An Open Letter to Survivors: You Don’t Just “Get Over” Trauma
Dear Survivor,
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and you’re probably seeing a lot about healing, therapy, and moving forward. That matters, but here is what doesn’t get said enough. You don’t just “get over” what happened to you. Healing is not linear, it does not follow a timeline, and it does not end in a neat, finished place.
You can be years out from what happened and still have moments where it hits you again. Something small, a name, a memory, a notification, can bring a reaction you didn’t expect. Your body responds before your mind can make sense of it. And then comes the question that can feel even heavier: why am I still affected by this? Because your body remembers. Not because you have failed at healing, not because you are back at the beginning, and not because you didn’t do the work. It is because what happened to you was real.
There is a lot of pressure to be “over it,” especially as time passes. To believe that if you have gone to therapy or built coping skills, you should be unaffected by now. That pressure can make completely valid reactions feel like weakness. It is not weakness. Healing was never about becoming untouched by it. It is about learning what to do when it shows up and allowing yourself to move through it without turning against yourself.
Some days will feel steady and others will not. That does not erase your progress. It does not take away from the work you have done. It means you are navigating something that had an impact on you, and that impact does not disappear just because time has passed.
You also do not have to carry it alone. Letting people in when you are struggling is not a sign of weakness. It is part of taking care of yourself. You deserve support in the moments that feel heavy, even if those moments come years later.
If something from your past is showing up again, there is nothing wrong with you. You are not behind. You are not broken. You are still healing. You are still here. That matters.
-Jane Doe