This Is How You Choose To Heal

Do you ever think about all of the open wounds that you never gave the appropriate time to heal? Are you carrying around healed wounds or untreated trauma?

There’s a song by India Arie where I feel that she speaks to all of our hurt. Within these lyrics, she addresses the very pains and traumas that we refuse to. In this song, she says, “Get it together, you wanna heal your body. Get it together, you have to heal your heart.”

If you’ve listened to this song before, then it’s within those words where the listener is reminded of the amount of trauma still present within. While humming the tune, you probably acknowledge just how weighed down you are by all of the things that you claimed to have let go of. I’m not here to judge, because I think we’ve all had those moments when we just wanted to be over something and we don’t give a damn about a healing process. The problem with that is when we don’t give ourselves enough time to heal, we weigh ourselves down and throw a bandage over the wounds that need more attention. So, we run from the healing process because it’s gruesome and it requires so much more out of us.

In the end, it affects us even worse because we don’t heal from the things that we don’t address. We end up lugging around old wounds with aged bandages that are threatening to fall off and expose us to all types of infection. Sometimes it’s easier to cover them than to heal them without considering the effects. When we avoid proper mending, we run the risk of reopening unhealed trauma and only making it worse. How long has it been since you’ve stopped and considered all of the untreated trauma that you carry around?

To heal, we have to identify the cause of our suffering. I think of this as us taking a mental trip down memory lane or a peek through our mental file cabinet. We must take this journey and find whatever it is that is bothering us. During this journey, we’re forced to face what lurks in the shadows head-on and feel it.

The thing we forget to consider while healing is that this whole process is based on patience. It cannot be rushed. We’ve gotta be patient with ourselves, because if we aren’t, we risk causing more damage to our already distressed state. True healing from deep-rooted pain requires boundless patience. When we are allowing ourselves to heal, we cannot set deadlines or rush the process. In other words, to restore ourselves, we have to let go of our need to control. We have to accept that in the process of mending, we have no control over how long it takes. All we control is how we treat ourselves while we heal.

Also, when it comes to restoring ourselves, we have to come up with and depend on the things that force us to be mindful. For me, the process of healing has always taken me to my notebook. It has always taken me to a blank or half-filled sheet of paper so I can bleed onto it. The best way I know how to heal is to write, to spill all of my frustrations into a book, poem, or even one of these posts. In doing so, I am allowing myself the time to address my hurt and mend it on its time. If I can do it, then you can too.

You deserve the time to rebuild and reconstruct. You deserve to heal all aged trauma to improve your quality of life. You deserve to be free of all pain and distress. So, when will you start your journey?