Women in Hiding Press
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Complimentary Book
  • DigitalWIH
  • DigitalBTS
  • DigitalFAH

What Is Healing?

5/17/2019

 
WHAT IS HEALING?
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
Healing from the pain of emotional trauma is an ongoing, ever expanding lifetime process.  It is not a gift or a destination.  Or a static, contented state of being.  Healing is a path…of growth…an ebb and flow of difficult challenges, tough decisions, and confusing emotions that rise up to be brought into the light of resolution.  Healing requires a constant renewal of patience while self confidence slowly develops.
 
However much we want it to, healing does not automatically happen, not even with time.  It won’t happen in a regimented program with strictures and time frames where “success” is celebrated by a group hug.  Nor with a slap on the forehead by a sweaty man clutching a damp handkerchief and a makeshift crucifix shouting, “You’re Healed!”  Healing certainly doesn’t occur because of a celebrity bellowing about an “aha teaching moment” no matter how convincing she sounds.  Even a big-hair psychic waving crystals and telling you that your father loves you does not possess the power of instant healing.  (Oh wait…I am the big-hair psychic waving crystals.  And your father does love you!)  Anyhow…while instant healing may be an illusion, a shift in personal energy is possible as a result of any experience.  And that shift will provide an opportunity, an opening to receive life-giving insight, not unlike a tightly bound rosebud unfurling to receive the waiting sunlight.
 
Startling, intense incidents can serve as catalysts to motivate you to pay attention to your yearning for relief and to finally act on your own behalf and commit to your emotional wellbeing.  Strange coincidences and unsettling events that occur seemingly out of nowhere—like a message from that big-hair psychic—are always connected to information about you and your life.  Should you listen for the underlying meaning, you will recognize that you are being offered powerful validation and encouragement at the precise moment needed to foster your growth.  And that includes opportunities to progress along the road of healing.
 
When you truly understand that healing is not a superficial, fixed state of happiness but rather an unfolding pathway to ever increasing emotional freedom, you liberate yourself from the artificial cultural rules that demand of us the humanly unachievable goal of bliss.  Every time you support yourself with compassion rather than condemning yourself for perceived failure, you are building inner strength.  That strength will continue to grow and continually propel you to progress and develop in a way that is natural, healthy and sustainable.
 
Healing, though, is not magic.  It does not erase traumatic experiences from memory or remove visceral reactions to imbedded pain.  Profound soul healing does not…does not…involve exoneration for those responsible for despicable acts.  Presuming that a militant abuser must play a role in your healing process is a dangerous misconception.  Every frozen smile, every automatic birthday greeting, every perfunctory invitation to a family celebration you extend to a militant abuser under the burden of duty is battery acid injected directly into your tender, healing heart.  Healing is not la-la land: it does not imply a happy place where all is well and everyone is wonderful.  Healing is breath and light--breathing and seeing.  An expansion of understanding, of learning to acknowledge and manage reality as it is, not as we wish it was, or as others insist it is.
 
Healing is our luminous, intelligent energy—our forever self—blossoming, gaining power, developing deep inner peace.  Healing is not a place.  It is not a finish line with a trophy.  Healing is a path.  A road full of potholes, twists and turns, and slippery slopes.  Healing is an ebb and flow of rising inner strength.  A constant tiptoe toward brighter and brighter horizons.  
 
Healing is not passive.  It is not a miracle.  It will not fall upon you like fairy dust.  Healing is personal action.  Healing is doing.  It is your deliberate act of attunement with the resonant forces of harmony that surround you and live beneath the darkness of entrenched trauma.  Healing teaches power while gaining power.  Through the on-going process of healing, you learn how to shift your precious energy from feeding emotional pain and focusing on all that cripples your life, to listening to the quiet whispers of your longing heart. 
 
Healing is opening your mind to all that is possible, allowing the mystical to guide you along the radiant path to clarity where you will find your untapped potential.  Healing is available to anyone who makes the personal, courageous decision to commit to themselves and to seeing. 
 
What is healing?  Healing, of course, is you.
 
Namaste
​

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    ADOPTION PRIVACY
    EXCERPT: Woman In Hiding
    INTROSPECTIVE
    POEMS
    SHAMING WOMEN
    TRAUMA
    VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

    Archives

    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed


    Women in Hiding Press Books:
    Picture
    Picture

    About the Author

    In the provocative spirit of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Gloria Anzaldua, and Mary Daly, Kathleen Hoy Foley expands and deepens the voice of female experience.

    Raw. Uncompromising. Compassionate. Deliberately antagonistic. Kathleen writes to awaken the courage within the reader.


    TO THE SURVIVOR
    If you are a person who was victimized as a child or as an adult, I am so very sorry you ever had to suffer at the hands of a predator. 

    I am sorry you were abused, sorry no one protected you, sorry you have felt so alone, sorry you have been so afraid then and in the now. I am so sorry for the loss of your innocence. 

    You were and are entitled to you life. And you had a right to inherit your own body. And no matter what you did or what you think you failed to do you are not to blame. Sexual abuse is never a victim's choice. Sexual abuse is something that was done to your body not something you wanted. 

    This is an excerpt from: 

    http://web.archive.org/web/20130101063123/http://true-perspective.org 

    Kathleen and I encourage you to visit this site for perspective on your ordeal. Live happy and whole. Claim you power! 

    You are your own authority.

    Question Everything.  Including social, religious & political authorities

    Learn to listen and respond to your intuition.  It is never wrong.

    Learn to be impolite.  It must be part of your defense system.

    Nothing is unspeakable.

    Stare truth in the eye and speak it.

    You name abuse.  Listen to your body.  It will tell you.  It is never wrong. 

    Stare abuse in the eye and speak it.

    Stare abusers in the eye and name them.

    Use your voice.  Use your words. 

    BE LOUD.  Violence against girls, boys, women and men hides in the silent shadows.

    Know that you are powerful.

    KNOW THAT YOUR VOICE IS POWERFUL.   USE IT.



© Copyright 2014-2020 Women in Hiding Press
Proudly powered by Weebly