By Uma Mahesh
Maybe This Is Healing
2020 broke something open
in many of us.
The world shifted.
And so did we.
Some losses came suddenly.
Without goodbye.
Without a hand to hold.
Just a silence
where life used to be.
Some of us lost children.
Some, partners.
Parents.
Dreams.
Certainty.
Pets suddenly lost entire families.
We went on.
Mostly because we had to.
Some days functioning.
Some days pretending.
We wrote.
Or sat still.
Or walked in circles,
wondering if pain had shape
or direction.
We studied healing
as if it could be measured.
As if there were steps to some unknown destination.
But healing didn’t come
the way they said.
It wasn’t a turning of the page.
It was learning
to carry the weight
without dropping ourselves.
It was learning to steady ourselves.
It was breathing
even when breath felt wrong.
It was reaching out
even while stumbling inward.
Some of us found meaning.
Some, just a rhythm.
A lamp we light.
The flowers we arranged.
A ritual.
A cup of tea at the same time each day.
A poem that holds us
when people can’t.
We even started to help others
while still hurting.
And somehow
that counted too.
Is this healing?
Who’s to be sure?
But maybe it is.
The shared sigh
of another who knows.
The courage to say
we miss them—without tearing,
without flinching.
The hope
that softens around the edges
and lifts us,
just enough,
to face the sun
again.
It’s a journey.
One that we didn’t sign up for.
“It’s a journey, one that we didn’t sign up for”—that is so true. None of us choose this path, yet we learn to walk it somehow. And time doesn’t really heal; it just helps us live around the absence. Your words are honest, gentle, and deeply relatable. You have put in words what so many of us feel but struggle to say it loud …. Lovely piece Uma
I truly understand the pain and the agony. ‘Only Time can heal’ is cliched. What it can do is simply numb the loss. But instead of becoming bitter and depressed, finding an outlet for our grief by helping and healing others is a noble gesture.
Well written, Uma.