How to process unresolved emotions and start healing
Music has always had a way of sneaking past the logical barriers I’ve built around certain emotions. Helping me to feel things I didn’t even realize were still simmering under the surface. It’s one of those art forms that can bring clarity without needing direct articulation. I can go months, years even, without thinking about something painful or unresolved. And then, out of nowhere, a song hits just the right note, and suddenly I’m transported back to a moment I hadn’t processed.
I’ve never considered myself a Swiftie. Not because I have anything against Taylor Swift or her music, but because, for a long time, I didn’t find myself relating to the topics she wrote about. I wasn’t the person who went through high school breakups or experienced the quintessential young love stories she so often captures. And for me, music has to give me an emotion I can connect to. It has to tap into something deeper, something real that I can feel in my bones.
So, when I sat down to watch The Long Pond Studio Sessions on Disney+, I didn’t expect anything more than some nice background music to help me unwind. But what I experienced was something completely different. As Taylor shared the backstories behind her songs, it was as if the door opened to a side of her music that I had never fully accessed before.
Then I heard Epiphany.
The song didn’t just resonate with me; it shook me to my core. There’s a line that says, “Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, holds your hand through plastic now.” In that instant, I was no longer sitting on my couch. I was back in the ICU, reliving one of the hardest shifts of my life. It was a moment I had buried for ten years.
On this particular shift, I was assigned two patients. One of them was nearing the end, and the family had made the decision to discontinue care. I stayed with the patient the entire time. Through their last breaths, witnessing their passing as calmly and compassionately as I could. Once the process was over, I took care of the family, ensured that the body was prepared for the morgue, and then… I walked straight back into my other patient’s room, picked up right where I left off, and carried on as if nothing had happened.
That’s the part they don’t tell you when you become a nurse: sometimes you don’t get to stop. You don’t get to grieve. You have to compartmentalize everything in order to keep going because there are still people depending on you. So I pushed it down. I put the grief away in a box and shoved it somewhere deep inside. Figuring I would deal with it later. But “later” never came.
For a decade, I’ve carried the weight of that experience without realizing just how heavy it had become. I had no idea that it was still sitting there, waiting for the right moment to resurface. And then Epiphany came along, with its haunting melody and that gut-wrenching line, and suddenly, I couldn’t escape it anymore. That memory was back, and I was finally facing it for the first time.
The thing is, you don’t have to work in an ICU, be a firefighter, an EMT, or part of the police force to have experiences like this — things you can’t unsee or can’t talk about. So many of us, in various professions or life situations, have moments that we just tuck away because there’s no space to process them when they happen. Maybe it’s the overwhelm of caregiving for a loved one. A personal trauma that goes unaddressed because life keeps moving, or even something as simple as watching the world spin into chaos while feeling powerless to change it.
Pushing through is sometimes the only choice. In fact, in many moments, it feels like the right choice. When you’re on the clock, when there are others depending on you, you just keep going. You have to. But what I’ve learned, and what this song reminded me of, is that while pushing through is sometimes necessary, it’s not sustainable if we never stop to process the emotions that get buried along the way.
If we don’t make time to process them, they don’t go away. They don’t disappear just because we’re moving forward. They sit beneath the surface, waiting for a moment to resurface. And when they do, it’s often at the most unexpected times. Like when you’re sitting on your couch watching a music documentary.
After listening to Epiphany and feeling all those old emotions flood back, I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t enough to just feel the sadness wash over me. I needed to honor it, to acknowledge the grief I had been carrying for that patient all these years. So I lit a candle in remembrance of them, creating a small space to hold that moment with the respect it deserved.
Then I started writing a letter to that patient. It wasn’t something I planned; it was just what felt right in the moment. The words poured out of me — words I didn’t even realize I needed to say. As I wrote, I finally let myself feel everything I had avoided that day learning how to process unresolved emotions. I ugly cried for an hour straight, the kind of crying where you don’t even try to hold back. The release was messy, but it was necessary. I finally grieved that patient, ten years after their death.
After that cathartic release, I decided how I wanted to honor their memory going forward. In those final moments, I had brought them as much compassion as I could, despite the clinical setting and the circumstances. It was pure, unfiltered compassion for another human being at their most vulnerable. And I realized that this was the way I wanted to honor them. By bringing that same level of compassion to everyone I meet and speak with.
It’s easy to forget how much compassion matters, especially in a world where we’re all so caught up in our own struggles. But after that experience, I made a commitment to myself: I would approach every interaction, every conversation, with the same compassion I showed that patient. Whether it’s in my work, in my personal life, or with strangers, I will bring that same level of care and presence.
Grief has a way of lingering when it goes unaddressed. But music — music can be a bridge. It can help us process the emotions we’ve locked away and give us the opportunity to heal in ways we didn’t expect. It’s not just about the song itself, but the door it opens to feelings we’ve been avoiding. And sometimes, that’s all we need to finally start healing.
For me, it took one line in a song to uncover ten years of unprocessed grief. And in doing so, it reminded me that we all need to take time to process the experiences we can’t talk about, to feel the emotions we’ve buried, and to honor the moments that shaped us — even if it takes a decade to get there.
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