Is healing a solitary path?

For me? At this moment? Much of the time it is.

I didn’t really want to write this post. Sigh. But I’ve learned that ignoring or overriding my soul’s guidance is counterproductive at best. So, here ya go, another uncomfortable piece about the inside workings of this crazy life of mine.

The reason I share about my experiences as just that- my unique, personal experiences- vs. universal truths is because it’s what I know. Your healing path may look entirely different. If that’s true, I’d love to hear what it’s like for you. If it’s somewhat similar, I’d love to hear about that too. Let’s not fit in together. 🤩

I’m deeper down the healing rabbit hole than ever, committed to honoring my body, my emotions, ferreting out the beliefs that are truly mine, releasing the beliefs that were installed by others, and cultivating a relationship with my soul.

Let’s just say this doesn’t merit me a lot of dinner party invitations.

“I’ve been exploring the pit of despair and taking full responsibility for directing my life’s choices in a mindful and co-creative way. Please pass the salt.”

How’s this for a dating profile: “I enjoy candlelight dinners, long walks on the beach, and mucking about in the shadows of my subconscious, and crying for no apparent reason.”

(I really crack myself up sometimes!)

The majority of people are not interested in doing this work and talking about it just seems to alienate many of them.

I think back to when I quit smoking. Yes, I used to smoke cigarettes. I have a long and varied history with numbing out and this was a great strategy for doing that. Until it wasn’t. Anyway… quitting wasn’t great for my social life either. I didn’t want to go to bars and come home smelling like smoke once my sense of smell returned full-force.

I didn’t really want to hang out with people who were smoking. At first it was too tempting, then it was just unpleasant for my nose.

What was unexpected, though, was smokers didn’t really want to hang out with me. Ok, so this was a long time ago and I very likely came across as judgey, partly because I was out of self-preservation, but even if I hadn’t been, there might have been a projection of judgment. People could have felt judged because internally, they were judging themselves.

How many times had we talked about quitting? Of being free of the expense and the cravings? Then I went and did it and my buddies were left in the lurch, feeling betrayed that I’d broken our unspoken code of helpless hopelessness and gone and liberated myself from the addictive cycle.

Well, this is worse. Much, much worse.

I’m breaking the cycle of addiction to suffering, struggle, lack, and limitation. Even the nonsmokers find this to be disturbing! There aren’t many things more unpopular than being genuinely happy much of the time, enjoying your work, allowing all the feelings to arise, and choosing to be calm and present as often as possible.

It’s boring to be me! There’s minimal drama, reactive blaming, commiserating, “fun” escape mechanisms, and an early bedtime.

Lots of people don’t want to hear about how I’m cultivating more pleasure, comfort, and joy in my life when they feel stuck in the rat race. It’s not like I’m bragging, but that’s a big part of my growing edge these days and what I want to share.

If you find yourself wanting to have more alone time, here are a few topics I can suggest that will decrease your inner circle pretty quickly. You’ll have to adjust them to your own circumstances, but the general premise stands. These are the unwanted, highly rejectable, taboo issues of the day.

Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

• Enjoy your work, be your own boss and make decisions that support your overall wellness and not just the bottom line, cut your hours back to 25/week, and give yourself a raise. Any one of these will do. Your choice.

• Crack the perimenopause-sleep-through-the-whole-night challenge naturally with meditation, journaling, and somatic mindfulness. Bonus points for avoiding night sweats altogether.

• Heal anxiety with nature walks, massage, Reiki, more somatic mindfulness, and self-compassion.

• Heal a knee injury holistically without any X-rays, meds, or even a trip to the doctor by listening to your body, applying heat and essential oils, tons of Reiki, and bodywork.

• Know that buying new gadgets, clothes, and cheap crap to be delivered almost immediately will not fill the emptiness inside any more than a brownie or bottle of hooch.

• Believe deeply that wellness comes from taking responsibility for giving your body what it needs to function optimally (sunlight, rest, movement, nutrients) and minimizing what hampers that (stress, toxins, over-giving/under-receiving dynamics) diligently, but not obsessively.

• Cherish and protect your immune system, your primary and most effective defense against disease, be it genetic, related to habits and lifestyle, or a contagion, regardless of its origin. Become unavailable for any of it.

• Be a good steward of the planet and allow this to influence your purchases. Take it a step further and acknowledge that most plastics are simply not recycled, even when you put them in the blue bin.

• Practice meditation, yoga, etc. to become more present in the body and every moment vs. trying to escape them. This one will work on many of your woo-woo friends. It’s almost as bad as suggesting than wine therapy doesn’t actually heal anything.

• Learn to tolerate the discomfort of saying NO for optional, unwanted events and so-called “opportunities” while reveling in the power of standing up for yourself and having your own back.

• Believe in an invisible healing energy that supports your highest good and works in magical, mysterious ways somewhat like a wise, stern fairy godmother. Even better, do it for a living.

• Welcome all your feelings, including the uncomfortable ones and allow them to be felt fully. Even when it’s inconvenient.

• Turn towards physical and emotional pain and get curious about its message without numbing or distracting. Trust that it is there to help you, even if it’s misguided, outdated, or unskillful in its approach. Simultaneously, know your limits and choose to numb or distract before it becomes overwhelming. Yes, I get that this might seem complicated. I take aspirin for a pounding headache, but I also investigate the cause of the headache because I know that it isn’t a result of being aspirin deficient.

• Cultivate access to and trust in your body’s wisdom and allow this to guide your eating and movement habits instead of relying on so-called experts or haphazard convenience. Throw out all the health-by-numbers approach entirely.

• Take charge of moving your life in the direction you’d like to go. You might not be responsible for your current circumstances, but if you want them to change favorable, you’re responsible for doing the work.

• Acknowledge the power of your thoughts, words, and actions while simultaneously acknowledging that while they are powerful and best directed in a mindful way, they aren’t the only power creating your life.

• Prioritize downtime, nature time, meditation, home cooking, savoring that cooking, rest, creativity, intuitive movement, and dare I say it? FUN.

• Examine your belief system and be willing to notice how you picked up ideas as a young child before you had the cognitive capacity to question them and these are now the blueprint for how you experience much of life.

• Make a serious, concerted, consistent effort to experience more and more pleasure, enjoyment, comfort, and freedom in your daily life. Because you know deep down that everyone deserves this.

• Eat beef if you like it. I sure do. Since it’s become clear that my body wants it, I’ve found local farms that treat their animals kindly and don’t inject them with weird stuff. I wholeheartedly believe that billionaires with private jets and a society that has normalized constant use of throw-away takeout containers is much worse for the planet than cow farts. (I think that’s the first time I’ve ever typed the word “fart”. It feels strangely liberating!)

• And here’s the biggie that will get you dropped off Christmas card lists and text threads like a hot potato: believe that Life Itself has your back and that everything happening to you, even the unpleasant crap, is happening for you for some reason, even if you can’t see why just yet.

• And my number one solitude-inducing behavior? Love your life. I do! Not because it’s full of glamour or glitz, but because I’ve come to appreciate simplicity, have made peace with things beyond my control, and take pleasure in the little things. I thought this was to be the topic of today’s post and have an article nearly ready to go, but my editor-in-chief gave a new last minute assignment. More on this soon, maybe next week.

I guess I should note that I like it this way. I like being myself, truly myself, without trying to fit in by abandoning my values or needs. My inner circle is small, but highly compatible. I’m not too burdened with keeping up with the Joneses that I don’t recognize my soul family.

I probably could have summed this all up in one key sentence: quality of relationships over quantity is what feels right for me now.

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