Tag Archives: thought work and healing

Four shifts to heal your life.

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Sun shining through fingers

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here if this was forwarded to you.)

Shift #1: More soul, less façade. Explore the difference between your essential self and your social self. We all have both, and we all need both. Learn which one is in the driver’s seat, and how to change drivers if you choose to.

Many writers and thinkers have explored this core concept, often using different labels for these two parts of ourselves. Other names for “Soul” include Nature, Essential Self, Heart, True Self, and Must. Other names for “Façade” include culture, false self, space suit self, and should.

A couple of ways to begin to work with soul and façade:
1. Ask yourself these questions: What do you do because you should? What do you do just because you want to? What’s the payoff in doing things you don’t want to do but you believe you should? What’s the proportion of “should” vs “want to”? Are you happy with this?

2. If you played with last week’s “If God is … then I am … and my soul is ….” exercise, ask yourself what the opposite is. Is this a good metaphor for your façade?
Example: If God is an infinite underground river of living water, then I am a spring, and my soul is the place in the Earth where water emerges. The opposite of this could be something like “I am a Costco parking lot. I keep water from moving freely through the earth underneath me.” This feels like a good metaphor for façade to me, because wildness erupts when water is free to flow where it wants to go. So then I would ask myself where I’m hard and unyielding, stopping up living water.


Shift #2: More acceptance, less resistance. Explore your beliefs about the inevitable changes of being alive. To live is to change. Much of our suffering comes from misunderstanding and resisting change.

Change is a feature of this human life, not a bug. Because to live is to change, we have infinite chances to begin again, over and over. Every loss leads to new life. Where are you resisting change? Do you have losses to grieve? Thoughts about change to disbelieve?

Here are two blog posts from the archive for exploring this core concept further.
Seven things I wish I’d known about change fifty years ago.
Change and Covid.  (Written early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know what the hell was happening.)



Shift #3: More intention, less reaction. Explore how your thoughts cause your feelings, not the other way around. This is good news, because you can learn to choose your thoughts.

Learning to hear and question the thoughts that precede your feelings is the work of a lifetime. And it’s so worth it. When we’re in charge of our brain, we can choose thoughts that make us happier, healthier, and more whole. It’s that simple.

The most powerful tool I know to start hearing your thoughts is the Awareness Wheel. Remember, if a thought causes suffering, it isn’t true.  

Post from the archives: Thoughts create feelings. Feelings motivate actions. Actions determine results. Your results become your life.
If you want more of my writing about the Change Cycle, there’s lots. Just search “change” on the top right corner of the blog. 

Shift #4: More creator, less victim. Explore the victim triangle and the empowerment dynamic. Create the life you want, instead of passively settling for the life you have.

To what are you acquiescing? To what do you aspire? That’s all you really need to notice. Then ask yourself Dr. Edith Eger’s Four Questions:
1. What do you want?
2. Who wants it? (You, someone else, the culture, etc.?)
3. What are you going to do about it?
4. When?

Blog post from the archives: This will change your life. I’m not kidding. 


PS. We’re approaching the Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. I love this time of year, not because of holiday energy but because of the growing dark. Despite the frantic nature of holiday preparations all around, this growing dark feels to me like a time for letting go. A time to embrace emptiness, silence, and waiting.

I’ve been doing this work for ten years now. I feel a new thing wanting to emerge, and I want to honor that feeling. So I’m trusting the cycle and letting go of my coaching practice as currently constituted. My surgery and subsequent newsletter hiatus created a lull in my client roster, so this is a perfect time. 

I don’t know what my coaching work will look like going forward. I have a hunch I’ll be writing and offering classes, workshops, and retreats. I’ll be organizing ten years worth of blog posts into categories and putting them under a coaching tab on my website as PDFs. I’ll continue to writing books, both fiction and nonfiction. I’ll continue to send this email as I have news and writing to share. Probably. What I do know is that I love this work, and I want to honor my soul’s mysterious “musts.” I also know that new life grows in the dark, and emerges on its own time. 

So much change happens in the dark. I’m wishing you abundant blessings of this dark time and the return of the light, and I look forward to connecting in the new year.
What does it mean that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?  ~Mary Oliver

Photo credit: Natalie Rhea Rigg on Unsplash

Safety is a feeling, not a fact.

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Bare feet overlooking the Grand Canyon

This week’s newsletter is the “to be continued” from last week’s story about my dad’s accidental death, my grief, and our Grand Canyon pilgrimage. (You can read last week’s newsletter here. Thank you for your many responses and well-wishes!)

Friends, I did not get to sit with my brother where he deposited my dad’s ashes 41 years ago. Here’s why. The road out to South Bass trailhead goes through the Havasupai Indian Reservation. The Havasu, like many Tribes, have been decimated by COVID and have closed all access. When we arrived at the boundary between the Park and the Reservation, we found a locked gate. My brother, who’s not in the best of health, and my sister-in-law stayed behind while Jed and I resorted to Plan B – a short hike down the Grandview trail, a trail I hiked many times in my youth with my dad.

I thought I was going to the Canyon to be with my dad and say good-bye. It turns out the Canyon was calling me home to myself.

I hiked in the Canyon (no one native to northern Arizona calls it the “Grand Canyon”) with my dad at least two or three times a year throughout my teens.  As I remember, those hikes were long, hot, dusty, and beautiful, but not hard.

Outside the Canyon, my teenage years were hard. My parents divorced when I was twelve, which meant the loss of more than a family. My mom then married a man who consistently and intentionally violated my body’s boundaries and was emotionally abusive to me. My alcoholic dad also remarried, three more times.

But I was still okay. I handled the bad shit by putting it in a bubble and ignoring it. I was resilient. I had good friends. I was simply waiting out the crazy around me, waiting for my chance to live my own life. I still mostly knew who I was and what I wanted.

My dad’s sudden, random death changed that. It was the final straw. I finally lost track of myself that day. I see, in retrospect, that his death destroyed my childish faith in a benevolent Universe.

I began to seek safety above all else.

I’m not alone in seeking safety. Many of my clients strive for safety. They yearn for something different and deeper in their lives. For new countries and old dreams. But they’re smart. They know that renewing their commitment to their lives and their priorities, reclaiming the fierceness and passion they felt as girls and young women, requires change. And change isn’t safe. Telling the truth to themselves and their partners, asking for what they want, will potentially blow their current lives up.

Here’s what I comprehended sitting 1000 feet below the South Rim of the Grand Canyon: I am still that girl who knew who she was. I am still the strong, capable, smart, resilient girl who loved the rocks and the trees and the birds. That’s true.

And two of the ways I’ve defined myself, as the victim of both sexual abuse and cosmic father robbery, are lies. They’re NOT true, and believing them causes suffering.

Yes, those things happened. They happened to me. I did not choose them. I did not control them. And, although I didn’t know it, what I’ve made them mean all these decades was actually within my control and power. What I choose to make them mean going forward is my decision and mine alone.

It turns out this trip was about facing and deconstructing wispy identities that aren’t solid enough to sustain me, and that obscure my integrity.

The Grand Canyon is solid. I was solid. I’m still solid. There’s bedrock in me, as solid and reliable as the Vishnu Schist, the Redwall, the Coconino Sandstone.

But my never-ending search for safety dammed my flow as surely as Glen Canyon Dam has turned the roiling, muddy, floody Colorado into a placid, useful river.

We’re taught to look for safety outside ourselves. Especially as women living in a patriarchy, we’re taught that following the rules and submitting to masculine culture’s expectations will keep us safe.

And then there’s religion. I think traditional religion’s biggest promise is the promise of safety: God has a plan, and It’s all in His hands. Here are the rules that will keep you safe. If you follow the rules, you’ll go to heaven when you die. Etc., etc., etc. (If that’s working for you, rock on!)

But here’s the thing: looking for safety outside ourselves will never work. The world is not safe. We live in time-limited flesh and blood bodies that hit trees, get cancer, or die in a myriad of other ways. If we’re lucky, we finally just wear out. Bad shit happens. All the damn time.

Safety is a feeling, not a fact. Feelings are created by our thoughts. So the only way to feel safe is to think thoughts that create that feeling.

I’m not talking about denial or positive thinking. I’m talking about healing your foundational worldview and seeing the world and yourself differently. I’m talking about Intentionally choosing thoughts that create an authentic feeling of safety. Thoughts rooted in a worldview that makes sense to you, that you actually believe in.

As I sat in my body on a rock below the rim of the Canyon, the same body that last traveled this trail forty-two years ago, I remembered what I used to know: I am strong. I am resilient. I am creative. I can fucking handle anything.

These thoughts are rooted in my deep belief that the world is holy. My body is made of this incredibly beautiful world and will return to it when I die, therefore I’m holy, too.

These thoughts are rooted in my grown-up understanding that to be alive is to change, and change is holy, too.

These thoughts are rooted in my experience. I have handled so much pain, been swaddled in so much joy, and reveled in so much beauty in these sixty plus years. I’ve loved and been loved so deeply. I’ll bet you have, too.

I have grown-up faith in this sustaining, incredibly generous universe.

Want to explore your bedrock, your dams, and your dreams? Reach out here to schedule a free no-obligation conversation. I’d love to connect.

My newsletter is where I share my latest news: coaching offerings, pop-up workshops, guest posts, etc. You can subscribe here.

Photo credit: Barb Morris, 16 April 2021.

Four healing shifts and a simple awareness practice.

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Sun shining through fingers

I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.” 

  1. More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations. 
  2. More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
  3. More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often. 
  4. More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.” 

Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.

Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.

Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.

My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable. 

Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.

1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet.
2. Scan your body for sensations.
3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are.
4. Sit with yourself for two minutes. 

Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.

That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive. 

Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.

You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.

All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.

I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback. 

I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you! 

PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

What would it feel like to be free?

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Girl in field of daisies: You are holy. You are perfect. You are beloved. You are safe.

I wonder what it would feel like to be free. What would it feel like to know that I am perfect just as I am? To know I can be 100% me in the world and I would be safe? To know I can say what I think and share how I feel and I would still be valued and belong to a community? To know that I could tell the truth and have a family and friends who love me?

What would it be like to truly comprehend that, in reality, hiding and not sharing myself is what creates loneliness and division?

If you think your true nature is too outrageous and loud and uncouth, or too quiet and sensitive – if you reject your true nature and judge yourself as unacceptable and wrong – then no external healing on the planet can touch that inner disconnect.

That inner disconnect, your self-loathing and lack of love for your authentic being, reproduces itself in your outer reality because of this cycle: Thoughts create feelings. Feelings drive actions. Actions produce results. Results accumulate to become the circumstances of your life. Then you think more thoughts about your results and circumstances, and the cycle continues.

If your foundational thought is “I’m not okay. I’m not good enough. I have to pretend to be someone I’m not to be safe and loved,” then you will feel fear and shame. Fear and shame drive actions that probably look a lot like being good, accumulating achievements, and meeting others’ expectations. These actions produce results that accumulate to create your life – a life that doesn’t fit who you really are. Your life becomes an illusion that must be maintained so you feel okay about yourself. Maintaining the illusion takes a tremendous amount of energy and is ultimately unsustainable.

Living a lie is always unsustainable. Your belief that you’re not okay, you’re not good enough, and you have to pretend to be someone you’re not to be safe and loved is a lie. I know it’s a lie because it causes suffering.

The way back to the truth is not to believe something else really hard.

It won’t work to tell ourselves over and over that we’re fine just the way we are if we still, deep down, believe we’re shit. We have to drop the lie that’s causing suffering. We have to see the lie for what it really is, and replace it with the truth.

The source of your self-worth is ultimately a faith question. Your innate worthiness, your guaranteed belovedness, your essential holiness, can’t be proven. It can, however, be experienced and remembered. There was a time in your life when you were deeply connected with your innate preciousness. You didn’t question it. Even if your mind can’t pull up those memories, your body remembers. That connection still exists. You just have to find the connection and strengthen it. Even though the spring has gotten blocked, the source of the flow remains. The blockage just has to be dislodged so the water can flow. The lie of “not okayness” is the blockage. And the water wants so badly to flow through you.

Try this. Put one hand on your heart and the other on your belly. Breathe deeply. Feel your heart beating. Now imagine that you’re holding a baby or a cat or a dog in your arms. That tender, perfect creature is in your care, and they’re completely safe. Just resting on your chest, being completely who they are. Now imagine that you’re that baby or that animal, and you’re resting completely in the arms of a loving presence who’s got you and is never going to let go. Call that presence what you want – God, Universe, Mother, whatever. You are holy. You are perfect. You are beloved. And you are so, so safe.

This is the truth. You were born perfect. You’re still perfect. You’ll always be perfect.

Freedom is knowing that the thoughts keeping you caged are lies, and they’re flimsy as dust. Freedom is living as the perfect, holy creature you are.

Choose to believe the truth you’ve always known. Choose to be free.  

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash, edited on Canva

Thoughts create feelings. Feelings motivate actions. Actions determine results.

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How to work with your thoughts so you create the life you want and value.

“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Does that quote piss you off just a little? It does me. There are things I feel I ought to be able to complain about. Things that just aren’t right, but that don’t seem to be within my power to correct. Things like White nationalism, the persistence of misogynist patriarchy, and rampant capitalism, for example. But what good does complaining about any of that do? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. At least for me.

I believe Eckhart Tolle is correct. I make myself a victim when I complain. If a situation is truly intractable, the only sane course of action is to accept it. Because the above-mentioned forces are man-made (deliberate use of “man”), they are changeable. It’s just that changing them requires such hard work and an eye on the long game that they feel intractable.

I also see in myself a tendency to complain about situations I could leave or change, if I were willing to live with someone else’s anger or my own discomfort. I blame others for my choice to remain in situations that I don’t like. We complain when we don’t want to change, or when we feel powerless because the problem is so damn big. We choose not to change because we’re afraid of the hard work and the consequences.  

I learned something in life coach training that blew my mind: Thoughts create feelings. I always thought it was the other way around. Nope. Here’s how it works:

Thoughts create feelings, which create actions, which create results, which lead to more thoughts, which create more feelings, which create more actions, which produce more results, which lead to more thoughts … on and on, around and around …

You can see how we can get ourselves pretty deep into a gnarly clusterf*ck if we don’t understand how this works.

Your thoughts create your feelings which motivate your actions which produce results. You then have thoughts about those results, which create feelings, which motivate actions, which produce more results. All of these results add up to your circumstances.

Of course, all of this is happening within the complex human ecosystem which is you. You exist within a matrix of material reality interwoven with Holy energy. And, as mentioned above, we live in a culture that privileges Whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, and wealth, which certainly affects your life.

If you’re an adult and you’re reading this, your present circumstances are largely a product of your actions. You did this. Every step of the way. The circumstances in which you find yourself are the result of actions you took in response to feelings produced by your thoughts.

Although we like to blame others for our adult circumstances, unless you’re being held captive, that blame is probably not accurate. I’m NOT saying you caused your cancer or depression or whatever. I AM saying that if your cancer or depression or whatever is creating unnecessary suffering, you can allevate that suffering by taking responsibility for it. It may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.

If you’re looking around at a life you didn’t intentionally create and you’re not thrilled about, it’s because you didn’t know about this cycle — how it works and how to create meaningful change for yourself.

How do you take responsibility for this cycle and the results it’s produced in your life? By understanding it and learning to intervene in it skillfully. To grow up is to understand this cycle and to use it to create the life you want.

Circumstances we don’t like and feelings we don’t like are where we usually notice distress, so it’s natural to think they are what we need to fix first.

We would be wrong.

Thoughts and actions are the only places we can break the cycle and put ourselves back in charge of our lives.

When we try to fix feelings without attending to the thoughts that drive them, we deny our feelings or numb them with addictions and compulsions. To alleviate uncomfortable feelings, we take impulsive actions, or no action at all because we feel paralyzed. These careless actions are useless at best, destructive at worst.  

When we try to fix results of our clumsy actions without addressing the feelings and thoughts that drove those actions, we simply recreate the same circumstances over and over again. We all know people who’ve moved, changed jobs, coupled up or broken up, gone back to school, had a baby, or something else to alleviate the discomfort of their circumstances and feelings. Heck, I’ve done this myself a time or two. Wherever you go, there you are.

Unskillful interventions create more suffering in the long run, and they don’t produce lasting change and healing.

Skillful interventions, on the other hand, reduce suffering and result in long-term change and healing.

How do we intervene in this cycle skillfully and effectively?

A good place to start is to notice what you’re complaining about. If you complain about a circumstance in your life, you’re making yourself a victim. Stop it. Stop and look at what’s really going on. Follow the cycle backwards. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What actions have I taken that resulted in this present circumstance?
  • What feelings was I having that drove those actions?
  • What thoughts created those feelings?

(A coach or other careful listener can be really helpful here, because we’re often blind to how the cycle has worked in our lives. If we could see it clearly, we’d make different choices!)

Actions: If you’re choosing destructive actions to alleviate feelings you don’t want to have, stop it. Are you overeating? Overdrinking? Overspending? Yelling at your kids or your spouse or the driver in front of you? And recognize that simply ceasing an action without attending to the feelings and thoughts that drive that action is unsustainable in the long run. Will power isn’t infinite.

Feelings: Uncomfortable feelings won’t kill you when you feel them. Feel your feelings all the way, and they lose their power. You’ll discover that you can feel your feelings and survive. Learning to feel feelings without needing to act on them in ways that are destructive to your life and your integrity – that’s freedom. That’s maturity.

Thoughts: The most effective and sustainable place to intervene in this cycle is with our thoughts. This is the bulk of the coaching I do, because most of us need help hearing our thoughts and changing them to thoughts that serve us.

Here’s an example from my own life. I feel embarrassed to share it. I also believe many of you can relate, so here goes.

I often crave potato chips, even when I’m not hungry. The cycle goes like this: I see potato chips and I think, “I deserve those today, I won’t be able to stand not eating them now that I see them, and a few won’t hurt me.”  So I want them, I eat too many of them, and I feel overfull and not proud of myself. I haven’t acted in my own best interests and according to my values. This is what I did just a couple of days ago.

I could have interrupted this cycle in two places. I could have noticed the wanting, felt it all the way, and not eaten the potato chips. This is what I usually manage to do. The most powerful place to intervene, though, is with the thought, “I won’t be able to stand not eating them.” Because I know if I can just let that craving be what it is, it will eventually dissipate and I’ll be fine. The craving is just neurons firing in my brain, after all. Although it feels lethal, it’s not. This is getting easier and easier for me to do as I rewire my brain. I hardly ever eat when I’m not hungry anymore.

Now, for most of us, potato chips aren’t the end of the world. But sometimes, because we don’t know how this process works, we make choices with destructive consequences that are life-altering.

Looking back on my life, I can see how I’ve gotten where I am, both the good and the bad. I can draw a line from the circumstances in which I’m living now, back to the actions I took to manage the feelings I was having, and then even further back to the thoughts that drove those feelings, and the circumstances that created the thoughts, and so on and on and on.

Here in my 60s, I can see how choices I made when I was in my teens and 20s have resulted in a life that doesn’t fit in important ways. I can stop doing the things that hurt me, but it’s working with my thoughts that has created and continues to create lasting change and healing.

Because of what went down in my childhood family, I believed I wasn’t worthy of living my own life on my terms. My choices flowed from that core belief. The only way I’ve been able to heal is to examine those tangled beliefs, and to begin to learn to think different thoughts. It’s not easy. Lasting change rarely is.

Now that I know better, I can do better. So can you. Start with where you’re complaining, and work backwards. Contact me if you want to talk.

Living a Healed Life

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A woman meets her soul: photo of child and bear

The source of your woundedness isn’t what you think it is. The reason you feel broken isn’t what other people did to you. You don’t feel broken because of the things that have happened to you. The source of your wounds is your beliefs. You feel broken because of your thoughts about those people and those events.

This is good news.

You can’t change other people, and you can’t change the past. What you are totally and completely in charge of is your thoughts and beliefs. The source of our sickness is who we believe ourselves to be – our foundational metaphors. If we’re swimming in a polluted worldview, our lives will be sick. (Last week’s very long post goes into this concept in detail.)

We heal when we learn to think healing thoughts. It’s that simple.

Two things I’m not saying: I’m not saying that others’ bad behavior is okay. I’m not saying you should overlook someone else’s violence or tolerate boundary violations, and just think happy thoughts. I’m not telling you to forgive, although that may happen.

I’m also not promoting the Law of Attraction – the belief that my thoughts make things happen in the physical world. This is different. The work I’m talking about changes who I think I am, which then affects the world around me. There’s a big difference between the magical thinking of manifesting 101 and the hard work of learning to think healing thoughts.

I am talking about solid neuroscience. We see what we tell our brains to look for. If your worldview is negative, you’ll find ample evidence to prove your beliefs, and you won’t change your mind. Your polluted metaphor has shaped your brain in profound ways. Your current worldview is like an eight-lane neuron superhighway that’s easy and automatic. And so very unhelpful. Our brains want to stay on this wide, fast, easy street precisely because it’s easy and automatic. Back in cave woman days, when resources were scarce, our brains evolved to favor the easy and automatic. Learning new ways of thinking and building new neuron pathways requires energy, so our brains, still stuck in survival mode, resist it.

Most of us aren’t currently living in food scarcity, in fear of saber-toothed tiger attacks. We can afford the resources to rewire our brains, if we choose to. But, because learning to think healing thoughts is uncomfortable and often not supported by your family and friends, you must make it your priority. Your health and wholeness must be your priority. If it’s not, you won’t do it. Why not? Because rewiring your brain is freaking hard, scary work.

Why does healing feel so scary? Why do we resist it?

1.This wounded place is familiar. When we accept the healing that’s always offered, we choose to travel an unfamiliar road into unknown territory – the opposite of easy and automatic. Our brains resist this.

2. When we regrow and expand parts of ourselves on our journey toward wholeness, it can hurt, just like when blood flows into your leg that’s been asleep, or into a frostbitten hand. You get a functioning limb at the end of the process, but the process can hurt like hell.

3. We’ve constructed our lives based on being one particular shape. When we let our shapes flow and grow, the lives we’ve built will inevitably be disrupted. Healing leads to change, and change always destroys one thing while something new is created. Metamorphosis is naturally destructive.

When we regrow and expand a part of ourselves, our new shape can cause friction. We rub against others differently. They might not want to stay connected to us. We might not want to stay connected to them!

4. These newly grown or uncovered parts, like babies and puppies, will be messy and disorganized, at least for a time. They are raw and vulnerable and sensitive. So healing can cause feelings of incompetence and lostness, which are especially disruptive for those of us who put a premium on feeling competent and confident.

Our armor has been our protection. Our armor has also been constraining, a too-small skin. Armor has kept us safe, but it’s also been heavy, clanky, and inflexible. When we uncover, shed layers, grow new limbs, we can feel raw, exposed, and ungainly.

So why choose to heal, if healing is uncomfortable, painful, and disruptive?

We are created by God, the Ultimate Wholeness, in whom we live and move and have our being, to be whole, holy, and healthy. The Holy One wants us to heal.

A healed life is a powerful life. When we stop spending our time and energy staying small and playing nice, we can use our time and energy to change the world. We can stop scoping for danger and worrying about being acceptable, and start seeing the broken places around us where we can bring healing. We can use our anger for good, rather than stuffing it because we’re afraid someone (looking at you, patriarchy) won’t like us.

Because we’re adults now, and we can keep ourselves safe. Because we have an inkling we’re not living the life we were put on this earth to live. Because we know there’s more joy and love on the other side of healing. Because once we see the ways we’re choosing safety and smallness, we can’t unsee them. Because choosing to stay armored and small requires more energy than finally shrugging off the armor to run light and free.

Because living as people who trust ourselves and our good hearts, people listening to our souls, is our calling.

The choice to heal, to learn how to feel fear and act in spite of the fear, makes us invincible. Unstoppable. And legions of invincible, unstoppable warriors leading healed lives will change and heal our world.

Two of my favorite “thought work” resources are Kara Lowentheil’s blog and podcast, Unf*ck Your Brain (heads up: Kara uses salty language) and The Work of Byron Katie. These two resources are very different in tone but their aim is the same: choosing thoughts deliberately.

As always, if you’d like to talk more about these ideas and get some immediate clarity, please schedule a no-cost, no-obligation call with me here.

Image: The Bear and the Child, kid-lit.net, photographer unknown