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Personal Reflection

There’s a cruelty in how casually people say, “time heals all wounds.” As if time were some tender surgeon that stitches up our grief and leaves us clean.

But that’s not how healing works.
Real healing is rugged. It’s uneven. And it leaves marks.

What Kennedy offers is not comfort, but truth. The mind does not erase pain; it adapts. It places scar tissue over the open places so we can keep walking. It learns how to carry memory without crumbling. It learns to breathe around the loss, not despite it.

This isn’t a story of forgetting. It’s a story of integration.

Some pain never leaves. It just gets quieter. It stops screaming, but it hums beneath the skin — a reminder of what mattered, of who we’ve loved, of what we’ve lost.

And that, too, is sacred.

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Reflective Prompt

What scar are you carrying that others can’t see?
In what ways have you adapted around your pain, and how has it shaped the person you’re becoming?