Three Hard Facts About Healing
Along this rainbow road of recovery I have needed to digest some profoundly unpalatable truths about healing.
1. No one is coming to rescue you.
2. Feelings aren’t facts.
3. Healing is hard.
If these are difficult to stomach, I see you. I felt exactly the same way.
NO ONE IS COMING TO RESCUE YOU
All I wanted was for someone ELSE to excavate my pain, someone else to wave a magic wand, someone else to fix me and make me all better.
The notion that no one else was going to do it for me was fairly horrifying, and it took me years to fully, deeply accept this. As soon as I did, I experienced a transcendental shift. I could finally step into personal responsibility with tenderness & grace, and whole-heartedly embrace my inner power.
We absolutely need other humans for connection, reflection and soul nourishment, and I have been loved and supported by countless incredible humans throughout my life, but the transition from self-loathing to self-love, that’s something only we can do for ourselves.
Until we let go of the ideation that someone else will rescue us and eradicate our pain, it’s likely that we’ll stay steeped in suffering & resentment.
FEELINGS AREN'T FACTS
I lived a life using my emotional barometer as a marker of ‘the’ truth, allowing it to dictate, justify & excuse my often appalling behaviour ( I was a violent, self-destructive, abusive drunk.)
To be able to acknowledge, nurture and tender our feelings, without allowing them to consume or obliterate us, is a pendulum on which I am more & more able to reside in the middle.
Our fluctuating feelings are wildly complex and need attention, but they are often influenced by past traumas & past unmet needs, not our deepest knowing. Be wary of the line between witnessing and deifying, allowing and wallowing. Our feelings are often fuelled by interpretation and story, rather than our actual embodied sensations.
HEALING IS HARD
Oh how I wanted healing to be easy! And quick! The proposition that it’s a lifelong investment was again, abhorrent to my instant-gratification-seeking self.
I was taught: sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly – and I most definitely fell into the latter category. The early years of my recovery were quite frankly excruciating, often oscillating between wide-eyed gratitude for my life, and then what felt like endless despair.
But they kept saying ‘Don’t quit before the miracle happens’, and so I kept going.
And they were right. Because here I am, on the other side of all that pain, telling you that yes, healing is hella hard, but it is possible.
If you’re on this healing journey and feeling that ache of loneliness, that resistance to responsibility, that heaviness of emotions unexplored, I would welcome you to join my circle of support, The Soul Library. Drop me a message if you’d like to learn more.
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