Prior to this Wednesday Workshop I polled viewers of my Instagram Stories asking them: What is Healing? I received a few fabulous responses that you can hear me read in the audio or video below. What I’m outlining here are some key points about how I understand healing based on personal experiences as well as doing this work with various communities and individuals over the years.
I was very intentional about calling my work Colorism Healing. It’s not colorism healed. There’s nothing past tense about it. It is a present, recurring practice. It is an ongoing journey that requires active intention and commitment. You can’t give up just because you don’t see overnight progress.
And it does take commitment and a strong desire to heal. We can actually be attached or addicted to the wounds, the pain, the chaos, because it’s familiar and because it’s become our ego identity. If has come to identify itself with or as the wounding, then your ego will resist healing because it will actually feel like death to the ego. You ego no longer knows who it is or would be without hoarding the pain.
That can be freeing, though, if you ask yourself: Who whould I be if I let this go? What would my life actually be like if I started to heal?
Those can be immensely painful question or immensely powerful questions.
You have the choice.
Healing, though, does feel less like effort or struggle and feels more like surrender. It feels, to me, less like force and more like acceptance and peace and not trying to control every outcome.
Thankfully, I have learned that I cannot control other people, which means I also learned that I cannot wait for other people to change before I begin to forgive and heal. My healing can happen independent of other people and independent of my external environment. This may be hard to grasp or accept, but ask yourself: If nothing and no one around changes, am I doomed to a life of misery? Or can I step into my own power over myself and find a way to have peace?
Although #Unbothered is cool and trendy, I think it’s highly overrated. We should be open to the full spectrum of human emotions. We can’t actually achieve the highs if we aren’t willing to risk the lows.
Bettering yourself because you think it will change the other person or prove a point to them or please someone else, is not healing. (It’s actually manipulation.)
Your healing has to be for you.
Lastly: Let yourself cry.
Homework: Describe healing for yourself. How does it feel to you? What does it look like, sound like? Allows you to recognize and celebrate your growth!!
Affirmations: I have everything I need to begin my healing journey. I am divinely supported on my healing journey. My healing is up to me. I take full responsibility for my own healing. No matter what my circumstances are, my healing is within my power.