Liberation Changes Our Perspective on Healing

You are whole. I know it may not seem like it. No matter what you’re dealing with, you always wonder if things can be better, can get better. And they can, but the fact that things can get better doesn’t mean that you’re broken.

And yet, when we talk about healing, there’s the implication that something will be cured, fixed. It’ll improve, be over with, and you’ll be better than you were before. All done. Except, in many cases it doesn’t work that way. Sure, a broken bone can knit itself back together, but ask anyone who has had a broken bone when the weather changes they feel the original break. It’s never truly completely gone.

So why then do we talk about healing our neurodivergence? Healing our mental illness(es)? Healing our chronic illness? If it’s chronic, and most mental illnesses are chronic illnesses, then it is going to last for the remainder of our lives. Does this mean we should throw in the towel? Give up? Of course not! I’ve bolded that point because I can’t stress it enough.

What if instead of thinking of healing being a one-and-done situation we reframe what we consider healing? What if healing is the awareness that no matter what’s going on in your life you are already whole? It’s true, you know. You are whole. And if you realize that you are already whole, then you are liberated, and that, my friend, is healing.

Holding awareness of this fact and accepting yourself just as you are with grace, being in this moment with yourself as you are, that is the liberation that we’re seeking, and that is a form of healing.

It’s not the healing that experts talk about, and it doesn’t mean we should seek treatment and care from professionals where appropriate. But going into that care with self-acceptance and understanding that’s a shift I think we all can make.

That shift is liberation; it’s an understanding that we’re more than our bodies, we’re more than our minds and our consciousness. We’re connected to everything and everything is connected to us, and more importantly, we are whole and complete just as we are.