How I Define Healing & Why That’s Important

Recently, I asked our followers: “How do you define healing?” This is a big question, I know. So I figure it’s only fair if I answer it myself, too. How we define it affects so much of our healing journey, how we navigate it, and how we celebrate our success along the way.

“Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing.”
― Joshua Kai

When we become clear about what we think of as emotional and spiritual healing, when we are able to define goals that celebrate our vulnerability and humanity, then nothing can stop us from building a life we love!

What Does Healing Mean?

There are as many aspects to your healing journey, as there are to yourself. Your emotional health, your spiritual path, and your mental ability being only a few examples. This is why I struggled for a long time to really drill down to what healing is for me. There are so many aspects of it and all of them feel different; requiring different techniques and processes.

When I finally understood what my healing process really was…It changed the game!

You see, for me, healing is akin to learning. As you process your memories, read about abuse, try out new healing tools and modalities, and try your hand at new life skills, you learn. You learn who you are and where your strengths and weaknesses lie. You learn how you can better relate to yourself and the people around you. You learn how to maintain boundaries that celebrate you and enable you to live your life to the fullest.

By considering my healing as learning, I gained some amazing advantages:

The greatest advantage was perhaps that my stumbles and mistakes didn’t feed into my feelings of shame anymore. Rather than judging my mistakes as proof of my innate inadequacy, I would see them as steps on my learning. I would take time to learn from the mistake and would vow to do better the next time. This allowed me to build myself up with compassion.

Why Does Emotional Healing Have To Be So Hard?

I would be lying if I told you I’d never ask myself, my husband, or the Universe this question. The truth of the matter is that healing isn’t easy. Healing your emotions takes time and effort. It requires a certain commitment to yourself and the life you’d like to build. But however hard this process is when you first set out, it does get easier with practice. Perhaps the question you should be asking is: is it worth it?

To that, my dear survivor friend, I’ll say, “YAAAS QUEEN!!!” (because I am sassy like that)

As complex as it is to heal your emotional wounds, it is always worth it. The process adds colour to your life. It’s sure to connect you to amazing people who will join you on your journey. It will enrich not just your life but that of the people you love (or will love), too.

This is what breaks the cycle and stops you from living through the same mistakes over and over again. Because you are learning new skills and changing your perception of the world, you begin to respond differently. And you know how they define madness as “taking the same steps over and over again while expecting a different result”? Well, that surely means that taking different steps and expecting different results is a sign of health and genius.

Like I said at the beginning of this post: “How we define healing affects so much of our healing journey, how we navigate it and how we celebrate our success along the way.” So today, take some time to consider this question for yourself. How do you define healing and how does that definition influence your journey?

Originally published at https://swanwaters.com on May 18, 2019.