it. From walking away from what once felt familiar, just to see what happens when I stop abandoning myself.

There’s no glow-up montage for that.

There are just small, daily choices.
To tell the truth even when it’s awkward.
To sit with the discomfort instead of fixing it.
To make plans for yourself instead of leaving space for someone who might not show up.
To say, “I actually need more than this,” and trust that you’re allowed to mean it.

It’s slow, it’s soft, and – while you’re in it – it feels like you’re going nowhere.

Until you look back and realize you’ve gone everywhere.

If you’re in the thick of it, let me say this clearly: You’re not failing because it doesn’t feel like a transformation. You’re not behind because you haven’t posted a glossy life update.

My glow-up isn’t loud.
It’s not a before-and-after photo or a big reveal.
It’s this.
The cracking open.
The honest no.
The weekends I fill with things that nourish me instead of waiting to be chosen.
The texts I don’t send. The softness I don’t apologize for.
It’s the me that stays with myself now, especially when it’s hard.

That’s what’s glowing.
It’s quieter than I expected.
But it’s mine.

It’s the way I walk into a room without needing to be seen to feel visible.
The mornings I start slow, because I finally believe I don’t have to earn rest.
The way I come home to myself now, instead of waiting for someone else to arrive.

This is the work. This is the becoming. This is the part no one puts in the highlight reel.

It’s not about becoming someone new.
It’s about becoming someone I can trust.
Someone I no longer abandon for the comfort of being wanted.

And it’s holy.

Maybe yours doesn’t look like much yet either. But if it feels like you’re coming home to yourself… that’s the beginning of everything.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend ❤