How long does it take to heal?

And other questions I ask myself.

A True Life Built is a living photo essay on starting over and building a truer life. It’s for anyone, at any age, who is finding the courage to begin again. Subscribe for free weekly posts.

My friends’ adorable baby, 10 months old. September 2022.

I’m camping with old friends, as we do every summer, and I’m waking up slowly by a forest stream. Our campsite is still, and I watch the first light sift through the trees. The clearing smells of woodsmoke and pine and coffee brewing on the fire.

I’m usually the first one awake, but now there’s a baby who likes the sunrise too. Her mom hands her to me and we snuggle by the stream, bundled against the morning chill: me in my first wool sweater of the year, her in a blue fleece onesie with orange sledding ducks. We both agree she has the superior outfit.

There’s something about waking in the woods that suspends time. Maybe it’s being so fully offline or the hush of the narrow valley, with its curled ferns and stones worn smooth by patient water. Or maybe it’s the annual ritual of it, one summer after the next, that stacks the memories side-by-side, like slides on a projector.

Last summer, I camped with these same friends in a different forest. This round-cheeked human in my lap was not yet born. My divorce was still live, and I walked around raw, all my nerve endings exposed. Back then, when I woke by a stream, I worried about lawyers.

I remember it vividly—and barely recognize that brittle version of myself. I’m still the same person I was, yet somewhere between last summer and this one, I’ve grown into someone very different. That’s the curious thing about healing: it happens in spurts and starts, almost when you’re not looking.

Exploring the stream with mom. September 2022.

In the shellshocked early days of divorce, I’d regularly Google, “How long does it take to heal?” I’d read every article, even the ones I knew were clickbait, searching for a certainty that didn’t exist. I’d invariably find an arbitrary answer—one month for every year of marriage!—and then howl at how long that was.

In the end, the answer that irked me most turned out to ring the truest: It takes the time it takes. Healing isn’t linear, and there’s no straight line from A to B, where A is hurt and B is healed. There is no place to arrive where you leave hurt behind; the pain of my parting is with me still, and may be forever.

Still, one day you wake up and find that things that used to hurt so much now ache a little less. This summer, the pain of my divorce is no longer all-consuming. This time, when I wake by a stream, I beam at a baby, hand her leaf after leaf to turn over in her pudgy little fingers, and think about the pancakes we’ll make for breakfast.

Breakfast in the woods. September 2022.

Healing, I find, is more likely a spiral staircase, where you keep looping back to a similar place, but each time you have a slightly better view. Last summer, I could barely see past the end of my divorce. This year, I see choices stretched out in every direction.

With the close of one chapter comes the chance to start again. What surprised me is just how profound that reset turned out to be. Everything—from what I make for dinner to where I live and work to how I spend my time and money—used to be fixed, set from long routine and negotiation. Now it’s not. The possibility for reinvention is so vast, so daunting, that it’s easy to feel like I’m not making progress at all.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that my new life is exactly the same age as the baby on my lap. She was born the day after my divorce cleared, on the first day of my new chapter.

“How about that,” I say to her, “we’ve both been at this new life thing for 10 months.”

Mornings with dad, who is teaching me the names of the trees. September 2022.

I consider this while she considers the latest leaf. Perhaps my need for progress is part of the problem, the pressure I put on myself to figure this new life out. I don’t get frustrated at her because she’s not yet able to read a book or ride a bike. I enjoy exactly what she is: a fuzzy bundle of chubby baby perfection. And when she reaches her next phase, I’ll enjoy that too.

What if we could extend the same grace to ourselves as we grew? What if I could trust that next summer would feel as wildly new and fresh as this one does?

“Next summer,” I tell her,” you’ll be big enough to skip stones with me and splash around in your little purple crocs. We will learn the names of trees and chase the frogs and count the mushrooms on old logs. We have so much to explore.”

She ponders this seriously, then stuffs my leaf into her mouth and settles back into my arms, content. The two of us humans, both starting fresh, snuggle up to watch the light drift down the stream.

Mornings with dad. September 2022.

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One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!

Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn. She’s spent her career finding the right words for others and now she’s finding her own.