Be Still and Become | Healing Journey

Embarking a healing journey is like going through bushes of torn, we will get scratches and bruises but it will all worth at the end.

Some may start the journey with the feeling of anxiety, disappointment of current life conditions, some might feel restless and lost. A feeling that something is just out of place, itchy that we don’t know where to scratch.

And so, we start to find the answer, without really understanding what we will get or face, it is just to ease the uncomfortable feeling, knowing something is not right within us and hence we try to get the remedy through the answers.

I remember how I started my own healing journey 9 months ago. It all started with the feeling of anxiety, feeling that there were missing pieces that I have not yet found, where life, as good as it was back then, still could not provide satisfaction that I was yearning for. I felt tired chasing a ‘perfect’ life yet I still feel empty inside.

For sure every person has a different reason why they start their journey and to what extent they want the journey to continue. However, if there’s any thin red line on why people start the journey is to heal the wound. Now the question is, whether we already know what wound we have, where is the wound, how many are the wounds, how bad are they or even what caused them, it is something that varies for each person but what usually happens is … we don’t even know that we have that wound.

Hence, the most crucial step to start our healing journey is to be aware that we need to heal. We can not heal a person who does not feel they need to be healed, we can not heal ourselves if we’re not aware that we’re sick. We start with awareness, whether we choose to heal ourselves or seek help is a different story, but at least we know.

Once we’re aware, we start to recognize areas that need to focus on. It can be anything, relationship area, family, self confidence, work related, love and many more. Perhaps for now we can only recognize the surface issues. For example, a good friend of mine, she was a successful career woman in her mid 30th, a lady boss as some might have called her. Her career went smoothly for her and she did not think she had a problem in that area. However, her love life was totally the opposite. She faced difficulties in maintaining relationships. Once she felt comfortable with a relationship, something always happened to break it, she felt it was she herself that sabotaged the relationship for whatever reason she did not know. Hence she got tired from any of it.

Another case, a woman in her mid 40s, felt anxious about something she did not know about. She tried everything, took sabbatical leave just to get a break from her job which at the end she quitted. Moved to a place that she thought will serve her passion better, yet at the end still did not get what she’s been searching for. When I heard her stories, it crossed my mind that there’s a possibility she might not know what is actually her issue. How can she heal from her anxiety if she doesn’t know what the issue is? So she was searching for an answer that she did not know the question yet.

So what do these stories tell us? My understanding (also taught by my beloved shifu :) — A healing journey is like burning a candle from both sides, one side is the healing itself while the other side is awareness. One can not succeed without the others. One needs to have awareness to heal, yet awareness alone can not heal us without any healing modality.

Back to the bushes, why do we say a healing journey is like going through bushes of thorn? Just imagine if those thorns are our own fear, our own past traumas that made us what we are now that created a pattern of the anxiety and misery we are facing. Things that had been hidden deep within us, a wound we wrapped and sealed so tightly so nobody will see it, not even ourselves.

In the healing process, we need to go through within and have those wounds open so we can find the right remedy to cure. As if we reach down to touch the wound that lies right underneath the protective shell that has been hindering us from healing. That process takes courage and bravery, how could it not? One might get passed out by seeing other people’s wounds, just imagine we see our own, open and bleeding.

Taking example from my own case, my surface issue is the fact that I never felt love throughout my 40+ years of life. Until one day the ‘What is Love’ question brought me to this healing journey. Little did I know, the journey brought me to the darkest corner of my childhood memories. Memories that I have never told anyone, memories that I buried inside.

And so, dear reader, part of the healing journey is to be aware of that wound, by accepting that the wound exists, no matter how painful/shameful it is. From there, we can start observing deeper on the root cause and hence the journey toward healing begins. One notable advice on healing ; healing is a process, it comes from letting there be all of the trauma to happen, room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

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About Be Still and Become : Be Still and Become is an in-depth spiritual learning module developed by Wakuha - By writing this essay, she allowed me to learn, assess while at the same time speak with my own understanding about each of the lesson learned.

Note to readers : I’m not a professional writer. One of the reason for me to write this essay is to share my journey with you and hope somehow it can give you inspiration or even courage to move with your own journey. Maybe some of you read this essay because you have seen a glimpse of my story in IG, which then I can tell you it is not the whole story and will never be, but nor did this essay. This essay was written based on my limited knowledge of life and as a human being I might be deluded to my own perception.

Another reason is to speak my truth, but sometimes the truth is a pill that is hard to chew. If somehow you find my story a bit too hard to resonate with, I can understand and maybe it is not the right time for us yet.