this is not a duet

We need stop encouraging the idea that healing is always beautiful. Healing doesn’t have to look pretty or magical. Real healing is exhausting, hard, draining work. Let yourself go through that. Don’t try to paint it as anything other than what it is. Be there for yourself with no judgement.

My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

F**k Yeah Science of the Day: Say goodbye to the “hot pizza burn” — researchers at the University of New Mexico (a city known for chemistry) have created a dissolving oral strip that gives immediate relief and healing to a scalded mouth. 

Coffee, tea, pizza, or Hot Pocket, let no temperature stand in your way ever again. These need to come out ASAP.

[geekologie]