So the next time you reach for a get-well card, pause. Ask yourself: Does this message have room for anger, shame, dissociation, and dark humor? If not, write your own. Begin with the words they most fear hearing—and then promise not to look away.
May you not recover quickly. May you recover truthfully. And on the days when the split feels unbearable, know that I am sitting in the space between the scenes, not asking you to choose one." If you are the patient or the struggling individual, and you’ve realized that standard “get well” messages feel alienating, you can educate those around you—or simply grant yourself permission to reject the linear narrative. get well soon pure taboosplit scenes
Perhaps "well" does not mean cured. Perhaps it means able to hold two contradictory scenes at once without shame. So the next time you reach for a get-well card, pause
I’m not going to say ‘get well soon’ because I don’t know what ‘soon’ means in your world anymore. Instead, I see the scenes you’ve described: the one where you’re furious at your caretaker, the one where you feel nothing at all, the one where you laugh at a dark joke that would horrify most people. Begin with the words they most fear hearing—and
Write down the three things you’d never say in a get-well card. Then say them to yourself. That is the pure recovery.
When someone we care about falls ill—physically or mentally—our first instinct is often to reach for the universal salve: the "Get Well Soon" message. We imagine a simple, linear path from sickness to health, a clean arc of recovery. But what if healing doesn’t look like that? What if, instead, it looks like a fractured mirror?
Here is a guide to crafting messages that resonate within the split: Do not shy away from the forbidden topics. Say: "I know you might be feeling rage at your own body right now. That’s allowed. That’s real. I’m not going to tell you to ‘stay positive.’" 2. Validate the Split (Without Trying to Glue It) Do not offer solutions. Instead, mirror the disconnection: "I see that you have a scene where you’re hopeful, and another scene where you want to give up. Both exist. Neither cancels the other." 3. Replace "Soon" with "Present" Do not wish for a rapid return to a pre-illness self (which may never exist again). Wish for presence: "Get well, in whatever form wellness takes today—even if that means staying inside the hardest scene for five more minutes." Part 4: Case Study – A Letter Written for Taboosplit Healing Consider this example of a "get well soon" message rewritten for a friend in the midst of chronic illness and dissociative episodes: "Dear M.,