When Healing Seems Impossible
The concept of healing has always fascinated me, and I suppose all the more since I have become painstakingly aware of my own chronic pain post-concussion. Envisioning my future without pain hasn’t been a difficult thing for me, but I would always imagine it after a sudden and miraculous event of instant physical healing, like something from a fairytale.
It wasn’t until I dug deep, and I mean REAL deep while in some of the worst physical pain of my life that I realized that there are two kinds of healing: you can be healed from something, and you can be healed through something.
Being healed from something was what I had always imagined. What I never could have imagined was that I was already in the process of being healed in many other ways through the physical pain I was feeling. Emotional healing, psychological healing - the kind of healing that requires time taken out of the daily busyness of life to even realize how much there is there to heal.
So while I experienced some of the worst pain physically I have ever been through, I came to focus my efforts on the things I could control: doing everything I knew possible to help my body heal physically, but also assess what else I could try to address that needed healing in my heart, brain and spirit.
There’s no Medal of Honor waiting for you for having survived through your traumatic experience. But becoming the best version of you in the midst of and as a result of the trauma - now that could be the best Medal of Honor you could give yourself.
So I encourage you to take a step back and ask yourself, “Have I given up on my own healing journey just because I don’t see physical progress being made?” And I urge you: don’t give up on you. Believing in you could be the biggest gift you give to the person closest to you.
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