The Hurts We Carry Quietly

"The hurts we bury don’t disappear. They wait for us—longing not to be erased, but to be met with the care they always needed." - Mary Coughlin

It’s funny how hurts hang around.

Especially the ones from childhood—the disappointments, betrayals, and wounds that felt too big for our little hearts to understand. We tell ourselves we’ve moved on, that we’ve grown up, that those memories belong to another time and another version of us.

And yet… they linger.

Not always loudly. More like shadows at the edges of our lives, shaping the way we navigate the world without our even noticing.

This truth bubbled up for me the other day while I was sitting with my sister. We were reminiscing about our childhood—those half-funny, half-heartbreaking stories we somehow normalized because they were simply “our life.”

My oldest daughter was with us, listening quietly. At one point she said, “I can’t believe you went through that.”

It stopped me.

Because that’s when I realized just how much we did normalize those hurts—how they became part of the water we swam in, part of the lens through which we learned to see the world.

And though I’ve long believed I put those hurts behind me, I can see now how they still echo—how they’ve shaped the ways I trust, love, risk, and protect myself.

What if healing isn’t about erasing those hurts at all?

What if it’s about turning toward them, finally, with compassion instead of avoidance?

What if we could meet those younger versions of ourselves—the ones who felt so small, so unseen, so unworthy—not with judgment or dismissal, but with the care they always needed?

I don’t think healing is a one-time event. I think it’s a practice. A quiet, persistent choosing to see the places that still ache—and to offer them warmth, not shame.

And maybe, as we do that, the hurts loosen their grip.

Maybe they stop being ghosts in the background and become part of the story we’re learning to tell with tenderness and truth.

Reflection Prompt:
Where do my past hurts still echo in how I move through the world—and what would it feel like to meet those echoes with compassion instead of avoidance?

What might shift in the world if we each began to tend to the quiet hurts we’ve carried for so long?

With love and curiosity,
Mary