The Doorway To Healing

Thank god for modern medicine! Without it, I'm not sure how I would have come back to myself after experiencing postnatal depression (PND) with both my babies. It was an overwhelming time, fraught with extreme surges of anxiety, debilitating depression and exhaustion. Thank you, antidepressants, psychiatrists and hospitals.

Why am I revisiting this painful time in my life? Because it was also the doorway to healing.

What does it mean to refer to something like this as healing?

Normally, when I think about healing, I automatically think of an injury healing, or an illness being cured. And yet I see so many people not healing, not being "cured." I ask myself: why has this person faced so much hardship, pain and suffering when they're such good people? Why do some have access to a cure when others don't? I've often listened to spiritual leaders and teachers, and sat through meditations about healing, and while part of me wants to believe we can heal ourselves, another part of me questions: is it just the luck of the draw?

Or is this healing something else altogether? A greater kind of healing…

When I looked into the etymology of the word "heal," it also references "to cure, save, or make whole, sound, and well."

TO MAKE WHOLE!!

When I think about the healing I experienced after my episode with PND, this is what I mean ~ to feel whole again. It's not about being cured, or arriving at some destination of "I'm better now," although one can feel better. It's a realization, a growth in resilience, a coming to know one's own strengths and steadfastness. Knowing you have the stability and ground to weather the storms that life inevitably dishes up.

I experienced this again when my mum died. Although it was extremely distressing and painful, we had already been facing that loss of her, for six years leading up to her passing. Through it all - letting myself feel heartbreak, frustration, anger, helplessness, fear, exhaustion and grief, somehow all of it led to a sense of wholeness. More of me. A connection to the unchanging, timeless and eternal ocean of formless potential. In many spiritual traditions, this quality is referred to as the Divine, and we are an embodied vehicle of that divinity - finding our way, healing ourselves over and over again.

We are all healing ourselves, even when it doesn't feel like it, in our own time and in our own way.

The difference is: can we acknowledge our unique strengths? If we can, it must come hand in hand with acknowledging what needs to soften and fall away. It requires us to see our flaws, examine what's no longer serving us, and be honest and truthful with ourselves - not in a mean, punitive way, but with love and compassion, tenderness and joy. In yoga, this is the fourth Niyama (the attitude we adopt towards ourselves), Svādhyāya - meaning to get close to yourself, to inquire, examine, and study yourself… I digress.

The point is: you can heal yourself, and remember your wholeness, your divinity.

Thank you for being here.

Warmly, Zoe 🧡