I’ve been thinking a lot about the word healing. It’s everywhere now…another workshop, another certification, another retreat, another promise that if you simply learn this new modality, you’ll finally become the version of yourself you’ve been searching for.
On one hand, I love that our collective relationship with healing is changing. For so long, emotional well-being was something hidden or dismissed. Today, more people are asking deeper questions, seeking support, and becoming curious about what it means to live with greater awareness. That gives me hope.
But I’ve also begun noticing something else. Somewhere along the way, healing became something we consume instead of something we remember. As though peace exists just beyond the next course. As though wholeness belongs to someone further along the path. As though healing is something another person can give us.
When I looked up the definition of healing, three words stayed with me: free, state, and return. “To heal is to become free from injury or disease, to return to a sound state.” Not achieve. Not perform. Not climb. Return. That single word changes everything.
Healing was never about becoming or transforming into someone new. It has always been about remembering the person who was there beneath the fear, the anxiety, the pain, the conditioning, and the stories that convinced us we were somehow incomplete…dare I say, broken.
Maybe that’s what has been troubling me lately, not that healing has become more visible, but that we’ve become better at marketing the guide than trusting the guide within ourselves.
Healing isn’t another rung on a ladder. It isn’t a destination reserved for those who’ve attended enough retreats or mastered enough practices. It is a relationship. One built through compassion, honesty, presence, and the quiet willingness to meet ourselves exactly where we are.
The deepest healing isn’t found in becoming more. It’s found in discovering that, beneath everything we’ve accumulated in our search to be whole, we never stopped being enough to begin with.
This is a beauful piece of writing that points right to the problem. One can't solve the world's problems, with deepening into the problem. Commodification of life, our being trapped in materialist value systems, and a culture of hoarding wealth, is the problem. The solution comes from within, the grass roots, and reorienting our value systems and culture. Thanks for writing Sheila!
I think it takes on very different meanings depending on what life brings and is totally been over marketed ... not 100% onboard with the definition... I would rephrase to ""To heal is to become as free as possible from injury, disease, grief, and loss, and to grow toward a clear, harmonious state of being." There are certain things we can't be "free" of but, how we "meet ourselves exactly where we are..." is so spot on ... not always easy to arrive at but, essential ... beautiful share xoxo