Sometimes it feels like life is but one continuous stretch of healing. Sometimes with deep activity into the healing. Sometimes with what seems like complete avoidance, and yet it is healing also.
Many years ago I had this illusion that healing was a gentle process, or at least one of reasonable effort and discomfort.
But reality? Ha! Healing can be (but to be fair isn’t always) hard, agonizing, deep work and constant that requires a commitment to redefining our current life. Because our current life is defined by the injury or illness (where here I don’t mean the we, the person, are defined by the injury/illness, but we have an injury/illness that is a part of our daily lives that we cannot, yet, get around), we must actively work to change.
It requires breaking down habits and patterns. It necessitates facing hard truths and working through them, not running away.
It is the deepest act of courage, to heal ourselves. To embrace the work, to face the deepest parts of ourselves, to shine our light into our shadows.
And not to come through the other side, better, healthier, resolved.
But to KEEP coming through, again and again, to another side and yet another, over and over. For the rest of our lives, always healing.