Holes in Your Soul

Kashmire Kay

If you have a hole in your soul, it does not mean you are a broken person.

It means there is a place inside you that has been waiting to be tended to.

Sometimes that place has been there so long you don't even remember when it began.

Maybe you learned as a child that being loved meant being good.

Maybe you learned to be quiet when you were hurting because somebody else's feelings always seemed to matter more than yours.

Maybe nobody taught you how to receive tenderness, so you became extraordinarily good at giving it.

Maybe you learned to perform, achieve, accommodate, forgive, nurture, rescue, smile.

And somewhere along the way, a little piece of you went without.

That is what I mean by a hole in the soul.

Not that you aren't whole.

But that something you needed was missing.

And this is one of the reasons certain people can enter our lives and feel strangely familiar.

An unhealed person can recognize an unhealed place in you not because there is something wrong with you, but because they know how to position themselves inside a need.

They may give you the attention you have been starving for.

The affirmation you have been waiting to hear.

The feeling of finally being chosen.

For a little while, it can feel like the missing piece has arrived.

Until you discover that what you thought was love was actually access.

And now you're left trying to understand why something that once felt like home has become the place where you hurt the most.

You cannot fill every hole with whatever is nearby.

Think about a hole in the wall of your home.

You wouldn't stand in your kitchen, scramble three eggs with cheese and seasoning, carry that beautiful little plate over to the wall and say, "Here. This should do it."

You would look at the hole and ask:

What does this actually need?

Maybe it needs spackling.

Maybe it needs mesh.

Maybe it needs someone who knows how to repair walls.

And maybe, before any of that, you have to stop hanging a picture over it and pretending you don't see it.

Healing can be like that.

We often reach for whatever is closest.

A relationship.

Shopping.

Food.

Work.

Sex.

Achievement.

Church.

Social media.

Another person's approval.

Sometimes even our spirituality can become a hiding place when what we really need is restoration.

None of these things are bad.

But they cannot be asked to do a job they were never designed to do.

You cannot ask a relationship to give you an identity.

You cannot ask success to convince you that you are worthy.

This is where healing becomes personal.

Not Instagram healing.

Not "just pray about it."

Not "forgive and move on."

Not pretending you are unbothered because you have learned how to quote scripture while still bleeding underneath it.

Where do I abandon myself to keep someone else?

What do I believe about myself because of what happened to me?

What would it look like to give myself some of what I have spent my life waiting for someone else to give me?

That might mean therapy.

It might mean a counselor who understands trauma.

It might mean a pastor who seeks understanding.

It might mean a friend who doesn't need you to perform strength.

It might mean sitting quietly with God and telling the truth instead of trying to sound faithful.

It might mean grieving.

Not because you are going backward.

Because sometimes grief is how the body finally releases what it has been carrying.

Your healing deserves the right tools.

You wouldn't repair a treasured piece of furniture with whatever happened to be lying around in the garage.

You would find the right materials.

You would handle it carefully.

You wouldn't rush the process simply because you were tired of looking at the damage.

You would restore it because it was worth restoring.

So are you.

Tell the truth to somebody safe.

Open your Bible and sit with one verse instead of trying to read five chapters.

Let yourself cry without rushing to explain the tears.

It doesn't have to look profound.

Healing rarely announces itself with fireworks.

Sometimes it looks like a woman finally realizing she doesn't have to keep abandoning herself to be loved.

And one more thing.

Please don't despise the places in you that still hurt.

They are not proof that you failed at healing.

They may simply be places that haven't received what they need yet.

A hole in the wall doesn't make the house worthless.

It means the wall needs attention.

And a tender place in your soul doesn't make you less worthy, less spiritual, less capable, or less whole.

It means something in you is asking to be cared for.

So don't cover it up.

Don't shame it.

Get curious about it.

Get wise about it.

Get the right help.

Bring God into it.

And then, little by little, begin the work.

Because the goal isn't to become the person you were before you were hurt.

The goal is to become fully acquainted with the person you were always created to be.

There are places in you that have been waiting a very long time to be loved properly.

Start there.

Gently.

Tenderly.

One beautiful repair at a time.