The Myth of The Healed Woman
- Nov 13
- 4 min read
By Jamie Lynn O’Neill
I used to think that one day I would wake up and finally be healed. My chakras would be aligned, my shadow fully integrated, and I would float through life in a linen dress, sipping green juice while saying enlightened things like, “I no longer identify with suffering.” Spoiler alert: that day never came. Instead, I woke up messy, human, and still slightly irritated by people who chew too loudly.
Somewhere along the self-help highway, healing turned into performance art. We began trading raw honesty for perfectly curated vulnerability posts. The message was clear: if you are still crying over something that happened five years ago, you must not be doing the work. The healed woman was born as a symbol of serenity and spiritual superiority. She glows. She forgives. She lets go effortlessly. I tried to become her. I journaled, saged, meditated, tapped, affirmed, and moon-bathed. And every time I thought I had finally reached her level of enlightenment, life threw me a plot twist that reminded me I was still very much human.
My healing has looked less like ascension and more like emotional CrossFit. Just when I think I have mastered self-worth, another childhood wound pops up wearing a new outfit and an attitude problem. For a long time, I thought that meant I was failing at healing. Now I know it means I am actually doing it right.
Healing is not a straight line. It is a spiral that brings you back to the same lesson again, but deeper each time. Sometimes you revisit pain not because you are broken, but because your heart is finally strong enough to hold it. The version of me who used to numb her emotions would not recognize the woman who now lets herself feel without trying to fix it. And yet, even she has days when she falls apart, cries in the shower, and questions everything she thought she had figured out.
The myth of the healed woman tells us that once we reach a certain level of enlightenment, we will no longer struggle. It whispers that healed people do not get angry, jealous, or insecure. It pressures us to smile through grief and call it growth. It tells us that sadness is a sign of spiritual failure. It keeps us chasing the next retreat, the next affirmation, the next guru who swears they can deliver everlasting inner peace for three easy payments of four hundred ninety-nine dollars.
The truth is, healing is not about arriving. It is about returning to your body, your truth, and your messy and magnificent self. It is about learning to hold your darkness with the same tenderness you offer your light. It is about laughing when you catch yourself repeating the same old pattern because humor heals more than shame ever could.
I have spent years studying holistic health, metaphysics, and the psychology of transformation. The deeper I go, the more I realize that no one has it all figured out. Even the most enlightened people still get triggered, fall in love with the wrong person, or eat ice cream straight from the carton while crying over something they swore they were done with. The difference is that they have learned to meet those moments with awareness instead of judgment. That is what real healing looks like.
There was a time I believed enlightenment would make me immune to chaos. Now I know it simply gives you better tools to dance with it. Some days my inner child wants to run the show. Other days my higher self takes the wheel. Most days they compromise somewhere around “cry a little, then manifest something cute.”
The idea that we will one day be completely healed is comforting but false. We do not graduate from our pain. We evolve through it. We shed skins. We soften. We learn. We circle back. We outgrow the need to prove how evolved we are. Real healing is not about transcending your humanity but embracing it.
If you are still triggered, still uncertain, and still figuring yourself out, you are not failing. You are alive. Healing is not an aesthetic. It is an act of radical self-honesty. It is crying in your car, laughing five minutes later, and realizing both moments are sacred.
I no longer chase the healed version of myself because she does not exist. What exists is the woman who keeps showing up. The one who apologizes when she is wrong, forgives herself when she is not, and has learned that vulnerability is stronger than perfection. The one who has made peace with the fact that sometimes doing the work means binge-watching bad television and calling it nervous system regulation.
So no, I am not the healed woman. I am the healing woman. The feeling woman. The one who knows that self-love is not always pretty and that spirituality without humor is just self-judgment in better packaging. I am learning that wholeness is not about fixing what is broken but loving what is real.
If you ever catch me claiming I have achieved complete enlightenment, please know I am either lying or severely sleep-deprived. Healing is not about being finished. It is about being real, being willing, and being human. And honestly, I would rather be a beautifully human work in progress than a perfectly polished illusion any day.
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