Your Relationship with Healing and Power
Many of us have an ambivalent relationship with power and only vague notions of what our personal healing would look like.
Written and narrated by Demian Yumei
I talk a lot about healing. Though personal healing has defining attributes that are pretty universal, what it looks like is unique to each individual.
For some, healing, and the empowerment it brings, may look like leaving a relationship or job or endeavor. For others, it may look like staying. Some people may find themselves opening up to more people. Others may find themselves seeking solitude. It might look like getting a job or choosing to resign from one.
There are two questions that are helpful to ask.
What does healing look like to me?
And what is my relationship to power, itself?
1. What Does Healing Look Like to Me?
What do you imagine your life will look like as you heal? What changes do you desire, expect, or hope to see? What freedoms will you have? What will you be able to do that you can’t do now or would like to do more of?
How will your relationships change, including the one you have with yourself?
Granted, sometimes, all we want is for the pain to stop. But what does that relief from pain look like?
These aren’t fixed goals to work toward or attain with perfection. They’re flexible. They breathe with the values you have and the priorities you hold. Your idea of healing and what it looks like can and, in all likelihood, will change, however big or small, as they grow with you.
Having a visual image can, also, help you to choose the tools and resources you need to help you get there.
Just remember this. Flowers envision the sun as they open to the sky. Enclosed within the bud, they know their goal. They don’t apologize for it nor are they embarrassed or self-critical when the night comes.
Be gentle with yourself.
This is meant to be an exercise in curiosity not of self-judgement or criticism.
If what you expect healing to look like in your life doesn’t happen or happen fast enough, it doesn’t mean real healing isn’t happening at all. It might mean the changes that will come will be arriving on their own timetable.
Or it may mean that serendipity has something better up its sleeve to deliver.
And then again, it may mean that you need to reassess your choices and ascertain whether you need to engage in a different practice or course of action.
2. What Is Your Relationship With Power?
When you heal, things change. You change. You learn. You grow.
Healing is a force. It is power. It removes obstacles, time-travels, binds and lets go. It is gentle, filled with grace, and harsh, and unrelenting.
It’s the energy behind and within change, and not just change but deep change, transformative change—intensive as metamorphosis, caterpillar to butterfly, or subtle as a gentle smile where before there was pain.
So, in our healing, it’s good to know what kind of relationship we have with power. Because that is what healing is and does.
It empowers you…
To live your life.
To speak your truth.
To define who you are.
To draw your boundaries.
To make your own decisions.
To dance your joy, your dreams, to whatever music calls you.
This power, the power that comes from within, is empowerment. It precludes the need to have power over others, including the rivers, the trees, and waters, the world, and humanity.
Empowered people don’t need to be bullies or seek to become dictators. They don’t need to control. That is for the weak.
If I said, “The power of healing lies within you”… if power is that close, what’s your gut reaction?
Do you feel inspired to rise up to this idea of personal power or do you recoil from it? Are you incredulous, because seriously, the notion of you having power is laughable?
Are you not allowed?
Or do you hear just another demand, another standard you have to struggle to meet? Does it come with personal judgment, laden with expectations for where you ought to be in your healing… but aren’t?
Healing is the power of creating, recreating, and redefining yourself. And though it looks different for each person, it’s the heart of the healing journey.
As such, Healing and Power can feel frightening, even threatening.
If you have an ambivalent relationship with power, or you don’t feel you have a right to the power that healing brings, you may sabotage yourself so that it doesn’t matter who you work with or what type of healing modality you choose, because you won’t let yourself receive the power that healing unlocks within you.
You may listen to your fears instead or the objections of others who don’t want you to change, and they will be there, and you will have them—those who benefit from how things are and your place in it. They may insist, and even make sure, you never have any real power, never know true healing.
And that would be a tragedy if you acquiesce to that pressure.
Instead, sit with these questions. Let yourself explore them with curiosity. Play with how healing would express itself through you. Get to know how you feel about becoming more empowered. Get to know you.
You can take small steps.
It may be that the only picture you’re able to conjure up about what healing looks like is you getting through this day. That’s great! What would that look like?
Then when you’re ready to rest for the night or for the next ten minutes, let your mind wander and wonder. What might tomorrow look like with a touch of healing? Or the next hour?
Leaps and bounds, two steps forward, one step back, skipping along or dragging your feet, shimmying and sashaying your way along your path or off it to venture into the wild. Whatever is right for you.
Let the pictures you have of yourself in your healing, at any point of your journey, lead you forward to the reality of who and what you are becoming.
Make peace with your relationship to power and your willingness to let yourself have what you say you want. You don’t have to unblock every psychological obstacle to do this. All you have to do is say yes, or at least, “I’m willing. I’m willing to say yes.”
And like the gentle presence of the full pale moon, sometimes that realization is all that’s needed to pull the tides of change.
From my heart to yours,
Demian Yumei ~ Silent No More
Silent No More is a pro-democracy voice with focus on personal healing, creative expression and activism through the written and spoken word, and song.
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