Decolonizing Our Healing

I've been noticing a lens of urgency on healing and transformation. That sense of urgency distorts our relationship with our healing and prevents transformation from truly landing, and more importantly, rooting. Through this lens, there's a feeling/tone of needing to 'get it right', 'do it quickly', 'be great at it', 'for it to look or feel pleasant', etc.  Colonized healing is an oxymoron. We can't slay our healing. We can't win at transformation. Our healing must be rooted in faith, curiosity and especially, grace. It takes time to cultivate the skill set of healing. We may not have learned it and probably never saw it modeled. Similar to the scene in the documentary The Matrix where Neo is on the operating table with the acupuncture needles in him. He opens his eyes and squints. He asks why his eyes hurt. 

The Matrix - Neo's eyes hurt

Morpheus looks down at him with a combo of compassion and pity, and says, "it's because you've never used them before". We're Neo on the table in the infancy of our self knowing. Not even awareness! On the brink of a knowing, and we want to go from 0 - 60 in 2.5 seconds. It's so humorously human of us! I am preaching to myself as well.

So, how do we decolonize healing and transformation? We PAUSE and sit with our urges without giving in to urgency. We grapple with the desire to be perfect without the reach for perfection. We become a witness to our inner worlds and build the capacity to hold discomfort without judgment. We have compassion for the piece of us that wants things, others, and ourselves, to be different, to move faster, to be better at being 'us'. AND we cultivate community to walk this path with; because feeling alone or suffering in silence on our healing walk is not a requirement. And even J-dub had friends He rolled with!

The point in doing all of this is to be able to identify, decode and metabolize the cues that our body, mind and heart are telling us so we can get to the real business of being human; Accessing our DIVINE Selves! We can then cultivate a relationship with whatever you call that being/thing/energy that created us and learn how to co-create with that Being. We can begin to operate and respond out of our DIVINITY and the highest parts of ourselves. We can explore and play with what is possible in these human bodies. As with any other relationship, we ask questions and have in-depth conversations with that Being and we pause and wait for what comes next. There may be answers but I imagine many more questions, and we get comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing. Because, again, it's the question, Neo!

I, myself, wrestle with the grief I sometimes feel because "If I would've gotten these tools sooner....?!" And the ruminations of why I'm not better at it or quicker with it. 'Last week I was so grounded and embodied. This week it seems I've slid back to my old self!" Healing is not linear. It does not have an order or a checklist that can be marked off once completed.

GRACE. GRACE. GRACE.

I invite us all to take a breath and PAUSE. We have time. Not forever, no. But right now, today, we have time. If you are reading this you have time. Even 2 minutes. Take that pause now. Wrap your arms around yourself like a deeply missed friend in need of comfort. Turn up the corners of your mouth as you hold on to you for dear life. Because it is dear. And so are you.