Healing

Welcoming the slowness & embracing the messiness...

A song I’m still listening to The Healing Game by Van Morrison.

I was speaking with my counsellor this morning. I needed to check in because life lately has felt a little up in the air for me. I’ve felt like I need a change but that I’m still in the messy middle of what that change will look like.

Healing is like this. It’s not linear. It’s two steps forward, one step back. The things that you thought you had worked through, rear their heads time and time again.

Van Morrison speaks of this in his song ‘The Healing Game.’ He writes “Here I am again. Back on the corner again, back where I belong, where I’ve always been. Everything the same, it’ll never change. I’m back on the corner again in the healing game.”

Everything in me wants this not to be the way. I want it all to work out. For the pieces of the jigsaw to effortlessly fall into place. But more and more I’m realising that life generally doesn’t look like this. Life is more mysterious than it is certain and that is hard. We want to know the outcomes before we take the leap. We want the answers but we’re often invited into more questions.

I am grateful for counselling. I am grateful to be on the path of counselling - both the offering and the receiving because it’s a place to pour your heart out in a safe space. To pour all of this stuff out. It’s a space where your pain and your confusion and your wonderings are witnessed. A space where you’re not alone on the journey. A space where you are heard. A space where you are seen. A space where you are comforted in your pain.

It’s a sacred space.

A holy space.

Lament isn’t something that we as a culture have been taught to do well. As a child I didn’t feel safe showing my tears but still I cried often.

Cole Arthur Riley in her book This Here Flesh writes in the chapter called Lament:

“We are born knowing how to cry, but it takes another to teach us how to cry well and with purpose. As we watch our elders cry, we are learning. Sister June taught me how to grieve with my body. She taught me how to feel the tears on my face and not wipe them away.

Your wails are worthy to be heard.

Journey to the centre with me now; together we won’t get lost in despair. Your wails are worthy to be heard.

Aren’t your eyelids

Tired of keeping

Prisoners? Those tears

Are precious

Minerals. Lap them up

Like a medicine-

It’s called healing.”

Healing now feels like it’s part of my DNA.

People pray for it all the time. Looking for miracles and quick fixes.

But my experience of healing is that it is slow.

It is disruptive.

And it is uncomfortable.

I think that must be why so few pursue it.

And there’s a difference between healing and numbing. We live in a culture that knows how to numb.

But healing is quite different to numbing the symptoms of our pain.

I have been in personal counselling since 2016. When I began, I remembered thinking I’ve no idea what I’m going to talk about! I was studying to be a counsellor at the time so doing your own work is part of the process.

But given that space to be honest starts to unravel you.

And in the unravelling comes liberation yes. But pain also and messiness. You come to touch parts of yourself that have remained hidden for a lifetime.

At the beginning of my counselling journey, I knew that I wanted to do a deep dive. To get to the root of my pain. To be honest the journey took me to a very dark place at certain points. I was touching the depths of my pain which was all part of the process (although at that time I found it hard to see this and hard to be with).

That was 7 years ago. The journey was both painful and liberating. It still is, at times both painful and liberating. The reality is that it’s hard to go these places. We’d all much prefer not to.

But when we don’t there are parts of ourselves that remain in the dark.

That we hide.

That don’t see the light of day.

That are never witnessed by another.

That are never shared with another.

And this means we’re our authentic selves remain hidden too.

There’s a line that speaks about living life to the full. The fullness of life is all of it. Every single emotion, not just the happy ones. Life to the full is feeling it all. Being with it all. Untying the cords of shame within us that have lived in there for too long. Letting the light shine on the darkest places within us. This is what counselling does. And this is why I’m such an advocate for it.

If I’m honest, it’s so much easier to stay the same. Healing is uncomfortable. It is disruptive. It is slower than we would like it to be. And…it is so worthwhile. Not because you’ll immediately feel like a new person but because you’ll be free to be with yourself fully. To embrace parts of you that you’ve wanted to stay hidden. To be fully you. Embracing the scars. Tending to the wounds.

I continue to check in with my counsellor from time to time. I thought that after 7 years of working things out that I might be done! But Miles Adcox once said that if you want to work on your physical fitness, you take out a gym membership. So if you want to work on your emotional fitness you go for counselling. And one gym session doesn’t make for lasting change. You return to it time & time again to keep a certain level of fitness. I believe the same is true with counselling. We’ll need to return to it at different times.

Counselling is for the soul what a run/gym/swim/walk is for the body.

And it’s not a one time fix. It’s not even a 6 session fix.

I wish it were easier. I wish life sometimes were just a little easier. But I'm learning to embrace the mystery. I’m learning to embrace the slowness. I’m learning to embrace the messiness. I’m learning to lean into the messy middle where everything isn’t resolved and fixed and neat. I’m learning to fully live.

I hope this speaks gently to you on your way.

Until the next time…