XXVII. “After the Middle: Holding Them While Healing You

After the middle—

after the decision,

after the boundary,

after the clarity—

healing becomes less about you alone.

Because for many of us, healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens while lunches are being made. While emotions are being regulated. While someone else needs reassurance, guidance, safety, and love.

It happens while you’re parenting, caregiving, holding space, showing up. And that’s when the real work begins. Because after the middle, healing requires learning how to nurture others without abandoning the child in you who still needs care.

Healing Requires Holding Two Truths at Once

After the middle, you realize something sobering and sacred:

You can be a safe place for others and still be learning how to feel safe yourself. You can teach emotional regulation while still rewiring your own nervous system.

You can model boundaries while discovering where yours were never taught. You can pour love into your children while finally noticing how little love you once received.

Healing requires you to hold both truths without guilt:

✨ I am responsible for those I nurture.

✨ I am still learning how to nurture myself.

Neither cancels the other.

Healing Requires Breaking Cycles Without Becoming Rigid

When you’re healing and parenting at the same time, there’s pressure to “get it right.”

To not repeat what hurt you.

To not pass down what you survived.

To be patient even when your own inner child is tired, overwhelmed, or triggered.

After the middle, healing requires compassion over perfection. You will feel old wounds activate when your child expresses emotions you were never allowed to express. You will feel tenderness when they are protected in ways you weren’t. You will feel grief when you realize how young you had to grow up. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re healing through the work, not outside of it.

Healing Requires Re-Parenting Yourself in Real Time

After the middle, you stop waiting for “later” to tend to yourself.

You re-parent yourself in moments like:

• pausing before reacting

• choosing softness instead of shame

• speaking to yourself the way you speak to your child

• resting without earning it

• allowing emotion without punishment

• offering reassurance instead of criticism

You begin asking yourself the same questions you ask them:

What do you need right now?

Are you tired or overwhelmed?

Do you need comfort or space?

Are you reacting from now… or from then?

Healing requires this gentleness—not once, but repeatedly.

Healing Requires Letting Your Child See You Human, Not Perfect

After the middle, you understand something powerful:

Your child doesn’t need a perfect parent. They need a present one.

Healing requires modeling:

✨ accountability

✨ emotional honesty

✨ repair

✨ regulation

✨ boundaries

✨ rest

It requires showing them that adults can apologize.

That emotions aren’t dangerous.

That mistakes aren’t shameful.

That love doesn’t disappear when things get hard.

By healing yourself, you give them something you may never have had:

emotional safety with truth.

Healing Requires Grieving While You Grow

There will be moments when nurturing others cracks you open. Moments when you see your child receiving something you needed and never got. Moments when you mourn quietly while being grateful loudly. Moments when joy and grief sit in the same room.

Healing requires letting that grief exist without resentment.

You’re not behind.

You’re not broken.

You’re not late.

You’re doing the brave work of ending cycles instead of repeating them.

That takes tenderness, patience, and time.

Healing Requires Choosing Presence Over Performance

After the middle, healing stops being about “doing enough.” It becomes about being here. Being regulated enough to respond instead of react…

Being aware enough to pause.

Being kind enough to yourself to rest.

Being honest enough to admit when you need support.

You don’t need to heal perfectly to nurture well. You need to stay connected—to yourself and to them.

After the Middle, Healing Is a Shared Language

This is the truth no one tells you:

Healing while nurturing others is not a delay.

It’s an initiation.

You’re learning how to be the adult you needed while raising humans who will never have to heal the same wounds. That matters. And even on the days it feels heavy, messy, unfinished— you are doing the work.

Not just for yourself.

Not just for them.

But for every version of you that deserved softness and finally gets to receive it now.