Letting Go of Fixing

Brokenness has always felt like home to me. I’ve never been afraid of it—quite the opposite, actually. When I’m around a hurt person I’m drawn to them. Perhaps it’s because I grew up. Being the middle child I took on the role of glue, holding everyone and everything together. My brothers, my parents—it was my job to fix things.

This mindset followed me into adulthood. I developed skills, honed talents, all to fix other people’s problems. Over time my relationships became defined by this: I was the fixer. The one who could fix whatever was broken. But when I look around I realize I was getting better at fixing but not necessarily growing myself.

Fixing is familiar and familiarity can be a powerful anesthetic. But I’ve come to see that there’s a certain arrogance in believing you can fix people. There’s this unspoken assumption that you know what’s best, that your solutions are the right ones. And when you live like that you forget about the most important person you should be working on—yourself.

I used to think fixing was the answer. That if I could just fix enough people I would somehow be whole. But fixing and healing aren’t the same. Fixing is quick, goal-driven and surface-level. Healing though—that’s a much deeper process. It’s uncomfortable, it’s messy and it’s slow. Healing doesn’t promise quick results but it does offer transformation.

There’s a certain humility that comes with healing. It forces you to own both the bright and shadowed parts of yourself, to recognize you too are broken in many places. It asks you to let go of control, to accept growth isn’t linear, that setbacks are part of the process.

As I step into this next chapter—medical school, new relationships, new challenges—I’m letting go of the fixer mentality. I’m no longer interested in solving problems for others as a way to avoid my own. Instead I’m committing to the slow, deliberate process of healing.

I want relationships where healing is a shared journey. Ones where we help each other grow, stumble and rise again. It’s a symphony not a sprint—a composition of both highs and lows. And it’s this journey not the destination I’m choosing to value.

Moving forward my focus is on process not perfection. I’m done trying to squeeze water from stone. Instead I want to find the gold in the sand, to embrace setbacks as steps towards growth. Life isn’t about fixing every crack—it’s about finding the beauty in the broken pieces and learning to live with them.