The Body Heals Itself

Countless invitations to begin again

There is this simple miracle that happens almost all the time. The body heals itself. The body heals.

Do we end up with the same body, yet somehow made anew? Do we live in a body that holds the record of each and every mark, the quiverings of pain, the specks of discomfort, the deep aches, the cavernous heartbreaks, the slicing of the knife, the breaking of the bones?

I’ve sometimes thought about what we’d look like if the body didn’t heal. The map of every infraction, every action gone wrong. But that’s not how we're made.

We were made to mend.

To stitch together, to become new over and over again, until this body can no longer reach into that basin of renewal and return.

Today I wonder, what would happen if I let myself know this truth deeply? Steady myself on its foundation. Behold its beauty in a fading bruise, a waning scab, trace the lines of scars that bind me back together.

I would maybe touch the force of nature that cares for us all, a universal mother. It says, “I will tend to you. Relax. Let yourself begin again.”

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