How Can Changing Your Environment Lead to Healing and Personal Growth?

As I'm going into my second month in college, I'm starting to realize that I'm feeling healthier and happier overall. For a while, I was wondering why exactly this was. I had just left the only life I've ever known behind; shouldn't I be missing my family and friends and be in a sadness of sorts?

I did spend quite a bit of time reflecting and being sad about everything that I had abandoned. But during this reflection, I recalled every time that I had been hurt in my former environment. I spent quite a bit of time trying to heal from things and people that had wronged me, but I found it difficult to do so. The other day, I saw this quote on Pinterest: "You cannot heal in the same environment where you got sick." Suddenly, everything I was fighting against made a lot more sense. I was trying to heal myself but could not do so while simultaneously being surrounded by these people and things that wounded me in the first place.

My advice to anyone else struggling to heal currently: change your environment, change the people you're surrounding yourself with, and try something new. From personal experience: the weight that lifts off your shoulders can actually make you feel like a new person.