It Wasn’t Your Fault, But It Is Your Healing: A trauma-informed reflection on growth, responsibility, and reclaiming your life

Some wounds weren’t your fault.

You didn’t choose the household you were raised in.

You didn’t choose the betrayal that broke your trust.

You didn’t choose to be ignored, controlled, manipulated, abandoned, or made to feel small.

None of those things were your doing.

But here’s the part that’s harder to hear and more liberating once you let it sink in:

It’s still your healing.

Not because you caused the harm.

But because you’re the only one who can choose what happens next.

The Lie That Keeps Us Stuck

When you've been hurt by others, especially by people who were supposed to protect or support you, it’s easy to stay locked in cycles of blame, shame, or silence. It makes sense. For a while, those feelings are part of the grieving process.

But at some point, continuing to center your story around what someone did to you can start to keep you stuck in it.

You don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen.

You don’t have to minimize it.

But you do get to decide what happens from here.

That’s where your power lives. Not in rewriting the past, but in reclaiming your present.

What Healing Really Looks Like

Healing isn’t linear. It’s not a checklist. It’s not always graceful. And it’s definitely not about “getting over it.”

It looks like:

• Learning how to set boundaries you were never taught to have

• Naming what happened without minimizing or excusing it

• Feeling safe in your body again, after years of being in survival mode

• Catching yourself in patterns that used to run you automatically

• Choosing differently...even when it’s hard, unfamiliar, or scary

  
  

Healing is work. But it’s not punishment. It’s self-respect in motion.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

There’s no award for doing this by yourself. Lean on your therapist, your coach, your journal, your community, your breath. Healing in isolation often mirrors the loneliness that created the wound.

You’re allowed to ask for help. You’re allowed to take your time. You’re allowed to not have it all figured out yet.

But what you’re not required to do is wait for someone else to fix it.

That part, that choice, that commitment to your future self, is yours.

A Final Thought

What happened to you wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t have been your burden.

But healing can be the way you put the story down without erasing it. It can be the way you stop bleeding from someone else’s cuts. It can be the moment you decide that your life, your peace, your joy, your power, belong to you now.

Not because you deserved what happened.

But because you deserve to be free.