Is Healing Separate From Living?

What if living fully and being in process require each other?

Some perspectives suggest that healing is separate from living.

That the healing process is in the way of living a life—a good one.

And that healing should eventually come to an end, so that living can resume.

I’m here to offer a view that is slightly more nuanced.

Let’s dissect it, shall we?

The process of healing is one in which we allow something—a living system, an organism, a body, a mind, to return to its original state.

It is the process of something coming back together again - becoming whole.

That implies, of course, that a split, a rupture, a type of damage was caused to begin with.

In order for said system to function properly again, it must go through this process of restoration— return back to health.

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As humans, we are fractured.

And yes, this is the human condition. We come into a world with a set of rules and expectations that are placed upon us by design.

And because we need the tribe to survive, we prioritise connection at the expense of our authentic expression.

This is the big split, and this is really what we get to heal from.

But just because this is the human condition at this point in our evolution, that doesn’t mean we get to ignore the real impact that it has on us.

Walking in the world with a fragmented sense of self—with pieces of us left behind, rejected, denied and deemed unlovable, is surely no way to live a good life.

In fact, stepping into more empowering versions of ourselves will require the continuous act of meeting ourselves in our painful experiences and making space for all our aspects and parts—as well as our gifts.

And by meeting our pain, I don’t mean becoming identified with it, but creating the necessary conditions for repair to occur— through presence, curiosity, acceptance and honesty.

This is healing.

And without this process, authentic expansion has no real solid ground to stand on.

Now, when we do become aware of the split I mentioned above, do we abandon our lives to go put ourselves back together again?

Maybe some do. The majority don’t.

We do the healing while we continue living.

In fact, life IS the ground that provides us with the exact opportunities we need to integrate our disconnected parts.

And as we heal and integrate, we grow. We expand. We move forward. We live life in accordance to this newer version of us that is more put together.

And, depending on the severity of trauma and human conditioning that a person has, that split from authenticity can be not one, but many.

And as you put back one piece—where being seen is safe for example—another layer of your body and psyche will ask to be integrated.

So in this sense, you never stop living to heal — quite the contrary. You live while you heal.

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Healing allows you to create space for newness, for freshness, for exploring new identities and flavours of being.

It allows you to expand and grow, so that you’re ready and safe enough to continue integrating the parts of you that suffered that split.

So in this sense, I don’t see healing as separate from co-creation at all! But an inherent part of it— something necessary for authentic action taking and self-expression.

We try on new versions of ourselves BECAUSE we have created the space and safety to do so.

Because now, our body and psyche know what integration feels like, and seek more of it.

And FROM that place of wholeness and integration, we continue to create the lives we want.

So healing is not separate from living, it cannot be.

It is what ALLOWS aligned and authentic living.

Otherwise we act from wounding.

Healing IS what will lead you and guide you to more intentionality, creativity and alignment.

Why?

Because this is our nature. This is what we ultimately want. This is what we came here for.

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To end, I believe that, to live lives full of aliveness and purpose, we must heal— not as a done once and for all thing, but as an act of continually tending to ourselves.

Healing isn’t the only journey of life—of course it isn’t! But it might be one that keeps weaving itself through all the others.

Maybe I’m too fixated on semantics, and this topic needs a lot more flexibility than it is currently receiving.

And so, for the sake of genuine conversation, let’s hear the different perspectives surrounding this theme. My own perspective might expand and I’m open to it.

With love,

A x