Where does one start?
Why do we start?
How do you know it is time to engage in one?
Why is there no ending to a healing journey and what does it do for us?
If you scroll through your favorite social media platform, there’s a grand amount of conversations, posts, and videos of people sharing their healing journey and the importance of doing healing work. Many, like myself, have found the courage and freedom to share the depths and vulnerability of our healing journey, and how we’ve come to the beginning of this new journey through the onset of a traumatic event, relationship, or loss while continuing to stay curious about what this new venture looks and feels like and how it has (or will) change them moving forward. Some just knew that it was time to pick up and leave their hometown or country and move far away and that was in itself a healing experience.
A question that has been asked in conversations that I’ve had with others while residing in Cambodia for 7 months in 2023 in the thick of my transformation has stuck out to me the past year, and has led me to think about the answer in its fullness; “How do you start a healing Journey?” It was easy for me to answer this from the context of my relationship with God and my religious upbringing “ I prayed and cried out to God for help”. Yet after giving this answer and looking back at my personal “how” and what that journey truthfully entailed, I began to dig deeper through my rearview mirror and find concrete evidence of what allowed not just myself but others I’ve had this conversation with, to begin an intentional healing journey.
What was it that led me to even cry out?
How does one start an intentional healing journey?
And why does it not have an end to it?
The real question at hand is what is a healing journey? I always tell my son when he wants to ask me a question “When you are ready to ask a question, you are ready to hear and handle the answer.” So let us take a journey through the how, the why, and the what’s next on being intentional with healing your cry.
The beginning of anything is the closing of something. There is a level of curiosity, awareness, and understanding of what once was can or will no longer be and that one has to do something different to stop getting the same result. I probe this question to anyone reading this who has peeked curiosity about healing or beginning to consider the search for answers that they have been struggling to answer within themselves; What are you finding yourself constantly crying out about? To begin in a place that we already hold the answers to gives us the beginning of a clear road map to what we want to do with that pain and how we go about that journey. When we look at what brings us into deep sorrow, we can begin to see the depths in connection to the extremes of our lack or intensity of the relationship to the root of that pain point. It begins with finding out what we keep crying about. This isn’t always an actual manifestation of an act of crying, but to make it plain, it is what grieves your heart, brings a constant lump in your throat, and activates a fire in your belly. Again, there is a level of curiosity and awareness that keeps you going to uncover and upturn the stones that are heavy to look at. I remember two very specific moments that catapulted me into staying curious about what this healing journey of my own would look and feel like. One was within the feels and revelations within my somatic body and the other was an actual police removal and me crying and saying out loud unconsciously “Why does this keep happening to me”.
Take a moment to ask yourself the following: what stirs up the dance of confusion and curiosity within you when you hear a specific word, conversation or experience a specific encounter? What causes you to experience a grand amount of grief that summons the body to fall into energetic despair and trigger something within you behaviorally and/ or emotionally? When we begin to take our sorrow seriously and become curious about understanding the root of it, we then allow for transformation to take its place and we embark on a journey that will never leave us the same.
I firmly believe that our divine purpose is intertwined with the sorrow that allows us to journey to deeper discovery. It gives us such beautiful permission to experience joy when we feel it and when our body remembers it. Sorrow beautifully grows us. When we engage in the dance, we allow ourselves to be changed and discover purpose. What we cry about ultimately brings us what we need to build a new life without what we thought was ok to stay in or not be able to accept. Here’s my take on what triggers a healing journey!
There is an acronym that I came to for myself and in a coaching program I creatively uncovered that says A.S.R.- Acknowledge, Sit with, Release. When we begin a healing journey it begins with a lot of curiosity and some level of awareness to begin “asking” ourselves those deep profound life-changing questions.
- What do I keep allowing to break my own heart? (acknowledge) When we get honest with ourselves about what keeps breaking our own heart, our Achilles heel I’d say, we then allow ourselves to start opening up and being vulnerable with ourselves. Love was breaking my heart. Wanting to be loved and being willing to be affirmed by anyone. It was causing a lack of boundaries, low self-worth, and an absolute lack of self-love. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is, in turn how we end up consistent in mastering the art of breaking our own heart. When we come to a place of acknowledgment, we open up spiritually and emotionally to allow ourselves to begin seeing the patterns and behaviors that kept leading us down the same path toward heartbreak. The root of what brought us here is what we are digging for and want to stay curious about. So what is the root that leads you to continuously breaking your own heart? We also want to acknowledge how we do want to feel and open the gate for us to holistically tune to that. When we acknowledge both we give way for us to now be in a space of awareness and choice. We become aware of what’s hurting us and what that feels like in our body and then we become aware of what we do want to feel and how that feels in our body.
2) Am I ready to do the work to stop allowing myself to break my own heart? (sit with) Now that we’ve brought to our attention the abuse, the patterns, the addictions, etc, and how we do want to feel, we get to be real honest with ourselves about whether we are ready to do the work to create inner change or not. Another way of looking at healing is self-reflection and awareness. Here is where we ask ourselves what have I been made aware of within myself and how will I allow myself to show up moving forward? This is the sit with stage I’d like to call it. This can be a tough stage, where people like to tap out or become complacent. You’re essentially being asked to dig into wounds that you’ve placed a bandaid over and make it bleed again, pour rubbing alcohol on it, and allow it to get some air as your body does its healing magic and reshapes it back to a new normal. Yet, you’ll have the scare forever, just not the pain of an unclean wound. I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s easier to stay in the patterns we’ve been made aware of because it is the version of us that we know and have grown accustomed to unconsciously. It has gotten us this far and has kept us safe and protected us the best it knew how. This is where we stay connected to the curiosity of who we want to be, how we want to feel, and what we want our lives to look like. Get in love with the curiosity of asking yourself who you are and whether are you moving in a way that aligns you with who you desire to become! When the student is ready the teacher appears and we end up being both simultaneously when we permit ourselves to stay curious about who we are. This part of healing takes some true vulnerability with self, which leads to the ability to create a deeper love with and integration of the duality of our hard days and light days; of our pain and of our pleasure, of the various body sensations that come from the triggers of joy and the triggers of remembering a past version of us in the present. This is also the space where we learn how to find coping mechanisms, or what I consider new self-management behaviors that ground us into our presence and give us the safety and security to be vulnerable with ourselves and others so that we can move through what we are facing and being led to let go. Learning these new habits that remain within us allows us to stay connected with why we started this new journey and who we are desiring to become. We also become more aware of what our values and non-negotiables are.
3) Am I truly ready to grieve and release the version of me that has been breaking my heart? (release) This is a very intentional question. Once you become made aware of something you now have the decision to move forward in a way that aligns you with the life and versions of you, you desire. I always ask people in the stage of the game “How do you want your life to feel?” Less than what you want to accomplish, do, etc. This is where we allow the grief work to take place as well. Grieving the release of who we once were, what we once allowed, and the behaviors we showed up in, all while celebrating our growth and the relationship we are building with ourselves so that we can connect with our higher being is what this experience comes down to. There will still be triggers, but you can see how you handled them and allow yourself to keep growing, adjusting, and becoming more aware of yourself in the process. Bringing back those values and non-negotiables, we begin to set a new standard of living for ourselves and what we allow in. With every release, we stand firm on the person in front of us, not the one behind us. This is an amazing space to be in. To write a love letter to your future and a thank you letter to your past self and find gratitude right in the middle of where you are. Your awareness will give you space to be able to say “Geez, I’m proud of me.” Who doesn’t want to transform the way they speak see themselves and tell themselves how proud they are? That is healing in itself.
Now a healing journey does not mean we will not experience hardships. It means we become better self-aware and connected within to know how to navigate those hardships and stay present within. Even if you revert to a behavior from the old version of you, please note, that you can’t undo your healing. There’s no such thing. If you’ve been able to recognize it then that means the healing is working or that you’re working the healing. You’ve become aware of how you showed up to the fight and that is the greatest gift of all. This is a process we will continually flow through, because of our newfound awareness, deeper love for self, and connection to what matters to us. When we make that mistake, take it as a sign that you love yourself enough to even address it, become aware of it, and release the guilt that is trying to hold you to it. There is no perfect way to do anything, yet how we do one thing is how we do everything. So grace towards ourselves is highly important on this journey because we are constantly in a state of learning, undoing, and doing so that we can stay aware of ourselves, stay curious about who we are, and grow in love with who we are coming home to within. What You’ve been crying about is going to be your greatest blessing to yourself. Happy Healing!
