If I could give every follower and reader one piece of advice for July, it would be this:
Stop pretending you’re okay when you’re not.
Not because you’re weak. Not because your life is falling apart. Simply because pretending has become so normal for many of us that we no longer recognize we’re doing it. Somewhere along the way, we’ve confused being strong with being silent, and we’ve mistaken survival for healing.
One of the greatest lies we’ve accepted is the belief that healing begins when the pain finally goes away.
It doesn’t.
Healing begins the moment we become honest enough to admit the pain is still there.
After more than twenty years of sitting with clients through some of the most difficult seasons of their lives, I’ve noticed a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. I’ve listened to stories of addiction, betrayal, childhood neglect, divorce, anxiety, depression, grief, abuse, trauma, and shame. Despite how different those stories appear on the surface, they often have one thing in common.
People don’t suffer because they’re broken.
They suffer because they’ve become incredibly skilled at pretending they aren’t.
Recently, I worked with a woman I’ll call Sarah. Her name and identifying details have been changed to protect her privacy, but her story reflects the journey of many people I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside.
From the outside, Sarah appeared to have everything together. She had built a successful career, raised a wonderful family, volunteered in her community, and had become the dependable person everyone leaned on. Friends admired her strength. Coworkers respected her. Few people would have guessed she carried a secret that had quietly shaped nearly every decision she’d made for decades.
During high school, Sarah experienced repeated sexual trauma that she never fully processed. She buried it beneath achievement, responsibility, and the determination to become someone no one would ever see as vulnerable again. Time passed. She graduated, married, raised children, and built a life she could be proud of. The memories never disappeared. They simply waited beneath the surface, influencing her relationships, her nervous system, and the way she viewed herself without her even realizing it.
Trauma has a remarkable way of doing that.
It doesn’t always announce itself through dramatic flashbacks or emotional breakdowns. Sometimes it appears as perfectionism. Sometimes it hides behind people-pleasing or an inability to rest. Other times it disguises itself as chronic anxiety, overachievement, hyper-independence, or an exhausting need to prove our worth over and over again. We often assume we’re simply stressed, busy, or overwhelmed, when in reality we’re carrying versions of ourselves that no longer fit the life we’re trying to build.
When Sarah first came to see me, she wasn’t asking for help healing trauma.
She wanted help managing stress.
As we slowly pulled back the layers together, something became painfully clear. She wasn’t exhausted because life demanded too much of her. She was exhausted because she’d spent years pretending the deepest wounds of her life no longer mattered. Carrying that mask had become far more draining than facing the pain ever would have been.
That realization became the turning point.
Healing didn’t begin because the memories suddenly stopped hurting.
Healing began because she finally stopped pretending they weren’t still shaping her life.
I think that’s where so many of us become confused.
We assume healing means reaching a place where nothing hurts anymore, where triggers disappear, grief fades away, disappointment no longer stings, and the past somehow loses all of its weight. That isn’t healing.
That’s avoidance wearing nicer clothes.
Real healing doesn’t erase our story.
It changes our relationship with it.
The memories may still exist, but they no longer dictate our identity. Pain may still visit from time to time, but it no longer gets the final vote. Instead of controlling the direction of our lives, those experiences slowly become chapters we’ve learned from rather than prisons we’ve continued living inside.
I’ve had to learn that lesson myself.
There have been seasons when I believed I could simply outwork my pain. If I served enough people, wrote another book, built another project, stayed productive enough, or kept accomplishing one more goal, perhaps eventually I’d outrun the parts of myself that still needed attention.
It doesn’t work that way.
Achievement can distract us for a season. Busyness can numb us for a while. Success can even camouflage unresolved wounds long enough that we almost believe they’re gone. Eventually, though, whatever we’ve refused to face quietly asks to be seen. Sometimes it surfaces through anxiety. Sometimes through chronic stress, autoimmune flare-ups, or relationships that seem to repeat the same painful patterns over and over until we’re willing to ask a different question.
Not…
“Why does this keep happening to me?”
But rather…
“What is this trying to teach me about myself?”
That’s a much harder question.
It’s also the one that changes lives.
One of the most beautiful truths in Scripture is found in Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I love that verse because it reminds me that God doesn’t wait for us to become healed before drawing near. He doesn’t stand on the other side of our pain asking us to get ourselves together first. He meets us in the middle of it. He sits with us in the questions, the tears, the confusion, and the rebuilding.
That’s why vulnerability is so powerful.
The moment we stop pretending we’ve got everything under control is often the very moment healing quietly begins. Not because life suddenly becomes easier, but because honesty creates space for grace, for support, and for God to reach places we’ve spent years trying to protect.
If I could encourage you to release one thing before July 1st, it wouldn’t be fear.
It wouldn’t be failure.
It wouldn’t even be regret.
I’d encourage you to let go of the exhausting responsibility of convincing everyone — including yourself — that you’re fine when your soul has been asking for something different.
Healing isn’t about becoming someone new.
It’s about finally giving yourself permission to become who you’ve been underneath the survival all along.
That person is still there.
Waiting patiently.
Not for perfection.
Not for someone else’s permission.
Simply for the courage to stop pretending.
Because healing doesn’t begin when you feel better.
It begins when you finally tell yourself the truth.
→If this spoke to you, I’d love to hear from you.
What is one thing you’re ready to stop pretending about?
It doesn’t have to be a long story. Maybe it’s simply admitting you’re tired. Maybe it’s acknowledging you’re grieving, struggling, healing, or finally ready to ask for help.
Leave one word or one sentence in the comments.
You never know who might read it and realize they’re not alone.
And if this musing touched your heart, please share it. Someone in your circle may be carrying a burden they’ve hidden for years, quietly believing they have to carry it by themselves.
As always loving and praying for you and our world,
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler-Wiseman(Author)
