There is Love Even While Healing

Healing does not make you unworthy of love.

In this special free episode of the RISE podcast, Keya McClain-Goodwin explores a powerful truth many people struggle to believe: you do not have to be completely healed, perfect, or finished with your personal growth to deserve love.

Through reflection, personal insight, and grounded wisdom, Keya discusses how healing and love can exist at the same time, and why waiting until you are “fully healed” can keep you from experiencing connection, support, and genuine care.

This episode invites listeners to release the pressure of perfection and embrace love as a space where growth, honesty, and healing can coexist.

If this conversation resonated with you, you’re invited to continue the journey inside the RISE subscription series, where we explore healing, self-trust, relationships, and personal evolution with depth and honesty.

Subscribe to access the full RISE podcast experience.

Transcript

Keya McClain (00:01)
Welcome to Rise, reclaiming identity, strength, and evolution. A subscriber only storytelling podcast with me, Kia McClain, the poet, the hardcore healing pen coach. This is where healing lives out loud through real stories, reflective journaling, spiritual and emotional clarity, and courageous transparency. Each month, I share one chapter of my lived healing journey.

not for inspiration alone, but for honest transformation. If you're ready to reclaim your voice, deepen your healing, and rise into your most aligned self, you're exactly where you need to be. Today's topic, as we rise together, is letting love meet you where you are.

And I wanna, before I go into this conversation, I wanna preface something that is so important, I think, for people to hear out loud.

You don't have to be healed to be loved. I repeat, you don't have to be healed to be loved. And I say this with love because there are so many different opinions and thoughts and perspectives on this. But as someone that was not healed when I met my husband, it did not prevent him from loving me. It did not prevent me from

feeling how much he loved me, which pushed me further into healing. So I just want to say that again. You do not have to be healed to be loved.

Now receive that and feel that and honor that because you are worthy and you deserve it and that's it. So

I wanna also thank you for coming back. I wanna thank you for starting with me if this is the first time that you have come to the Healing Poetic Podcast for the Rye Series. Thank you.

Somewhere along the way, many of us internalize the belief that love is ⁓ a reward. That once we get it together, once we stop flinching, once we stop crying, once we stop needing reassurance, then we become worthy of being held. But that belief is not truth. That belief is survival.

And survival teaches us to perform strength instead of speak truth.

If you're listening to this and you feel like you have to show up polished, regulated, and emotionally together to deserve love, this episode, this one right here, it's for you.

There was a time when I thought the safest way to be loved was to be low maintenance. To not need too much, to not ask too many questions, to not admit when something hurts.

I learned how to show up strong even when my nervous system was exhausted. I learned how to smile even when my body was bracing. I learned how to be impressive instead of honest and people admired me for it. But admiration is not the same as intimacy.

When you show up perfect, people fall in love with the performance, not the person. And that's a lonely kind of connection. I began to notice that even when I was surrounded by people, I felt unseen.

And consequently, it wasn't because they didn't care, but because I hadn't let them see the real places in me. The tender places, the unsure places, the places that didn't have answers yet. I was showing up as who I thought love required, not who I actually was.

And the truth is I wasn't protecting myself. was abandoning myself. And one of the main reasons why people felt like they knew me so well and could tell me more about myself than I could tell them was because my performance was that damn good. yeah. It was Oscar nominated. It was definitely.

an Academy Award winning performance. People believed me to be whoever I presented myself to with them.

So I had to ask myself a hard question.

Kia, are you trying to be loved? Or am I allowing myself to be known?

One of the most healing lessons I learned is this. Love doesn't have to rush to be real. When you've experienced loss, betrayal, or emotional inconsistency, your body learns to brace. It either rushes intimacy to feel secure or avoids it completely to feel safe.

Neither is wrong, but neither is regulated either.

Pacing intimacy means letting connection unfold at the speed your nervous system can actually tolerate. It means pausing when your body tightens, slowing conversations instead of oversharing, taking breaks without disappearing. It means understanding that closeness doesn't require collapse.

Another shift came when I stopped pretending I had more emotional capacity than I did. I started saying things like, I don't have the bandwidth for that today. I care, but I need to process this slowly.

I'm not avoiding you, I'm regulating. This was uncomfortable at first because it felt like I was risking being misunderstood. But here's the truth. People who are meant to love you will adjust. People who need you to overextend will resist.

Clarity filters connection. Just know that. This might be the most important part. Nervous system honesty is when your words match your body. It's when you stop saying, I'm fine, while your shoulders are tense and tight. It's when you stop agreeing while your chest feels heavy. It's when you stop performing calm.

while your body is axing for rest.

Love that ignores the body is unsafe love. But love that listens, even when it's inconvenient, becomes healing.

Now here's what changed when I let love meet me where I was.

I stopped chasing connection that required me to abandon myself. I stopped proving my worth through endurance. I stopped shrinking my needs to make others comfortable. And instead, I allowed myself to be met.

Love that meets you is safer than love you chase. Because love you chase keeps you anxious. Love you chase keeps you guessing. Love you chase keeps you performing.

The love that meets you, it grounds you.

softens you.

allows you to exhale. It doesn't require you to be healed. It allows you to heal while held.

So if you're listening and you feel like you're not ready for love, let me offer you this truth.

Readiness is not perfection. Readiness is honesty. You are allowed to show up unfinished. You are allowed to move slowly. You are allowed to say, this is where I am. The right connections won't demand more than your nervous system can give. They will meet you right here. And that is where...

real healing begins.

Ask yourself this week.

Where am I performing strength instead of naming truth? And what would it feel like to let love meet me there?

You've been listening to this podcast for, I don't know how long at this point. I know we're in the fourth month, the third week. I don't know if you just started listening. I don't know if you went back to month one or month two. I don't know if this is your very first podcast you're listening to. I don't know if you've been listening and repairing and healing and loving yourself. I don't know.

where you are right now.

What I can tell you.

is perfection will not get you there. Claiming perfection won't get you there.

Vacating the premises to avoid the love that you absolutely deserve, especially from yourself, won't get you there.

Let love meet you where you are.

You don't have to be healed to be loved.

The reward is understanding that we have had some belief systems that have held us back from the happiness and the joy that we absolutely deserve.

Lean into the awareness of knowing who you are, what brings you joy and what doesn't. And alleviate and avoid.

That fear.

that will cause you to walk away from love, that will cause you to fear love, that will cause you to self-sabotage love.

You are worthy. You are deserving.

And I hope that Rise is helping you to rise a little higher every single day.

you deserve to be exactly where you are.

So as we close this episode, take a deep breath and ask yourself.

Am I missing out on love?

because of fear.

because of past pain, because of rejection.

because of perfection.

Use your journal. Sit with the feelings. Honor the memory this episode stirred. And if you're walking this healing journey alongside me through the Rise series, thank you for choosing yourself. Continue to choose yourself over and over.

and to support me, make sure you shoot me a voice memo. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Let me know if it resonated. Let me know if it helped.

And if you want to support the products and services that I have, go out to my website, kiascoaching.com. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel, Kia McLean, the poet. I am excited to connect with you.

and I look forward to our next time together. Until then, peace.