What is Healing?

What is Healing? Sounds pretty straight forward, Right? Yet, when I think about it and feel into that question, I find it’s a multifaceted answer. It can be defined many different ways depending on who you ask and how they interpret the question. Is healing something that has a completion or is it ever evolving? Is it a doing or a being?  

Let’s stop and take a breath here. And another.  Ahhh… That feels better.   

We tend to make things more complicated than they need to be.  In my experience, Healing is not necessarily “fixing” the “problem” but accepting yourself in the moment, as you are, whatever you are experiencing. The acceptance often allows the integration that has been needed to occur. 

So, growing up I experienced migraine headaches, and I still do by the way. At times, they would be extremely disruptive and debilitating. They would hurt so bad and leave me unable to function for days. I felt like they were running and ruining my life.

I would pray and hope that they would go away forever and never come back. I did all the normal things: doctors, alternative practitioners, therapists, medical intuitives and so on for this condition I had. If I heard about it, I would try it. 

Some things really helped. Some things did not. Some things helped for a while and then stopped helping. There was never really a magic bullet, doctor, practitioner, supplement or pill that had the answer for my healing. 

 Healing began to take on a new meaning when I started working with my inner child and I started listening. I had created a pretty big story that centered around the idea that something was wrong with me.

I believed that the migraines were the problem which, when internalized, became ‘Lucy with the migraines is not loveable, good enough, capable or of value’. It was really heartbreaking to feel how that innocent little one felt when she believed these things.  It was a progression of recognizing these layers. It took me time to grasp it open-heartedly and work with the layers being presented.  

It can be overwhelming and downright painful sometimes to be that honest and raw with yourself, to feel those painful things, and to admit that you have those beliefs about yourself. In those moments where I began to meet myself in the migraine and not run from it, I felt so amazingly loving and loved simultaneously.

It felt like I was giving myself something I did not know I had always wanted. A lot of times, it felt like a soothing balm on the wound. I was giving and offering myself love and acceptance in moments that, in the past, I would have rejected. I was opening my heart to my pain instead of ignoring it or wishing it was not there.

I was taking responsibility for my pain instead of being a victim of it. I was empowering myself instead of expecting that somebody or something needed to fix me.

It was not always easy or convenient nor did I do it perfectly, but it was always rewarding and worth the challenge. This path with my inner child changed how I saw and experienced healing. It taught me that healing is not always what you think it is going to be.

Healing was not limited to a finite goal of being migraine free. Healing was being with myself right where I was. Healing was more a path of discovery than a ‘fix’ or single destination. Healing offers an invitation to deep self discovery, self-connection, acceptance, growth.

I have found healing is an ever evolving path and unique to the individual who is experiencing it. Healing for me, has been (and still is) an evolving journey of discovering new forms of love, deeper connection with God, and greater levels of self-acceptance.