I used to believe that healing meant getting back to who I was before.
I chased that woman for years. The one from before the wound. Before the betrayal, before the loss, before survival became my primary occupation. I thought if I could just get back to her — recover her, restore her, return to some earlier, uncomplicated version of myself — then the healing would be complete.
It took me a long time to understand that I was chasing someone who no longer existed. The Monica I used to be would never return. And that this was not a tragedy.
It was the beginning of something better.
The Myth of Getting Back to Normal
There is a quiet grief that lives underneath the healing work for many survivors — a grief that sounds like: I just want to feel normal again. I just want to go back to who I was before all of this happened.
I want to hold that grief with you, because it is real and it deserves to be honored. The loss of the self you were before trauma is a genuine loss. You lost something. And mourning that is not weakness — it is honest.
But I also want to offer a reframe. Because the goal of “getting back to normal” is not only impossible — I believe it is smaller than what God has in mind for you.
The self you were before the wound was beautiful. But she was also unfinished. She was you before the refining. Before the depth. Before the hard-won wisdom that cannot be earned any other way — only lived through.
❝ Healing is not restoration. It is transformation. And the woman you are becoming is not a lesser version of who you were. She is more. ❞
New Creation
2 Corinthians 5:17 says: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
I want to be a careful steward of this verse, because it has sometimes been used harmfully — to dismiss grief, to rush survivors past their pain, to demand a joy that hasn’t arrived yet. That is not what it means.
What it means is that the old definition of you — the one written by the wound, by the person who hurt you, by the shame — has been overwritten. The old verdict has been appealed. And the new verdict reads: beloved. chosen. new.
And Revelation 21:5 adds the most personal detail: “I am making everything new.” Present tense. Active tense. Right now, in the middle of your process, God is making things new.
“No longer will they call you Deserted… But you will be called Hephzibah… for the Lord will take delight in you.”
— Isaiah 62:4 (NIV)
Hephzibah means my delight is in her. That is the name God speaks over the woman emerging from the other side of survival. Not the name the wound gave her. Not the name she was called in her hardest season. The name God gives: my delight.
She Didn’t Go Back
Ruth could have gone back. When Naomi released her — go home, go back to your people, return to what was familiar — Ruth had every practical reason to accept the permission.
Instead she said: “Where you go I will go. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
She went forward. Into unknown territory. Into a life she couldn’t map or predict. She left behind the old normal and walked toward something she didn’t have a name for yet.
And what was waiting for her — provision, belonging, a redeemer, a legacy that stretched all the way to the lineage of Christ — was more than she could have imagined from where she stood on that road.
The new thing was already waiting. It just required moving toward it.
Meeting the Woman You Are Becoming
Romans 12:2 invites us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Not conformed to old patterns, old roles, old definitions. Transformed.
And transformation, by definition, produces something new.
The woman you are becoming is not a finished product. She is a woman in motion — carrying the wisdom of what she survived, the depth of what she endured, the compassion that only comes from having needed it yourself. She is more fully herself than she has ever been.
She is worth arriving at.
“The woman I am becoming is someone who…” — finish this sentence this week. Write it down. It is your north star for August.”
You are not going back. You were never meant to.
You are walking forward — into a newness that is already being prepared for you, in a season that is already in motion, with a name that God has already spoken over you.
Beloved. New. Delighted in.
Welcome to your becoming.
Listen to the companion episode
S1E4 — “Walking in Newness” is available now on the Monica in Daylight Podcast.
New episodes every Monday at 6 AM ET · Find Monica in Daylight on Spotify · Link in Instagram bio · August begins next week — theme: Still Waters
