Healing

I've been trying to decide what to write about today. I have lots of things to write about. Lots to share, but nothing was grabbing me as a topic. And then it hit me with the force of freight train and knocked me on my ass.

Healing doesn't happen in a straight line. Oh HOW MUCH I wish it did. Sometimes it feels like it does. One day you're laid out flat, not eating, not sleeping, not wanting to even open your eyes and look at the world. The pain is so intense, you're not sure you can endure it.

Then little by little the pain lessens. You find you can take a breath and thought it's not deep, it's not shallow and stabbing either. And then you take another breath and another and before you know it, you're breathing closer to the way you should. And just getting enough air to your brain lets your head start to clear and you begin to see things a little better. You can't quite see light at the end of the tunnel, but somehow you know it's there, that maybe around the next corner or the one after that, there's light. You can remember that you've been through pain before and you survived it and you know you just have to trudge on until you get through this pain.

You start to remember that in every painful experience there are lessons to be learned and you actually can ignore the pain for long enough moments that you start to wonder what the lessons are this time. And then, through your own memory, or if you're lucky the help of others, you start to see those lessons - shadowy at first, but growing clearer, taking more and more shape everyday.

And then you begin to focus on the lessons, because this work is real and it's the stuff that will help you grow out of the experience rather than being broken by it. Everyday, as you examine the lessons, as you look back and apply them to your past actions and begin to see the ways you could have behaved differently, you find that the pain has lessened. And one day you take a deep breath and think, "I'm on the road to healing."

Then, quite suddenly, you wake up one morning and none of it matters, the lessons seem pointless, the pain is back, and you wonder what the hell you've been doing all this time when you thought you were healing.

But just like when a scab gets pulled loose too soon and the skin beneath is still raw and tender - you can see that there are parts that are better, healed. So, you keep moving on. You go through learning how to breath again, seeing the lessons again, cultivating your hope again...

And so the process goes. Healing doesn't happen in a straight line. It twists and turns. Sometimes you feel like you're right back where you started, some times you feel like you were catapulted forward and the finish line - the place where you get to feel good and stay that way - is so close you can touch it.

It takes time and patience and faith. A LOT of faith. Some people rely on their faith in God or some other higher power. I guess I have faith in the universe. Faith that ultimately things are the way they're supposed to be, and that for the most part human beings are destined for good things - if we allow ourselves to experience the good. Mostly though, I have faith in myself.

My healing right now involves full on believing in me in ways I never have before. I have always had faith that I was good and strong and resilient. I am teaching myself, right this moment that I am beautiful and smart and lovable and deserving of all the good things the world has to offer. I have faith that though I only know those things in my head, that one day soon I will know them in my heart and then I will be healed.