always whole, never healed.

embracing and incorporating the places that hurt.

never healed.

What is the point of ‘healing’, I wonder, to this culture that champions the pursuit. The quest for healing is often propelled by the intoxicating idea that we must improve ourselves enough to fit in and function ‘normally’ in a society in which many facets should, quite frankly, not be normal. Without exploring alternatives to what healing might represent, it remains to be portrayed as this sort of journey to an unattainable and elusive destination.

Yes, it is worthwhile to tend to the wounds that linger in your psyche and body. You deserve the expansion that unraveling and releasing brings. But what about when “progress” stagnates and the wound denies full recovery? When pain stubbornly plants itself inside, maybe we try to work with it, rather than focus on its elimination.

Author and storyteller Sophie Strand writes extensively on the illusion of becoming healed. She describes the indigestibility of trauma and abuse, and how one can seek to “craft a life around and including the dysfunction.” Her insight and inquiries challenge the zeitgeist’s narrative that healing involves processing and assimilating our pain so that we might get “back to a baseline of comfort and relaxation.”

Is comfort a baseline we should really be striving for? So that, what, we can produce more stuff, move more quickly, or not feel sad? Sophie asks the probing question, “what if refusing to break down and metabolize was a risky maneuver towards making another world?”

Here, within the aches and abnormalities, the damage and the deviance, lies opportunity. The grief that refuses to be integrated waits for you to ask it, what are you available for? What are you here to show me, how will you lead me, how can we work together?

Harm is multidimensional and not the fault of a single individual. Regardless of whether it ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t have’ happened, we must accept what is here now. And, instead of aiming to seamlessly integrate our afflictions to operate ‘normally’, perhaps we respectfully approach them with curiosity. Perhaps partnering with our dysfunction will birth new ideas and creations, and widen our capacity to experience deeper levels of connection and compassion.

always whole.

I have dedicated years of energy and work to my ‘healing journey,’ to correct what I once believed to be wrong with me. The dawning understanding that I will never be healed comes with relief and a flurry of mental worry. Will I ever feel totally healthy, will I ever craft the correct diet and blends of supplements and routines and habits, how can I be sure to process my pain fully so that it doesn’t get stuck or slow me down, how can I stay cool & calm & collected when something challenging happens. On and on it goes, this relentless pressure to handle everything perfectly and easily.

I can never return the nourishment to the years of adolescence I spent lurking in the shadows of anorexia. My smaller self that was starving, sad, and grasping for acceptance is a part of me, she is who made me, and I am grateful for her.

If I could turn back time and somehow erase the damage from my past, would I? Do I even really want to create a totally healed version of me? I can see her vaguely, this beacon of radiance that never questions her worthiness, always makes the healthiest choices, and keeps herself calm even while ascending to higher dimensions. Would this version of me, who never got ill, never felt agony, be as emphatically enchanted with the intricacies of life as I am now, among all of my bruises and insecurities?

The most sustainable healing, for me, calls for a dynamic relationship between my inner world and my outer world. Healed, for me, is no longer a hungry climb toward perfection, nor is it “baseline good and functional.” Healing is a worthy collaboration with the parts of me that continue to hurt and the parts of me that are fresh and vibrant. It is ongoing growth and the patient incorporation of the lessons I am learning. Healing is the consistent willingness to engage with what is alive and with what is dying, around me and within me.

always broken, already whole.

If there is a ‘point’ of healing, maybe it is merely to return to our wholeness within us, and to remember our part in the whole. Perfection need not be a goal to move toward, but instead be something that already exists within us, surrounded by our flesh and bones and dreams and tears.

Bodies are archives of broken shards that constantly shift around, poking at and encouraging us toward purpose. It is a radical act of bravery to honor the jagged edges within us, and may actually be the fuel to embody ways of coexisting more peacefully.

A polished, sanitized life is not of any interest to me. Let it be messy, let it be raw, let it be full of passion and depth. Let it be weird and ugly and wild —

That sounds like healing to me.

xx, maggie

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Lately, listening & reading

Parable of the Sower — Octavia Butler

Sophie Strand — Indigestion is Emergence; Healing: a Ghost Story; I will not be purified (11 min)

Human — Tank and the Bangas