Flip the script on your healing journey
Today I want to share a slice of my own healing journey, for the benefit of those undertaking them. As a coach and not a healer, please take the following as a personal account and opinions… Everyone’s journey is different.
My journey kickstarted with my corporate exit + travel sabbatical… culminating in my being “forced” into healing vis a vis injuries — physical and emotional.
Another way of seeing it is that I unconsciously chose them, or that the universe gave me what I needed even if I wanted something different.
The gift was that I was forced to confront wounds and weaknesses I had pushed out of consciousness.
Shadow work, in other words.
The injuries took shape as physical traumas during my travel year and coach training program, my mother’s Grade 5 brain aneurysm and subsequent confrontation with unhealthy family of origin dynamics, falling for the wrong person at the wrong time, and living in relative isolation in the Cleveland suburbs during the pandemic after I left New York.
I was never depressed exactly, but I became acquainted with loss and grief, in addition to life’s and my own fragility, in ways I was not before. My go-to strategy was seeking the gift or learning, prematurely. I refused to accept that pain and suffering are omnipresent — until they overwhelmed me.
It’s been a heavy time, for me and so many others.
If you’re on a healing journey, some perspective:
- You’re not broken. And you don’t necessarily need to take a break to do deep healing work — do it if you can and want to. Just keep in mind that having as much love and life in your life as possible is usually the best medicine.
- You don’t need to fix yourself, someone or something else.
- The state of affairs isn’t hopeless or inevitable. If anything, it’s a painful puzzle.
- In order to realize the best in yourself, in my opinion you need to own the worst — with compassion, without drowning in it.
- Pain isn’t something to run from or toward. It’s a place to support with lots of love for you — potentially in ways or to degrees you’ve never known or practiced.
If there are signs you could benefit from healing, heed them. You’ll hit snags in integrity or power leaks where they go unaddressed.
The upside? Once your foundations are solid, you’re unshakeable. There’s beauty in the strength of you.
