The Greatest Healing Often Happens In The Most Ordinary Ways
When you begin your healing journey, you will be searching for epiphanies—life-changing, soul-opening, mind-bending truths. Drastic changes, rapid uprooting, the fierce releasing of what you can no longer stand, and the obsessive need to find something that makes you feel a little better, even just for a moment.
One of the most subtle challenges will be that the thick of it often happens in the most ordinary ways.
It’s about setting an intention to heal—writing it down on a piece of paper somewhere you see often. Realizing that nobody knows what to do at the beginning, so sometimes the most powerful way we can begin is by making a statement to the universe about what we’re going to do.
It’s about carving out space for deep rest—the deepest rest you’ve ever given yourself. It’s about realizing that your body knows what to do, and your job is to support it, to step out of the way.
It’s about changing your environment, both in big ways and small. This might mean moving. It might mean cleansing your space of relics so you are no longer living in a museum of the past. It’s about realizing that you will adapt to what’s around you, and so you must choose wisely. You must create even just one corner of peace within your own little world, recognizing finally that “home” was never a place that existed anywhere outside of your own heart.
It’s about doing the practical things—the budgeting and the blood tests, the doctor’s appointments and the making of plans, the calendars and the emails, the supplements and the exercise routines, however simple they may be at first. These things are often the first to be cast aside when we are hurting, and yet they are also the most vital.
It’s about finding the kind of support that’s right for you—the trainer, the therapist, the life coach—whatever is needed for your own unique journey.
It’s about rediscovering the little joys of life—the long baths, the page-turning novels, the quiet Saturday mornings, the clean sheets, the stars, the city lights, the ocean—and realizing that they were the big things all along.
It’s about affirming what you want to be true, and knowing, somewhere deep down, that it already is. It’s about visualizing your future self and being willing to believe that maybe, just maybe, that person could be real. It’s about standing up for yourself when it’s necessary, and recognizing all of the times when you’re misinterpreting a mindless comment as a slight. These things all require deeper levels of self-awareness, evaluation, and consciousness.
It’s about recognizing that the heat of your trauma is trying to prevent you from living your life. Somewhere, deep down, you know that when you go out and try to make your way in the world, everything goes wrong. So your fear is trying to lock you down, and it’s trying to keep you safe.
What it does not know is that there is no greater failure than a life unlived.
There is no greater pain than having your heart go unloved, your soul go unseen.
It’s about choosing not to give your mental attention and emotional energy to things that will not grow into experiences you want to be having. It’s about realizing that you can construct a new dream. It’s about releasing who you are, in the smallest ways, and realizing that sometimes the most ordinary things are the most defining, the most saving, the most soothing, the most important, the most overlooked, and the most real.
