a metaphor

Healing from emotional wounds is knitting.
You make progress - you get better - you go forward a loop or two.
But then you fall back.
But the falling back isn't pointless.
It isn't always masochistic.
The thread must move backward to fix the forward loops in place.
It's reinforcing the design.
And in the end, after many, many, forward-backward iterations, you have something good.
A scarf.
A sweater.
A hat.
A baby blanket.
A whole.