There’s something that doesn’t get said enough when we talk about healing: it’s not just what happened to you that shapes your life. It’s what you say to yourself about what happened that creates your reality.
No, we don’t choose the traumas, the grief, or the heartbreaks. But what we do choose—consciously or not—is how we think about those events every single day. And those thoughts? They matter. The ones you repeat over and over again eventually become beliefs. And those beliefs become the framework through which your brain interprets the world.
In other words, we create our reality—not by magic, but by repetition.
Neuroscience supports this. The brain is designed for efficiency. It forms neural pathways based on repeated thoughts and behaviors. The more often you think something like “I’m not good enough,” “No one will ever love me again,” or “I’ll never be the same,” the stronger that neural connection becomes. Eventually, those thoughts don’t feel like thoughts anymore—they feel like truth.
Even if ten people compliment you and one person criticizes you, your brain will likely latch onto the one negative comment. Why? Because your belief system is actively filtering your reality to match what you already believe to be true. That’s not accuracy. That’s confirmation bias—and it’s running in the background of your mind unless you choose to interrupt it.
This is why healing takes more than time. It takes awareness. It takes a conscious decision to examine the thoughts you think and the language you use—especially the words you speak to yourself.
After loss or trauma, it’s easy to fall into thought patterns that feel factual. “I’m broken.” “I’ll never be happy again.” “No one understands me.” But these aren’t facts. They’re interpretations. And interpretations can be challenged. They can be changed.
Healing doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It means learning to notice your default inner dialogue—and starting to shift it, little by little. It means gently replacing thoughts like “I’m broken” with “I’m hurting, and I’m healing.” It means moving from “I’ll never be the same” to “I’m becoming someone new.” And from “No one understands me” to “The right people will see me when I start showing up as myself.”
This isn’t toxic positivity. It’s not denial. It’s self-leadership. You’re not ignoring the pain—you’re choosing to no longer let it write the whole story.
You are the narrator. You always have been.
And your words… shape everything.
