Every process of healing begins with the inner recognition that there’s something in need of healing. 
Without it, no healing can ever occur. No matter how much help and assistance others offer, no matter how much others push. It's the inner choice that allows for healing to happen.
This recognition, in and of itself, may not come easily. 
It is a surrendering. It’s accepting that you don’t have much control over anything, and that certain things in your life, and about yourself, are not working. 
But when the recognition arrives, it’s the first step.

Healing Takes Time

Do not expect your lifelong traumas and burdens to magically disappear when you have a single session of a consultation, practice, or therapy. Or one realization. One eureka moment.
It *is* possible. Figuring out the answer, and suddenly your great big daemon fades away like ash in the wind.
That is the ideal scenario, and, of course, what every healer would ideally want to hear. “Once I did my session with you, my problem went away! I can’t believe it. I’m healed! It’s gone.” 
That’s what every healer wants. That's what every healer works for. Every caretaker, every assistant, every provider. To heal. To erase the burden.
But most burdens — especially those that have been with you for a long time, especially the ones that run deep — require, first and foremost, your unwavering decision to tackle them, sustained determination, grit, going at it. Trying. Pushing. And simultaneously, a lot of time, patience, and compassion.
I once heard somewhere, that food cooked in the oven needs to rest for as must time as it spent cooking.
You do not spend years, decades, lifetimes, of wading through sorrow and painful patterns, of hurt and suffering, for them to be over with just one single ah-ah moment. You do not make a stream of poor choices, and then solve it all with a single choice in the opposite direction.
It may be the case. But, more often than not, it will take a lot of clicks, a lot of choices, a lot of tries. It will probably take a lot of a lot, of various things. 
It takes whatever it takes. That’s the one true answer.

You Will Be Guided

You won’t necessarily know what to do next, what will work  —  or even what can be done. But you can expect to be guided every step of the way, all the way. To know what to do, follow your heart and where you’re drawn to.
It doesn't mean every step will be a “correct” one, and wield results. Perhaps you were meant to learn something, or to know an option was not exactly what you wanted or needed.
What you want, is to lessen your burdens, address them, find a degree of comfort, clarification, in ways that seem appropriate to you. With a facilitator or otherwise. You want to focus on how you feel after each choice, after each consultation, after each session. If you feel drawn to it, then it will have something to offer you. 
Don’t be disappointed because you try one thing — one idea, one healer, one healing method, one path — and it doesn't eradicate your shadows all at once. You don't know how deep your pain goes, and how long it will take to heal it. 
You want to keep a healthy degree of hope, while assessing how each step makes you feel. And then, keep at it.
You can expect to find answers you didn't think of, and questions you didn't know you had. You can expect to find healing through ways you don’t know about yet. If you did, you wouldn't need healing.

Healing is a Path

Quick or long, easy or difficult, unassisted or with help, lonely or with others. But a path. It is very rarely a single moment. It is a sequence of them.
Sometimes, at the end of such path, there will really be the one answer, that which truly illuminates everything and liberates you in a grand apotheosis. 
Other times, you will be left battle scarred, but the memories and wounds, while painful and permanent, are not sore anymore. Other times, you will simply be freed. With no special happiness or bliss. You’ll simply be “normal”, as you should be, not burdened anymore.
And other times, things simply are not there anymore, when you check on them. They’re gone. Without you noticing. That's ultimately what healing is: when your darkness is either absent, or powerless. By whatever means it takes you to get there.

Originally published at Heartki.com.