WHOLING: Healing vs. Curing
We are a WE Kaleidescope
“We have to help heal each other’s pain.”
We are a WE. Yes, there is an ‘I’ and a ‘you’ and ‘me’. But importantly also a WE. And as this WE, what is our responsibility to each other? We live in a world where we are increasingly pulled away from realising that we and everyone/everything is connected.
For me, having lived through an incredibly complicated and rare cancer has definitely taught me a lot… more than I ever could have guessed. And certainly more than I wanted in some ways too. I never, for instance, really wanted what became a kind of Masters thesis-worth of knowledge about breast cancer, its treatments, statistics, side-effects and complications. But hey, wisdom, hard won all the same.
So, more now than ever, I am passionate about the distinction between healing and curing a person. One can be very healed and whole and still dying. One could also be cured of something, but not healed per se.
In fact, one could argue without anyone actually being able to prove otherwise, that we are all indeed going to die. And, therefore, it becomes pretty essential how we live and how we spend our 4000 weeks or so on this earthly plane.
Since ‘being ill’ with the whole cancer malarkey thing, my life and my interests are curated and honed increasingly on what is essential, and therefore wholing/healing – for me, for you, for all of us. It’s actually very simple. But not necessarily easy.
This is the stuff of facing difficulty; of facing discomfort directly – and not shrinking back. This is daring to live with eyes wide open, creating work and spaces to illuminate the dark and broken places in all their magnificence. It is about celebrating our lives, well lived even as they are fading fast.
I know I have wasted too much of my life already: trying to look good, trying to not need to ask for help, trying to get it right, perfect or beautiful…
“Where the wound of love bleeds & never heals… I wait for you there.”
So here’s to the perfectly imperfect in all of us, with all our squirmy, resisted, awkward, shameful, undesirable, embarrassed, difficult parts included… And the broken, open hearts and bodies, including the scarred and stitched back together bits.
And here, too, is to the stranger we will never meet who actually did the stitching up; to the stranger who lifted you up again after a fall off your bike; or who gave you a hard whack on the back on the train to keep you from choking.
When I traveled around the world, interviewing people for the In Your Own Skin project and listened deeply to them, without judgement, often, if not always, what people revealed most was what they loved. Here’s to all of us. We are a great whole WE.
Real strength is the ability to give and receive love. To open and be opened. Wholing and healing ourselves as we integrate the disowned parts one-by-one into being.
Blessings on your healing WHOLING life journey.
—————
What helps you find ground again when you feel lost?
What makes you most whole?
What is our responsibility to each other?
What are the values that guide us in our work and lives?
Speaking of we:
If you are in the UK, Be sure to book if you want to come and enjoy an evening connected in a great WE of gorgeous beings with drinks, poetry, surprise film short and the fab feature IN YOUR OWN SKIN film plus Q&A Friday 28th April at The Barn Cinema in Dartington. If you want us to come to your part of the world, please get in touch.
Here is an Interview with the rather gorgeous Ali Donkin, Dartington’s Film Programmer https://youtu.be/5eKKYhG8CXU
#perspective #simplicity #wellbeing #silence #rest #spacesinbetween #poetry #presence