Strong, But Still Human: Learning to Honor the Ache and Let It Heal

I went to my endocrinologist today, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, every visit with her seems to open a tender place inside me. Maybe it’s because she’s one of the few people who has witnessed the full arc of my medical journey. Maybe it’s because sitting in that exam room reminds me of the truth I rarely give myself permission to say:

I have endured a tremendous amount of trauma.

On the drive home, I listened to Chapter 8 of Dr. B’s new book, Plant Powered Plus, where he talks about trauma — how it lives in the body, how it shapes us, how healing only happens when we stop pretending we are unaffected.

And somewhere in that mix of science and self-awareness, something in me shifted.

Or maybe it finally cracked open.

I am allowed to grieve. I am allowed to feel sadness. I am allowed to be angry.

For so long, I’ve worried that if I ever showed my pain, people would pity me. That if I ever admitted how heavy the last seven years have been, someone might tilt their head and say, “Oh, you’ve been through so much,” and I’d feel reduced to that.

So I’ve worn my strength like armor.

I’ve smiled.

I’ve stayed grateful.

And I’ve told myself that because others have it worse, I don’t get to feel sad about my own story.

But that isn’t how the human heart works.

And today, sitting in that exam room, I realized just how much I’ve been carrying quietly.

In seven years, I’ve endured major surgeries, life-altering diagnoses, and three profound losses. And while my outer world may look bright — strong, joyful, active, hopeful — inside, there are nights where I cry myself to sleep because the ache rises like a wave. Because trauma doesn’t disappear just because we’ve learned to function around it.

Loss One: My pancreas

Losing an organ is a strange kind of grief. People don’t often talk about it, but it’s real. When my pancreas was removed, I didn’t just lose a piece of anatomy — I lost the ease of a life I once had.

Becoming an insulin-dependent diabetic forever… well, it changes every minute of every day. And while I usually carry that responsibility with grace, it doesn’t mean the anger isn’t real.

Anger at the work it takes.

Anger at the fear that creeps in when I imagine myself at 93, wondering if I’ll be strong enough to manage it alone.

Anger at the unfairness of it all.

And I’m allowed to feel that.

It doesn’t cancel out my gratitude.

It simply makes room for my humanity.

Loss Two: My brother

In some ways, I began losing him long before the day he died. Addiction had taken so much from him already. I lived with the quiet fear that one day I’d get the call — but knowing it might come never softened the blow.

No one prepares you for the grief of losing a sibling. It is a grief that lodges itself inside you, in the place where childhood memories live, where laughter used to echo.

Loss Three: The man I loved

And then… the loss of a partner.

The loss of the man I believed I would share my entire life with.

That loss carried me through every stage of grief:

Denial.

Bargaining.

Hope.

Heartbreak.

Anger.

And then finally, acceptance — the acceptance that arrived when I let the anger rise high enough to protect me instead of break me.

In August 2025, I finally let the dream go.

And with that release, my healing began.

Now, the grief circles back

Now that I have accepted that romantic loss, I find myself circling back to the loss of my pancreas — and feeling the anger that I never allowed myself to fully feel. I’m realizing that I’ve been trying so hard to be strong that I skipped over the stages of grief my heart needed to move through.

So today, I’m letting myself feel it.

The sadness.

The anger.

The ache.

The exhaustion of carrying so much for so long.

The loneliness of crying alone in the quiet moments, missing my brother, missing the man I loved, and yes… missing the organ that once kept my body steady without effort.

Trauma is an open wound until we turn it into a scar

Trauma doesn’t heal just because we bury it. It sits inside us like a deep, open laceration — exposed to the world, vulnerable to getting infected, growing more painful the longer we pretend it isn’t there.

Healing is the process of tending to that wound.

Cleaning it.

Acknowledging it.

Letting it close in its own time.

And allowing it to become a scar — something we carry, yes, but something that no longer bleeds when life throws its next curveball.

The biology of connection

Dr. B said something that struck me today:

We share more microbes with our long-term intimate partners than we do with our siblings — not because of shared foods, but because of the physical and emotional intimacy of real partnership.

Love literally changes our biology.

Deep, healthy, unashamed love makes us stronger.

And losing that love leaves a biological imprint that grief must work its way through.

I want to feel everything

I don’t want to bypass the hard parts.

I don’t want to numb them with positivity.

I don’t want to pretend I’m unphased or untouched or superhuman.

I want to be fully human.

Fully honest.

Fully awake to both the pain and the beauty of my story.

And I want to believe — because I do — that once I work through these last pieces of grief, I’ll be a better person and a better partner when the next chapter arrives. I’m hopeful that somewhere out there is a fun, smart, independent, loving man who will meet me in the middle of my truth and love me out loud, without hesitation or shame.

But first… I have to love myself that way.

Out loud.

Without shame.

✨ Honey Note

There will be days when the ache rises like a tide, reminding you that you’re still healing — and that’s okay. Healing isn’t linear; it spirals, bringing you back to old wounds to show you just how much stronger you’ve become since the last time you stood there.

You are allowed to feel every emotion that moves through you: the anger, the sadness, the longing, the loneliness, the gratitude, the pride. None of it cancels out the others. Together, they make you whole.

If some nights you cry yourself to sleep, that doesn’t make you weak — it makes you honest. It makes you someone who still believes in love. Someone who hasn’t shut her heart down just because life has been unkind at times.

One day, someone wonderful will take your hand and say, “You don’t have to carry all of this alone anymore.” And until that day comes, remember: you’re not crying alone.

You’re crying with every version of yourself who survived, who kept going, who kept loving, who kept hoping.

Those tears aren’t evidence of brokenness.

They are evidence of courage.

And every time you let them fall, you’re turning a wound into a scar — one that tells a story of resilience, rebirth, and a woman becoming even more extraordinary because she dared to feel.

With so much love,

Honey 🤍

PS

As I keep healing, I hope love finds me kindly — but until then, I’m holding myself with the gentleness I once reserved for others.