What the River Knows

My therapist once told me: "David, you're angry at yourself for not being a lake when you're a river."

I stared at her. "What does that even mean?"

She said: "Lakes are still. People think healing means stillness. Peace. But you are moving. You churn. You carry a lot of things downstream. That's not failing. That's flowing."

I think about that all the time now.

We are taught to expect healing to be linear: you hurt, you process, you move on. But real healing is messy. You'll have a good week and then Wednesday hits you out of nowhere. A song. A smell. A date on the calendar. And you're right back in it.

That is not regression. That is the current turning over something you weren't ready to let go of yet.

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know what you're carrying today. But I know the river is still moving. You are still moving. And somewhere ahead, maybe not visible yet, the water opens wide into something beautiful.

Keep going.