Healing is a choice. We make it when we decide to accept that there is something better out there for ourselves. It is a choice, and there are options.
As the onion is peeled back when we do the good and hard work of uncovering in therapy, each of us needs to face the choice of getting to the sweet rather than staying in the bitter.
It is also about making the choice to move forward and to grow into new spaces in our lives. If we’re holding on to harmful thoughts and feelings, we can’t get to the sweet when we’re clinging on to the negative.
The attitude that healing isn’t a choice is destructive. We have a choice: actually, we have many choices.
We can decide to remain in the safety of the old. You can decide to hold on to the old anger and resentment. You can decide to turn and reject healing. It is a choice.
You can also make a choice for the work of uncovering and dealing with the hard facts. Healing, like not healing, is a choice we must make.
Discovering and facing our flawed selves is the hardest thing we’ll do in our lives. It is about looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves as we really are, and not the person we think we are. It is also about evaluating our inner data for the truth and the untruths.
In order to heal, we also need to spend time in knowing what is right about ourselves.
If you ask a person for a self-critique, they’ll spin out a thread of the things that they see as self-wrongs. What about the things that are right? Have we become (in Western culture) a culture of looking at the “what is wrong with me” in order to consume what advertisers tell the masses they need to be right in themselves?
Jon collected cards. He had a card in his collection that showed a guy in an auto dealership stating that he had it all. But if he only had this car… it would be perfect. Can we afford to hang our lives on the “if only?”
It’s the “if only” place that stops us from forward movement. It’s a trap. We’ll never have the “if only” because it doesn’t exist, and it can’t exist. The reality is that we make the choice to say yes to the realities of our lives as they are, and accept what we can do. Sometimes that also means accepting help and moving forward into the scary place and coming out of the forest on the other side.
Healing is about learning to accept both the good, and the areas where we can improve. We need to do both in order to heal.
Just as grief is not for wimps, healing is for the courageous. As we come out and learn to reach for the sun, and even dance in it, we are liberated to find our best selves.
There are those who will not believe my words to be possible. I get it. You hold on to the pain and stuff it down. You engage in what I call stuffology. You do this because, in your head, you just know that there is no other way to live. You’ve done this for so long that it is a firm belief in your life. I’m not talking unicorns and flower beds. I’m talking about a reality where you can safely confront the real pain and get rid of the need for an iceberg and all that goes with it.
To heal means that you must first accept that there are paths to healing. The first step on the path is to consider that the option of healing may be a viable path for you to walk on.
We don’t accept this path grudgingly. We accept the path of healing with an understanding that there will be hard work and ugly days. I keep thinking of the Josh Groban cover “When You Walk Through a Storm,” and the hopelessness we feel as we journey into the fierce winds. In the fierce winds we get knocked around, walls are taken down, doors are broken into, and what is inside gets thoroughly trashed. It hurts.
Then, and only then, does the change come. You don’t feel it because of the storm you went into. It is there all the same, and one day you notice the edges—that silver lining. You walk towards it until you notice that storm is gone, and you are standing in the warm sun! You stop, and you notice that the earth beneath your feet is stable. You’ve been on a soul journey, and the healing is real. This is a WOW moment! In my case it was the many times I spent navigating my river. You can find your own symbolism. It is yours to claim. You only need to accept that healing is a choice you can look at and engage in.
Come, find your own unique path to healing yourself. Take the journey into the sun! It feels so good!
