Healing Means Coming Back to Myself

Welcome to Sacred Musings, a space where I share reflections from the heart on love, life, caregiving, and the lessons that shape us into who we are. My hope is that these words bring comfort, perspective, and inspiration to anyone walking their own path of healing and growth.

Last year, I was trying to get over someone I loved deeply. I was hurting, feeling alone, and trying to understand what it actually meant to heal.

I knew I wanted to heal. I was trying to do it. But I needed a definition that meant something to me—something I could recognize in my own life.

Eventually, I found it:

Healing means coming back to myself.

I think that definition is shaped by being a nurse and having a scientific mind. As a wound care nurse, I have watched wounds change over time. I have watched tissue repair and skin close. We recognize healing as the body restores its integrity, even when a scar remains.

That is how I have come to understand my own emotional healing. I can carry evidence of what happened to me and still come back to myself.

When I say “my original self,” I think about the parts of me I knew before I learned to question them. Who was I at ten? What did I love at five? What was my favorite flavor of ice cream? What color did I reach for simply because I liked it? What kind of people did I gravitate toward? What energy felt comfortable to me?

Those little things tell a story. They remind me that I had preferences, curiosity, and a sense of connection long before this heartbreak. There was a Kimberly who knew what she liked without needing to explain or defend it.

I want to hear from her again.

There is room for the woman I have grown into, too. I have learned things, developed new interests, and discovered strengths I didn’t know I had. Coming back to myself means making space for all of that while reconnecting with the parts of me that still feel true.

Sometimes healing looks like asking a simple question: Do I actually like this? Sometimes it means noticing who I feel at ease around. Sometimes it means choosing a color, a song, or a scoop of ice cream for the simple pleasure it gives me.

Those moments help me recognize myself.

And much like a wound that has healed, I may still have a scar. That scar belongs to my story. So does the life that continues around it.

During that painful time, I was behaving like someone completely different from who I knew myself to be. There were moments when I looked in the mirror and wondered, Who is this person looking back at me?

I didn’t recognize myself. And somewhere in all that hurt, I began to realize how much I missed me.

The woman with her own interests. Her own voice. Her own ideas about what she wanted to do with her life.

Kimberly.

Coming back to myself meant getting curious about her again.

What do I like? What do I want? What brings me joy? What do I want to create? What kind of life feels like mine?

I didn’t have all the answers. Sometimes I still don’t. But learning who I am has become a creative process, and, surprisingly, there has been fun in it too.

I have bumped my head along the way. I have journaled, put the journal down, and come back later to read what I wrote. Sometimes those pages show me how much I was hurting. Sometimes they help me recognize something I couldn’t see while I was living it. Sometimes I find my own voice waiting for me.

Through those pages, I have been getting to know Kimberly Sue Johnson again.

And I have been learning to accept her wholeheartedly.

Bumps, bruises, wounds, keloids and all.

That part matters to me. I want to be able to look at myself with love while I am still figuring things out. I want to live as myself unapologetically, with room for everything I have experienced and everything I am still becoming.

During the time when I felt hurt, harmed, alone, and flailing, I came to my desk and started creating an affirmation deck. I needed words I could return to when it was difficult to find something loving to say to myself.

So I created cards based on the affirmations I needed to hear.

That became the Celebrate My Life Affirmation Deck: a collection of 50 cards for releasing, affirming, and celebrating YOU.

Born from a dream and guided by ancestral wisdom, the deck makes room for worthiness, partnership, feminine lineage, stepping into the spotlight, and trusting divine timing. Those themes reflect things I was trying to understand and make room for in my own life.

I also created a little workbook, because writing had become such an important part of coming back to myself. I wanted space to sit with the words to consider what they brought up, what needed releasing, and what deserved celebrating.

Creating the deck gave me somewhere to put my pain and my hope. It let me make something meaningful from what I was experiencing.

I shared it on my Sacred Pages website, and I have also added it to my Sacred Heart website because I believe it may offer companionship to people who are grieving.

Grief can leave us with so many questions about who we are and how we want to live. I know what it feels like to reach for words when your own are hard to find. My hope is that these cards give someone a gentle place to pause, reflect, and hear something they need.

When I say, “Burn what no longer serves,” I think about the beliefs I am ready to release. The ways I have questioned my worth. The expectations I have carried that leave too little room for me to be myself.

And when I say, “Celebrate your life,” I mean the life you have today, even with its unfinished parts.

There is beauty in learning what you like again. In making something just because you want to. In reading an old journal entry and recognizing that something has shifted. In looking in the mirror and beginning to see yourself with tenderness.

Today, that is what healing means to me.

Coming back to who I truly am. Listening to myself. Accepting myself wholeheartedly. Giving myself permission to enjoy the life I am creating.

Celebrate your life. Burn what no longer serves. Step into your worth.

With love,

Kimberly