Sacred Doesn’t Always Feel Good: What Healing Actually Looks Like

Healing doesn’t always look like "love and light"- in fact, it rarely does. Sometimes, it’s grief, rage, and unraveling. A sacred, hot mess.

Healing isn't always beautiful.

It doesn’t always arrive wrapped in rose petals and angel numbers. Sometimes it comes through a cracked voice and unwashed hair, sitting on the edge of your bed wondering if you’re going to make it through the week. Sometimes healing doesn’t feel like light- it feels like unraveling. And for far too long, we’ve been taught that if it’s not soft and serene, it’s not sacred.

But that’s a lie. And I’m done trying to make my healing digestible.

The truth is, healing can look like rage. Like grief so sharp it buckles your knees. Like numbness. Like saying no to every invitation because your nervous system can’t handle another demand. It can look like walking away from things you thought you’d want forever. Or holding your body and whispering, “I forgive you,” even when part of you still doesn’t.

This past year has asked more of me than I ever thought I could give. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally. After major surgery, countless appointments, a heart that kept getting broken open, and now preparing for a hysterectomy in the fall- I’m learning firsthand that healing isn’t a mountaintop moment. It’s a slow burn. A long remembering. A sacred mess.

There have been days where I’ve questioned everything- my path, my purpose, my body. Especially my body. How do you love something that keeps forcing you to say goodbye to pieces of yourself? How do you find the sacred in a body that’s constantly hurting, shedding, transforming against your will? I’m still figuring that out.

But what I do know is this: even in the unraveling, I’ve found truth. Even in the undoing, I’ve felt something ancient and wise whisper, "This is still part of it."

This is still holy ground.

The grief, the exhaustion, the cracking open- it’s not proof that you’re broken. It’s proof that you’re alive.

We are not here to make healing a performance act. We are not here to glow in curated perfection. We are here to feel it all. To fall apart and come back together, time and time again. To move through the fire and emerge with ash still clinging to our skin.

Some days I am the fire. Some days I am the ember. Some days I am the pile of ash whispering, "This still matters."

I’ve come to believe that healing doesn’t ask us to be ready, it asks us to be willing. Willing to show up with the truth. Willing to meet ourselves where we are. Willing to enter the temple of our bodies, even when they feel foreign or unfamiliar. Willing to experience cyclical healing and chaos, but with fresh, new eyes.

Over time, I stopped trying to return to who I was and started getting curious about who I’m becoming. I let myself soften into the unknown. I let the Earth hold me when nothing else could. I cried into moss, screamed into the wind, danced barefoot under the moonlight like something primal in me remembered how. Not for aesthetic. Not for Instagram. But because my soul needed it.

This is where Sacred Wild was born.

Not from a place of "having it all together," but from the moments where I didn’t. From the space between what was and what’s unfolding. From the ache of being human- and the remembering that we are never alone in that.

Sacred Wild is a one-day retreat, but it’s also far more than that. It’s a reclamation. A homecoming. A circle of women gathering not to fix, but to feel. To root back into the wisdom of the Earth. To honour the season we’re in, whether we feel ready or not.

We will dance. We will sit in stillness. We will breathe into the parts of us we’ve ignored, and we will call back the instincts that patriarchy taught us to suppress. We will be seen- not for what we produce, but for who we are becoming.

If you are burnt out, tender, raw, unsure- this space is for you. If you are grieving something unnamed- this space is for you. If you are yearning for your own rhythm again- this space is for you.

Sacred Wild doesn’t require you to show up healed. It simply invites you to show up honestly.

We gather on Sunday, September 21st in Grimsby, Ontario, aligning with the Fall Equinox and the new moon. Early bird tickets are available until July 31.

I would be honoured to hold space with you there. Visit www.lightyourpath.ca/retreat for details.

Because this is healing, too. Right here. In the mess. In the mystery. In the sacred wild of it all.