Tamaryn Nicholson on Healing: Why the Journey Is Never Linear

From a childhood shaped by both warmth and quiet pain to relationships that tested her sense of self, Managing Director of LUNA Unlimited, Tamaryn Nicholson shares an honest account of what it really means to heal.

We often imagine healing as a steady climb upward; a clean, predictable journey where each day feels lighter than the last. But real healing rarely looks like that. It is uneven, surprising, and at times deeply uncomfortable. It asks you to revisit what you thought you had already overcome and to sit with emotions you would rather outrun.

lifestyle

Healing Isn’t Linear: Diane Rodrigues on Learning to Stay, Not Just Survive

For Tamaryn Nicholson, healing has been exactly that: a process of unraveling years of hidden wounds, relearning her sense of self, and confronting patterns shaped long before she had the language to name them. Her story is not about perfection or quick recovery. It is about honesty, resilience, and the courage to keep going even when progress feels invisible.

Here, she shares a raw and deeply vulnerable reflection...

I grew up in a beautiful home. My parents are still together and they are warm, loving people. Our house was always full. Friends came and went, music played loudly, and every weekend meant a braai in the garden. From the outside, we looked joyful and safe.

But inside our family, there was pain that most people never saw.

My sister struggled deeply with her mental health. As common as braais were, trips to the Sandton emergency room were too. I learned early how fragile life could feel. I remember praying prayers of surrender as a child, telling God that if He took her, I would trust Him. Thank God He never did.

At the same time, I was constantly changing schools. Every two years meant starting over, being the new girl, learning new corridors, new faces, new ways to fit in. It taught me resilience and how to make friends quickly, but two things can be true. I was also repeatedly grieving friendships I had to leave behind. Change became my normal.

Growing up around illness and instability shaped me in ways I did not understand until much later. I learned to be emotionally independent and self sufficient because I had to be. But quiet, complicated wounds formed underneath that strength. Codependency. People pleasing. A blurred sense of self. Anxiety. Guilt. Chronic shame.

Those patterns followed me into adulthood and into relationships.

My first relationship started when I was seventeen and lasted four years. Looking back, I think I mistook relief for love. Relief that someone chose me. Relief that I was wanted. He was toxic and emotionally abusive, slowly moving toward physical intimidation. A compulsive liar. A master gaslighter.

The relationship after him looked healthy at first, and that confused me more than the chaos had. No one warns you that after toxicity, calm can feel unsettling. Without a villain to react to, my own unhealthy patterns were suddenly spotlighted. I felt guilty constantly. I overexplained. I stayed when I was bored. I stayed because I did not want to hurt him.

Then he cheated.

I remember thinking, with painful honesty, what a relief. Now I had permission to leave.

Years later, I fell into the relationship that would break me the most. This person was clever. Quietly controlling. Subtle enough that it took me years to understand what was happening. The kind of person who rewrites reality until you no longer trust your own mind. They never told me I could not see my family or friends, but my life became unbearable when I did. Even my dog was treated like competition.

From the beginning, I believed I was safe. I shared my wounds, my fears, my history. I did not realise those truths were being stored and later used against me.

Two years in, during a worldwide crisis, I was mentally, emotionally, and psychologically quarantined. When they were kind, it erased the cruelty in my mind. I could not hold both

realities at once. Eventually, I started reacting to the abuse, and that reaction fed my shame even more. I felt like I was becoming someone I did not recognise.

When it finally ended, I was hollow. I was a shell of who I had been. Around that time, I developed an autoimmune disease. My body was carrying what my mouth could not say.

I promised myself they would not win.

I went back to church, which became my anchor and transformed my life in ways I am still discovering. But even with faith, community, and therapy, I struggled with one simple truth.

Healing is not linear.

I thought progress meant waking up every day feeling lighter than the last. I thought strength meant never missing them, never doubting myself, never crying in the car on a random Tuesday afternoon. When bad days returned, I punished myself for them. I told myself I was regressing. That I was weak.

My friends gently corrected me again and again. Healing is not a straight line. It loops. It pauses. It doubles back. It surprises you.

I carried so much shame about always being the girl in toxic relationships. I was terrified of being judged. So I kept everything locked inside. I threw myself into work. Distracted myself with unhealthy coping mechanisms. Chased validation through ego boosts and temporary fixes. Curated a healed version of myself online.

But none of it lasted.

Because healing is not about what it looks like from the outside. It is about what is being rebuilt on the inside.

I learned that sitting in pain moves you further forward than pretending it is not there. That mistakes are part of growth. That shame slows the process more than softness ever could.

I thought I would recover from that last relationship quickly. What I did not understand was that I was not only healing from one person. I was unraveling a lifetime of patterns, grief, fear, and survival instincts.

I still love a bubble bath. But self care is not candles and playlists alone. That is a teardrop in the ocean of the real work.

A hundred likes on Instagram feel good for a moment. A flirty message can lift your mood for a night. But true healing happens in the quiet evenings you no longer run from. In the boredom you learn to enjoy because you are finally at peace with yourself.

Healing is also bravery. It is facing shame head on. It is offering yourself compassion when you think you deserve it the least. On the days you feel behind. On the days you believe you are not doing enough. On the days you think you should be further along by now.

The glow up is not pretending everything is fine.

The glow up is letting it be ugly. Letting it be slow. Letting it be honest. It is learning that you are human.

It is staying present in the discomfort instead of escaping it. It is rebuilding from the inside out.

And the truth I hold closest now is this.

The glow up is not the goal.

It is the byproduct.