Demystifying the Healer
My favourite definition for the word heal is to make whole. Healing as a mouvement brings things together and unifies whatever it is that is separate from us. In truth, we are all healers.
In 2012 my life turned upside down. At the age of 24 my heart was broken for the first time and I had no idea how to deal with the pain. I had come to a point where all of my old coping strategies were no longer working and new words like co-dependent and meditation began to catch my attention.
Maybe some of you have the same coping strategies as I did. It’s so common to have a glass of wine at the end of the day to release stress, take medication to mask the pain in our bodies, or talk behind our peers back’s about the issues we have rather than face conflict head on with compassionate communication. These are just some of the typical things we all do to cope, created by the age-old tradition of sweeping our issues under the rug.
Don’t get me wrong, there is no judgement here—we are all human, and I'm still one to have a glass of wine on special occasions. I’m pointing at them here for a different purpose, I'm pointing at them for those of you who are starting to feel that these coping strategies have lost their effectiveness. Metaphorically speaking, it happens becasue all of things that we've pushed out of sight and out of mind and into the closet, are bursting at the seams. There is nowhere else to go, no more space to stuff things, and so it's an invitation to start the clearing things out.
In our culture we learn how to cover up pain instead of taking the healing action, which is to pay attention to it . . . and lovingly if we can.
The funny thing about it, is that no one really teaches us how to work with our inner world as we are growing up. So, it usually takes us to the point of a personal break down and/or an awakening before we realize that paying attention to our inner world and being curious about our authentic soul response to life, is even something we can pay attention to. In general we are not taught how to self reflect or to meditate at a young age.
Instead, in the generation I grew up in anyways, when I cried or was acting well . . . childish, the common response was to “grow up”, or to “think of all the poor children in another country who didn't have the things that we had”. If you're a man, maybe you were told to be tough and strong because 'boys don’t cry'. If you’re a woman, perhaps you got compliments when you acted sweet and polite, even if it was not your natural predisposition. These are just a couple of examples.
Being guided to move away from our authentic body/mind/spirit response is curiously commonplace at this moment in our culture. It's rare that we are taught how to regulate our emotions, to honour them as our compass, or to grow our personal will to the point where we can authentically integrate into society.
Mother Teresa said, "The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God."
The trick, is that when we learn to love ourselves in a deeper way, we mirror that experience into our external world too. Another aspect to consider is that the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual pieces are interconnected. So when we have a physical illness it's worth looking at the emotional, metal, and spiritual pieces as well as the physical. What would happen if our society began to really take a look at our personal health issues in this way? What if we stopped trying to separate ourselves from the illness? What would happen? I think it is an interesting thought to ponder on.
A healer invites you to own your illness, because through the courageous work of embracing it, we also acquire the power within to change the narrative and many times even the illness itself.
Do so we must first loosen the grip of fear, and read what is inside of our inner files with courage and compassion. When we begin to look at ourselves from a more soul based lens we expand our potential and our effectiveness to recreate our own personal narrative. We become the architects of our own realities.
For me, a professional healer is someone who is walking this path themselves, and so then has the tools and capacity to support others. They do this by holding sacred space for your inner knowing to unfold. A healer is someone who will encourage you to open the scary bits within and let them integrate into your whole being. All of this is done while the healer stays attuned to your own readiness, and holds a safe container for you to process new information. A healer is someone that you can trust with the role of supporting you to open to your own power. We all have this innate capacity to access the healer within.
Blessing and love,
Marnie
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