Why Some Wounds Stay Open

Paulette Boone

7/7/20267 min read

There is a kind of wound that does not announce itself. It does not bleed where anyone can see it. It does not show up in a doctor's office or reveal itself in a conversation over coffee. It lives underneath the surface of a woman who has learned to function through her pain, to smile on cue, to show up for everyone around her while quietly disappearing from herself. And the reason so many of these wounds stay open for years, sometimes decades, is not because the woman carrying them is broken beyond repair. It is because she has never been given permission to stop pretending they are not there.

I know this kind of wound personally. I know what it is to carry something heavy for so long that it begins to feel like a part of who you are. I know what it is to convince yourself that time is doing the healing when really you have just gotten better at hiding. I spent years believing that if I kept moving, kept showing up, and kept holding everything together, the pain would eventually fade on its own. But pain does not work that way. Pain that is buried does not dissolve. It settles deeper. It finds new ways to speak. And eventually, no matter how skilled you have become at silencing it, it begs to be acknowledged.

The Wound That Works in Silence

That is the quiet tragedy of an unclosed wound. It does not just sit there harmlessly while you live your life. It works. It whispers. It rewrites the way you see yourself, the way you interpret love, and the way you decide what you deserve. It becomes the voice in your head that tells you that you are too much, or not enough, or somehow responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong. And as long as that wound stays buried, that voice stays in charge.

In my book, Whispers from the Wreckage, I wrote about the season when the silence I had used to survive finally started hurting more than the wounds themselves. I had become the peacemaker. The one who smoothed everything over. The one who tucked her feelings away and smiled through discomfort. I told myself I was mature. I told myself I was taking the high road. But the truth was, I was disappearing. I was fading into the background of my own life while calling it strength. And the wounds I thought I was managing were not closing. They were festering underneath a surface that looked, from the outside, like everything was just fine.

You do not even realize how many of your decisions are being made not from your healed self but from that place of unaddressed pain. The wound is not passive. It is active. And it will keep speaking until it is finally, honestly, given the space it has been asking for all along.

Why So Many Women Stay Stuck in the Cycle

So many women skip the most essential part of healing. They move straight to forgiveness without ever passing through honest acknowledgment. They try to release what they have never named. They try to heal from wounds they have been too afraid to look at directly. And then they wonder why, despite all the praying and all the trying, something still feels stuck.

Women are remarkably creative at renaming their pain. We call it being strong when we are actually shrinking. We call it grace when we are actually suppressing something that deserves to be expressed. We call it moving on when we are actually moving around, carefully navigating life in a way that avoids the thing we have never fully dealt with. And the wound stays open because the truth of what it is has never been welcomed into the light.

There is a passage in Whispers from the Wreckage where I had to face the reality that I had contributed to some of my own suffering. Not because I was cruel to myself, but because I was too afraid to be kind to myself. I had mistaken silence for humility. I had mistaken avoidance for peace. And I had to grieve that before I could release it. There is a particular kind of grief that arises when you realize you have been a participant in your own disappearance. It is not a grief rooted in self blame. It is the grief of finally seeing clearly, and choosing with compassion, to do something different.

Signs Your Wound Has Never Fully Closed

Before healing can begin, a woman has to be honest about where she actually is. Here are some signs that a wound is still open, even if it has been buried for a long time.

  • You find yourself reacting to present situations with a level of emotion that feels bigger than what is actually happening, because old pain is being triggered underneath.

  • You replay certain conversations or moments on a loop, even years later, because they were never fully processed.

  • You struggle to receive love, care, or compliments without immediately deflecting or questioning whether you deserve them.

  • You have forgiven with your words but your body still tightens when that person's name comes up.

  • You have built your life around avoiding anything that might make you feel the way that original wound made you feel.

  • You feel a persistent low level sadness or emptiness that you cannot quite explain, even in seasons when life looks good from the outside.

  • You are exhausted in a way that sleep does not fix, because you have been managing pain for so long that your body is carrying what your heart has never been allowed to release.

If you recognized yourself in any of those, I want you to know this is not a list of failures. It is a list of invitations. Every one of those signs is your soul asking you to finally come home to yourself.

What It Actually Takes to Close the Wound

Healing is not a single moment of breakthrough. It is a series of small, daily choices to keep telling the truth, to keep showing up for yourself, and to keep bringing the pieces to God even when they feel too sharp to hold. Here is what that process actually requires.

It requires truth. Not the organized, polished kind you share when you are ready to be admired for your growth. The raw kind. The kind that rises at two in the morning when you are out of excuses and there is nothing left to hide behind. The kind that finally says out loud, this happened to me and it hurt me and I have never fully allowed myself to say so. That truth is the beginning. Not the middle, not the end, but the necessary and unavoidable beginning. Real healing does not begin when you finally forgive. It begins when you finally tell yourself the truth about what actually happened and what it cost you.

It requires naming what you have been calling something else. You cannot heal a wound you refuse to name. You can bandage it. You can dress it nicely and call it something more comfortable. But it will keep bleeding underneath until it is finally, honestly, called what it is.

It requires compassion for yourself. Not the performance of self care, not a bubble bath or a journal prompt, but real, quiet, consistent kindness toward the version of you who did not know what she did not know. The version of you who stayed too long, who gave too much, who silenced herself one too many times to keep a peace that was never really peace at all. She was not weak. She was doing the only thing she knew how to do with what she had been given. And she deserves the same grace you have so freely extended to everyone around you.

It requires God. Not the God you perform for. Not the God you approach only when you have cleaned yourself up enough to feel worthy. The God who met you on an ordinary afternoon when you had nothing left. The God who does not wait for you to be presentable before He steps into your pain. Psalm 34:18 tells us He is close to the brokenhearted. Not distant. Not disappointed. Close. That closeness is not conditional on your having it together. It is anchored in His love, and His love does not require your performance. It only requires your honesty.

It requires time as an active partner, not a passive cure. Some days you will feel like you are making real progress. Other days you will feel like you have gone backward. Both are part of the process. Neither disqualifies you. The path is not straight and it was never meant to be. It is a messy, winding, deeply personal journey that leads not back to who you were before the wound but forward into someone you have never fully been before.

You Have Not Missed Your Window

If you are sitting with a wound that has stayed open longer than you can explain, I want you to hear this clearly. You are not weak for still hurting. You are not behind. You have not missed your season for healing. You are a woman who was never told that she had permission to tell the truth about what broke her. And that truth, as costly and as tender as it feels to finally speak it, is the very thing that sets the healing in motion.

You were not made to carry this forever. You were made to be whole. Not perfect, not painless, not without scars, but whole. And wholeness does not begin on the other side of the wound. It begins the moment you stop pretending the wound is not there and invite the One who heals to meet you right in the middle of it.

If this is where you are right now, I wrote Whispers from the Wreckage for you. Not for the woman who has it all figured out, but for the one who is still standing in it, wondering if anything can still be rebuilt. The answer, with every part of me, is yes.

You can find the link to grab your copy in the comments below.

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