▷ It hurts and it’s worth it by Kalee Guauta, 2024 | Acrylic Painting Fresh Stock

No one told me that healing would hurt so much, no one mentioned that, while I was trying to bring color to my soul, my body would be twisted, or that the hands that paint also cry, or that the arms that give life also tire.

But I understood it by force, and I am grateful for that. Today I know that there is no real creation without sacrifice, I know that there is no beauty without breaking. I have learned that anguish is not overcome by running away, but rather by going through it, and that sometimes it is so intense, so thick, that the only way out is to walk through it.

Today I know that fear does not disappear with courage, but with more fear: fear of staying the same, fear of never touching what I came to touch, and that damn deeper fear was what pushed my hands to continue.

Today I know that draining through art what I couldn’t say was my way of not dying inside, and even today it still is, although I no longer sleep the same, although my back remembers it every day, because the reality is that I have left pieces of myself in every stroke and it hurts, but it is also worth it.

Because everything we love will cost us, because healing, true healing, is not decorative, because healing is surrendering to the process, letting go of the ego, healing is silencing pride, and letting something deeper take its place. Healing is living like monks who break themselves inside and out to touch clarity, and I also want to break myself every day if in doing so I find something better to giv