February 4, 2024 • 21 mins
We've all encountered those moments that seem to redefine our path to wellness. We live in a mortal world, after all, and all of those things illness, injury, hurt, loss, etc are part of this world that we live in. So there are times when we are impacted in a way that asks for healing, and while the physical impacts are easier to see, we have emotional and mental impacts as well, and if they remain unhealed, they can have a greater impact than we realize. Today, we'll uncover the beauty of balance, inspired by the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda.
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Contact: Julie@thejourneyblueprint.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Julie (00:08):
Welcome to the podcast today.
Everyone, thank you for beinghere and for the questions that
come and inspire topics to talkabout.
The topic for today came fromthe observation that, in the
work that I do, I talk a lotabout healing with my clients,
specifically healing our hearts,our minds, our bodies.
(00:29):
But when I'm talking abouthealing and the process of
healing, what do I mean?
Since there are so manyjourneys that we go on that
involve healing, and sincehealing is in many ways tied to
the abyss, it felt like a goodopportunity to talk about what I
think it means to heal,especially in terms of journeys.
We're going to call this thestitches analogy and before we
(00:50):
dive in, let me just say outloud that this episode is most
certainly not medical advice.
I would not recommend thatanyone do the things the way I
did them, and if you are amedical professional, please
know that I own all of mymissteps here.
And with that, let's getstarted talking about healing.
First of all, let me just sayonce again that the journey does
(01:12):
not see you as broken.
It does not see you asdeficient or lacking.
Journeys see all of us as whole.
That being said, even as wholebeings, we can still get injured
, we can get sick.
We are impacted by the worldaround us.
We live in a mortal world,after all, and all of those
(01:32):
things illness, injury, hurt,loss, etc are part of this world
that we live in.
So there are times when we areimpacted in a way that asks for
healing, and while the physicalimpacts are easier to see, we
have emotional and mentalimpacts as well, and if they
(01:52):
remain unhealed, they can have agreater impact than we realize.
Healing is the process ofcoming back to a state of health
.
That seems obvious, but what isless obvious is perhaps what
health is and how our view ofhealth can get in the way of
what health can actually be inour lives, and I find it helpful
(02:13):
to think of health in terms ofbalance in my many studies,
because I am such a learningnerd.
One of the most helpful ways Ihave found for me to think about
healing comes from the study ofAyurveda.
I'm not gonna go super deep intoAyurveda here we can have this
conversation later if you wouldlike but Ayurveda is a sister
science of yoga, where yoga isfocused on bringing together our
(02:36):
mind, body and spirit in orderto become the best possible
expression of ourselves.
Ayurveda is really more focusedon the body part of that, so it
focuses on the physicalsuffering that we experience, on
how to take care of our bodiesin such a way that we can be
healthy and vibrant enough tolive our dharma or our life
(02:57):
purpose.
It's hard to fulfill ourpotential when we're sick all
the time.
So Ayurveda as a construct andby construct I mean it's how we
talk about something, so it'sthe words and symbols and
metaphors that we use tocommunicate about that which is
in communication.
So in Ayurveda we use theelements as the language of our
(03:22):
experience.
In Western medicine we talkabout bones and muscles and
cells and pathogens.
In Ayurveda we talk about ether, air, fire, water and earth.
And the foundational premiseupon which Ayurveda is based is
that each person is made up of aunique percentage of each of
those five elements, and we knowthat because nobody looks the
(03:45):
same as anybody else.
So that is their unique balance.
And through a variety of thingslike food or movement or the
weather, we can either bringeach of these elements more into
our lives or we can have adeficiency of those elements.
Either way, it causes animbalance in us, and the point
(04:06):
of talking about.
All of this, though, is what Isaid before.
Every person has a uniquebalance.
Some people need more airelement than other people.
Some people need more earth.
There isn't a perfect andthat's in quotes or even an
ideal balance.
There is just your balance.
So, when it comes to healing,understanding that our own
(04:28):
personal balance is the way thatwe're going to feel best, then
we can see that understandingthat balance is really a
worthwhile pursuit, and this isa whole different topic for
another day.
I'm not going to go too deepinto it, but what we think
balance means for us may not bewhat our body and our mind and
our emotions are asking for.
(04:49):
A lot of times, when I talk tomy clients about Ayurveda, they
want to get all of the elementsin perfect balance 20% of each
of them but that's probably notwhat their body is asking for,
or their emotions or theirmental well-being.
Better, instead, to understandtheir unique balance.
What do they need?
So, as we tune into that withpatience and grace, we can
(05:13):
actually help speed up thehealing process, because we
actually have a sense of what weneed to do to heal, and that
all leads us to the fact thathealing is a journey in and of
itself, and if we can see thathealing is a journey, then we
(05:34):
automatically know that therewill be difficulties in the
process of healing.
If it's a journey, we count onjourney elements to be involved.
We will try things that don'twork, we will push too hard, we
will give up too soon, becausethat's what we do as humans.
In the context of journeys, andspecifically when we're talking
about maybe those deeper hurts,those less visible hurts, we can
(05:56):
often feel like we've healedsomething, we've done the work,
only to find ourselves fallingback into the same patterns or
being activated by somethingthat we thought we were over.
We thought we moved past, buthealing isn't a linear journey.
Much like physical injuries,where we're talking about
muscles and bones and fascia andconnective tissue, there's
(06:16):
really rarely one thing that isinjured.
Multiple systems can beaffected and, as such, we may
need to apply different types ofhealing for those different
systems.
Just because there is a systemin this network that is still
injured doesn't mean we didn'tmake any progress in a different
system.
(06:37):
We just have to be willing tostick with it long enough to
actually get to the end, tofinish the journey, because
often I think we apply a lot ofband-aid type healing attempts,
especially to our intangibleinjuries, the ones that maybe we
can't see.
We work really hard on thesurface, giving a lot of effort
(06:58):
to see who, seeming like we'rehealed, seeming like we're okay.
But true healing often requiresus to go pretty deep, facing
the things that maybe we haven'twanted to face, digging up
beliefs and experiences andhabits that often run below our
approved again in quotes levelof awareness.
(07:19):
Sometimes these things are toopainful, they're too raw to look
at, but that wound will remain,regardless of whether or not we
want it to, until we're willingto really get in and open
ourselves to the truth.
Sometimes these wounds aremulti-layered, they're
interconnected, they're spreadout through different systems
and we have to pay attention tothe message that we're receiving
(07:41):
in order to address what'sreally happening, so that we can
get back to our natural balance.
So let's get to the analogyhere.
Here's the stitches analogy.
Recently I went to the doctorand I had a mole on my arm
removed.
It was no big deal, just onethat had been on my mind.
I wanted to be safe about itand it was actually a crazy day
(08:04):
that ended up with a second tripto the doctor, in this case to
the urgent care, to get evenmore stitches, but that is
another story for another day.
Focusing back on my arm, thecut to remove the mole was deep
enough that the doctor had toput one stitch in a lower layer
inside my arm, and then the moresuperficial stitches on the
skin.
That deeper stitch wasabsorbable, so when I came back
(08:27):
a week later, it was to just getthe superficial stitches
removed.
Two weeks later, though, evenwith the superficial stitches
gone, the wound wasn't healing.
Now, one thing that you may ormay not know about me is that I
am a total body nerd.
I think our bodies arefascinating, and when I was in
(08:47):
college, I majored in Englisheducation because I loved it.
I really enjoy talking aboutideas and writing and words and
all of those things.
I mentioned that so that, whenI tell you my favorite class in
college was anatomy and going tothe cadaver labs, that you
understand how much I reallylove it, even more than my major
(09:09):
.
Our bodies do these amazingthings, and the more I study,
the more I can see that ourbodies are often trying to heal
all the time.
So if healing isn't happening,that's an opportunity to then go
deeper like I do with myclients into those root causes,
to what's underneath the surface.
(09:29):
So when I saw that my arm wasn'thealing, it was clear that
there was something to miss, andmy best guess because I'm not a
doctor or a medicalprofessional was that the stitch
hadn't absorbed and that mybody was sending a clear signal
that something needed to be done.
So I went back to the clinicand I explained the situation to
a different doctor, since myregular doctor wasn't available,
(09:51):
including my suspicion that thestitch was still in there.
And since it was still in there, that's why my body wasn't
healing correctly, because thewound itself was seeping.
When I finally went, heexplained that I was going to
need to take some antibioticsfor a few days before he could
open it up, because infectionwould complicate things even
more if he were to cut my armopen.
(10:13):
I started my regimen of both anoral antibiotic and a topical
one, because we were reallygoing to hit this thick heart in
order to get it to the pointwhere he could actually get in
there and see what was going on.
And yet, four days later, thewound wasn't looking any better
and I was scheduled to go in onthat fourth day.
(10:34):
But I was really worried thatif this was an infection it was
still going to be a problembecause it hadn't improved at
all.
And he asked me a few questionsabout what I had noticed.
And then he said that it feltlike it probably wasn't actually
an infection at all and I wasmaybe a little annoyed that I
had gone to all the trouble andall the work of taking this
(10:55):
medication and all of the sideeffects that have come with it,
when maybe that wasn't theproblem.
But that's okay.
We talked about how.
What was more likely was thatmy body was rejecting something
foreign, which again made senseto me because I figured the
stitch was still in there andthat we could actually just go
ahead and do the procedure thatwould clean things out, get
(11:16):
everything to where it couldactually start healing again,
and at this point the incisionand the skin around it was so
raw and so sensitive.
I was just ready for the wholething to be done.
So we stepped in the procedureroom got situated, he numbed my
arm, he cut into the wound.
I'm not going to go into anygory details, but after a few
minutes he said that it seemedlike he'd gotten the wound all
(11:38):
clean and he didn't see anyabscesses that my body might
have built up in order to createa barrier if there was
something in there, and Ithought that was great.
I appreciated that information.
I really only had one questiondid he find the stitch?
Was it still in there?
So I asked him, and it turnsout he'd been so focused on
(12:01):
looking for the abscesses thathe forgot he needed to look for
the stitch the reason that theabscesses would have been there
in the first place.
So I said okay, here we go.
He thanked me for the reminder,which was kind, and he dove
back into my arm and about twominutes later which can be a
very long time when you're lyingthere and someone's digging
around in your arm I finallyheard him say there it is, and
(12:24):
he proceeded to hold up thesetweezers that were holding an
incredibly thin suture, maybeonly a quarter of an inch long.
It was a tiny little thing, butthat was clearly what my body
was working on rejecting, and itdidn't matter how small I
perceived it to be.
My body was responding in a bigenough way to bring my
(12:49):
attention to it, and you'd thinkthat that would be the end of
the story, but no, it continues.
Just over a week later, it wastime to take these new stitches
out.
And, going back to my trip tothe urgent care that I had
mentioned before, the doctor hadtold me at that time that if I
wanted, I could just take thestitches out myself I didn't
(13:09):
need to go back in.
And so I had done that.
And so now here we are, a weekafter the procedure.
It's time to get the stitchesout, and I just decided to take
them out.
So again, this is not medicaladvice, my friends.
I removed the stitches and thenext day was able to see it was
looking better already.
Much of the irritation and theswelling was gone, and I was
(13:33):
looking so forward to my armfinally being able to heal.
But a few days after that itfelt like the area around the
scar was still irritated, likeit wasn't closing right, and as
I looked in my arm it lookedlike there was a small little
divot that had maybe some deadskin or something I could see,
and I thought, well, I'll justtry to clean it out just in case
(13:55):
.
Like maybe there's something inthere, it's making it so it's
not going to close finally.
So I grabbed some tweezers topull out that small piece of
dead skin.
Only, it wasn't dead skin andfor all of you who are really
good at worst case scenario,like I am, no, it wasn't a
parasite or anything like thateither, thank goodness.
But as I pulled along, thinfiber came out of my arm.
(14:20):
It was about an inch or an inchand a half long.
And in the moment as I'mwatching this thing come out of
my arm, I remembered that,before I had asked the doctor
about finding the other stitch,he had mentioned putting a drain
in to help that deeper layer ofmy arm to heal correctly.
And this must have been thedrain, the one that the doctor
(14:44):
surely would have removed had Iactually gone in to have him
take the stitches out.
So there we go.
Today I have a prettynoticeable scar on my arm.
It's dark, red, sometimes alittle purple, and clearly
visible against my relativelypale scale, relatively pale skin
.
And yet, as I look at it, itserves as a reminder of some
(15:08):
things for me.
Before moving on, maybe it wouldserve to take a moment to
consider your own life.
Have you had experiences likethis?
Have you been through somethingthat you thought you had
perhaps healed from, only tofind out that there was more to
do.
Take a second and pause us fora moment, if you can, and either
(15:28):
reflect or write your thoughtsabout your own experiences.
I don't really want to belaborthis point and I also don't want
to tell you what you shouldtake from this story.
Analogies are great becausethey are somewhat open to
personal application.
So whatever you're taking fromthe story is important, it
matters, and, if you feel it'shelpful, please write those
(15:50):
things down.
I'm going to add some of mythoughts, just in case it adds
to what you already understood.
So first, when we talk abouthealing, it is work.
It's a journey.
So there's things that we needto do.
It's not going to just happenon its own.
Second, doing the work ofhealing can be a lot like this
(16:13):
experience.
It can be messy.
It's a journey.
That's what happens.
We do work, important work toaddress what we can see, but
that doesn't mean that thereisn't something else An
invitation to go a little bitdeeper, to pay attention a
little bit more when it comes toour own personal development.
(16:35):
Often the healing work that weneed to do isn't in the trials
and temptations, because thesolution there would be to add
more, to do more.
The trials and temptations isadditive.
Often the healing work isactually in the abyss.
It's in the process of facingthe truth and then being willing
to make the sacrifice that isasked of us that we heal.
(16:58):
Those beliefs or identities orfears that we're holding onto
are causing harm to us, justlike that leftover stitch was,
and the journey will ask us togive them up, just like my body
was doing by bringing myattention to the fact that there
was something wrong.
Now I could have, I suppose,decided that my body should just
(17:20):
be able to absorb the stitch.
That's what they're made to do,right, so my body should just
get over it and do what it wassupposed to do.
But this happens with mentaland emotional injuries as well.
The assertion that it shouldjust get over it would not have
made my body any more able toabsorb what it apparently
couldn't absorb.
(17:41):
I had to respond to what was notwhat I thought it should be.
It's a lot easier to see thatwith physical injuries, but I
think the lesson remains thesame I have to respond to what
is, to whatever injuries orhurts that I have, not the ones
I think I should have or theways.
(18:02):
I think I should be over themalready.
So if something is coming upand asking for attention through
our reactions, through ourthought processes, whatever it
is, it's something that's readyto be looked at and, in most
cases, ready to begin thehealing process, and not that
it's going to be fast justbecause it was coming up.
(18:23):
Nor is it going to be easynecessarily.
But if we're able to notice it,if we're able to see it, as I
was able to see in my arm thatthere was something wrong, then
we can actually do somethingabout it.
And finally, often theseexperiences have multiple phases
or journeys to them.
I needed to have that moleremoved.
(18:45):
It was important, but it alsobrought other things to the
surface that then needed to heal.
There was the physical healing,but I also discovered in the
process that I had some beliefsand some thoughts about this
healing process that I needed tolet go of in order to be fully
healed.
So any work we do to movethrough these abyss moments
(19:08):
they're important it doesn'tnecessarily mean that all the
work is done or over with justbecause we've taken a step or
two.
Often these feelings orthoughts or impulses will come
up again and it's tempting tofeel like oh, I thought I dealt
with this already, why is thiscoming back?
I should be over this.
But in those moments, maybe itcan be helpful to think back.
(19:31):
On the Stitches analogy Everysingle problem I had was in the
exact same place on my arm,every single one.
But each issue was unique anddifferent in its own way.
It was never the exact sameissue and they all needed to be
taken care of in different ways.
(19:52):
So please don't feel that thework you did before was wasted
or that you didn't do it wellenough, just because something
is coming back to the surfacefor you.
You did the work and it wasenough, and now that you've done
that work, the next phase ofhealing is ready to be seen.
(20:15):
So, as I do this work withclients, I'm able to help them
to discover for themselveswhat's ready to heal, what's
ready to let go of, what do theyneed to do in order to move
forward, and really it all tiesback to coming to this
experience of our wholeness.
If something's coming up again,it isn't that we failed.
(20:35):
It's that the journey knowsthat we can do this now based on
what we've learned, based onthe work we've already done that
.
This is ready, so take from theStitches analogy what resonates
or is meaningful for you.
I learned a lot from it and Ireleased some things that were
ready to be released, and I hopeyou can find something in here
(20:56):
that helps you to perhaps seethese healing journeys in a
different way, because life is ajourney and it's time to start
living like it.
Thanks again for being here,everybody.
I'll see you next time, .
Welcome to the podcast today.
Everyone, thank you for beinghere and for the questions that
come and inspire topics to talkabout.
The topic for today came fromthe observation that, in the
work that I do, I talk a lotabout healing with my clients,
specifically healing our hearts,our minds, our bodies.
(00:29):
But when I'm talking abouthealing and the process of
healing, what do I mean?
Since there are so manyjourneys that we go on that
involve healing, and sincehealing is in many ways tied to
the abyss, it felt like a goodopportunity to talk about what I
think it means to heal,especially in terms of journeys.
We're going to call this thestitches analogy and before we
(00:50):
dive in, let me just say outloud that this episode is most
certainly not medical advice.
I would not recommend thatanyone do the things the way I
did them, and if you are amedical professional, please
know that I own all of mymissteps here.
And with that, let's getstarted talking about healing.
First of all, let me just sayonce again that the journey does
(01:12):
not see you as broken.
It does not see you asdeficient or lacking.
Journeys see all of us as whole.
That being said, even as wholebeings, we can still get injured
, we can get sick.
We are impacted by the worldaround us.
We live in a mortal world,after all, and all of those
(01:32):
things illness, injury, hurt,loss, etc are part of this world
that we live in.
So there are times when we areimpacted in a way that asks for
healing, and while the physicalimpacts are easier to see, we
have emotional and mentalimpacts as well, and if they
(01:52):
remain unhealed, they can have agreater impact than we realize.
Healing is the process ofcoming back to a state of health
.
That seems obvious, but what isless obvious is perhaps what
health is and how our view ofhealth can get in the way of
what health can actually be inour lives, and I find it helpful
(02:13):
to think of health in terms ofbalance in my many studies,
because I am such a learningnerd.
One of the most helpful ways Ihave found for me to think about
healing comes from the study ofAyurveda.
I'm not gonna go super deep intoAyurveda here we can have this
conversation later if you wouldlike but Ayurveda is a sister
science of yoga, where yoga isfocused on bringing together our
(02:36):
mind, body and spirit in orderto become the best possible
expression of ourselves.
Ayurveda is really more focusedon the body part of that, so it
focuses on the physicalsuffering that we experience, on
how to take care of our bodiesin such a way that we can be
healthy and vibrant enough tolive our dharma or our life
(02:57):
purpose.
It's hard to fulfill ourpotential when we're sick all
the time.
So Ayurveda as a construct andby construct I mean it's how we
talk about something, so it'sthe words and symbols and
metaphors that we use tocommunicate about that which is
in communication.
So in Ayurveda we use theelements as the language of our
(03:22):
experience.
In Western medicine we talkabout bones and muscles and
cells and pathogens.
In Ayurveda we talk about ether, air, fire, water and earth.
And the foundational premiseupon which Ayurveda is based is
that each person is made up of aunique percentage of each of
those five elements, and we knowthat because nobody looks the
(03:45):
same as anybody else.
So that is their unique balance.
And through a variety of thingslike food or movement or the
weather, we can either bringeach of these elements more into
our lives or we can have adeficiency of those elements.
Either way, it causes animbalance in us, and the point
(04:06):
of talking about.
All of this, though, is what Isaid before.
Every person has a uniquebalance.
Some people need more airelement than other people.
Some people need more earth.
There isn't a perfect andthat's in quotes or even an
ideal balance.
There is just your balance.
So, when it comes to healing,understanding that our own
(04:28):
personal balance is the way thatwe're going to feel best, then
we can see that understandingthat balance is really a
worthwhile pursuit, and this isa whole different topic for
another day.
I'm not going to go too deepinto it, but what we think
balance means for us may not bewhat our body and our mind and
our emotions are asking for.
(04:49):
A lot of times, when I talk tomy clients about Ayurveda, they
want to get all of the elementsin perfect balance 20% of each
of them but that's probably notwhat their body is asking for,
or their emotions or theirmental well-being.
Better, instead, to understandtheir unique balance.
What do they need?
So, as we tune into that withpatience and grace, we can
(05:13):
actually help speed up thehealing process, because we
actually have a sense of what weneed to do to heal, and that
all leads us to the fact thathealing is a journey in and of
itself, and if we can see thathealing is a journey, then we
(05:34):
automatically know that therewill be difficulties in the
process of healing.
If it's a journey, we count onjourney elements to be involved.
We will try things that don'twork, we will push too hard, we
will give up too soon, becausethat's what we do as humans.
In the context of journeys, andspecifically when we're talking
about maybe those deeper hurts,those less visible hurts, we can
(05:56):
often feel like we've healedsomething, we've done the work,
only to find ourselves fallingback into the same patterns or
being activated by somethingthat we thought we were over.
We thought we moved past, buthealing isn't a linear journey.
Much like physical injuries,where we're talking about
muscles and bones and fascia andconnective tissue, there's
(06:16):
really rarely one thing that isinjured.
Multiple systems can beaffected and, as such, we may
need to apply different types ofhealing for those different
systems.
Just because there is a systemin this network that is still
injured doesn't mean we didn'tmake any progress in a different
system.
(06:37):
We just have to be willing tostick with it long enough to
actually get to the end, tofinish the journey, because
often I think we apply a lot ofband-aid type healing attempts,
especially to our intangibleinjuries, the ones that maybe we
can't see.
We work really hard on thesurface, giving a lot of effort
(06:58):
to see who, seeming like we'rehealed, seeming like we're okay.
But true healing often requiresus to go pretty deep, facing
the things that maybe we haven'twanted to face, digging up
beliefs and experiences andhabits that often run below our
approved again in quotes levelof awareness.
(07:19):
Sometimes these things are toopainful, they're too raw to look
at, but that wound will remain,regardless of whether or not we
want it to, until we're willingto really get in and open
ourselves to the truth.
Sometimes these wounds aremulti-layered, they're
interconnected, they're spreadout through different systems
and we have to pay attention tothe message that we're receiving
(07:41):
in order to address what'sreally happening, so that we can
get back to our natural balance.
So let's get to the analogyhere.
Here's the stitches analogy.
Recently I went to the doctorand I had a mole on my arm
removed.
It was no big deal, just onethat had been on my mind.
I wanted to be safe about itand it was actually a crazy day
(08:04):
that ended up with a second tripto the doctor, in this case to
the urgent care, to get evenmore stitches, but that is
another story for another day.
Focusing back on my arm, thecut to remove the mole was deep
enough that the doctor had toput one stitch in a lower layer
inside my arm, and then the moresuperficial stitches on the
skin.
That deeper stitch wasabsorbable, so when I came back
(08:27):
a week later, it was to just getthe superficial stitches
removed.
Two weeks later, though, evenwith the superficial stitches
gone, the wound wasn't healing.
Now, one thing that you may ormay not know about me is that I
am a total body nerd.
I think our bodies arefascinating, and when I was in
(08:47):
college, I majored in Englisheducation because I loved it.
I really enjoy talking aboutideas and writing and words and
all of those things.
I mentioned that so that, whenI tell you my favorite class in
college was anatomy and going tothe cadaver labs, that you
understand how much I reallylove it, even more than my major
(09:09):
.
Our bodies do these amazingthings, and the more I study,
the more I can see that ourbodies are often trying to heal
all the time.
So if healing isn't happening,that's an opportunity to then go
deeper like I do with myclients into those root causes,
to what's underneath the surface.
(09:29):
So when I saw that my arm wasn'thealing, it was clear that
there was something to miss, andmy best guess because I'm not a
doctor or a medicalprofessional was that the stitch
hadn't absorbed and that mybody was sending a clear signal
that something needed to be done.
So I went back to the clinicand I explained the situation to
a different doctor, since myregular doctor wasn't available,
(09:51):
including my suspicion that thestitch was still in there.
And since it was still in there, that's why my body wasn't
healing correctly, because thewound itself was seeping.
When I finally went, heexplained that I was going to
need to take some antibioticsfor a few days before he could
open it up, because infectionwould complicate things even
more if he were to cut my armopen.
(10:13):
I started my regimen of both anoral antibiotic and a topical
one, because we were reallygoing to hit this thick heart in
order to get it to the pointwhere he could actually get in
there and see what was going on.
And yet, four days later, thewound wasn't looking any better
and I was scheduled to go in onthat fourth day.
(10:34):
But I was really worried thatif this was an infection it was
still going to be a problembecause it hadn't improved at
all.
And he asked me a few questionsabout what I had noticed.
And then he said that it feltlike it probably wasn't actually
an infection at all and I wasmaybe a little annoyed that I
had gone to all the trouble andall the work of taking this
(10:55):
medication and all of the sideeffects that have come with it,
when maybe that wasn't theproblem.
But that's okay.
We talked about how.
What was more likely was thatmy body was rejecting something
foreign, which again made senseto me because I figured the
stitch was still in there andthat we could actually just go
ahead and do the procedure thatwould clean things out, get
(11:16):
everything to where it couldactually start healing again,
and at this point the incisionand the skin around it was so
raw and so sensitive.
I was just ready for the wholething to be done.
So we stepped in the procedureroom got situated, he numbed my
arm, he cut into the wound.
I'm not going to go into anygory details, but after a few
minutes he said that it seemedlike he'd gotten the wound all
(11:38):
clean and he didn't see anyabscesses that my body might
have built up in order to createa barrier if there was
something in there, and Ithought that was great.
I appreciated that information.
I really only had one questiondid he find the stitch?
Was it still in there?
So I asked him, and it turnsout he'd been so focused on
(12:01):
looking for the abscesses thathe forgot he needed to look for
the stitch the reason that theabscesses would have been there
in the first place.
So I said okay, here we go.
He thanked me for the reminder,which was kind, and he dove
back into my arm and about twominutes later which can be a
very long time when you're lyingthere and someone's digging
around in your arm I finallyheard him say there it is, and
(12:24):
he proceeded to hold up thesetweezers that were holding an
incredibly thin suture, maybeonly a quarter of an inch long.
It was a tiny little thing, butthat was clearly what my body
was working on rejecting, and itdidn't matter how small I
perceived it to be.
My body was responding in a bigenough way to bring my
(12:49):
attention to it, and you'd thinkthat that would be the end of
the story, but no, it continues.
Just over a week later, it wastime to take these new stitches
out.
And, going back to my trip tothe urgent care that I had
mentioned before, the doctor hadtold me at that time that if I
wanted, I could just take thestitches out myself I didn't
(13:09):
need to go back in.
And so I had done that.
And so now here we are, a weekafter the procedure.
It's time to get the stitchesout, and I just decided to take
them out.
So again, this is not medicaladvice, my friends.
I removed the stitches and thenext day was able to see it was
looking better already.
Much of the irritation and theswelling was gone, and I was
(13:33):
looking so forward to my armfinally being able to heal.
But a few days after that itfelt like the area around the
scar was still irritated, likeit wasn't closing right, and as
I looked in my arm it lookedlike there was a small little
divot that had maybe some deadskin or something I could see,
and I thought, well, I'll justtry to clean it out just in case
(13:55):
.
Like maybe there's something inthere, it's making it so it's
not going to close finally.
So I grabbed some tweezers topull out that small piece of
dead skin.
Only, it wasn't dead skin andfor all of you who are really
good at worst case scenario,like I am, no, it wasn't a
parasite or anything like thateither, thank goodness.
But as I pulled along, thinfiber came out of my arm.
(14:20):
It was about an inch or an inchand a half long.
And in the moment as I'mwatching this thing come out of
my arm, I remembered that,before I had asked the doctor
about finding the other stitch,he had mentioned putting a drain
in to help that deeper layer ofmy arm to heal correctly.
And this must have been thedrain, the one that the doctor
(14:44):
surely would have removed had Iactually gone in to have him
take the stitches out.
So there we go.
Today I have a prettynoticeable scar on my arm.
It's dark, red, sometimes alittle purple, and clearly
visible against my relativelypale scale, relatively pale skin
.
And yet, as I look at it, itserves as a reminder of some
(15:08):
things for me.
Before moving on, maybe it wouldserve to take a moment to
consider your own life.
Have you had experiences likethis?
Have you been through somethingthat you thought you had
perhaps healed from, only tofind out that there was more to
do.
Take a second and pause us fora moment, if you can, and either
(15:28):
reflect or write your thoughtsabout your own experiences.
I don't really want to belaborthis point and I also don't want
to tell you what you shouldtake from this story.
Analogies are great becausethey are somewhat open to
personal application.
So whatever you're taking fromthe story is important, it
matters, and, if you feel it'shelpful, please write those
(15:50):
things down.
I'm going to add some of mythoughts, just in case it adds
to what you already understood.
So first, when we talk abouthealing, it is work.
It's a journey.
So there's things that we needto do.
It's not going to just happenon its own.
Second, doing the work ofhealing can be a lot like this
(16:13):
experience.
It can be messy.
It's a journey.
That's what happens.
We do work, important work toaddress what we can see, but
that doesn't mean that thereisn't something else An
invitation to go a little bitdeeper, to pay attention a
little bit more when it comes toour own personal development.
(16:35):
Often the healing work that weneed to do isn't in the trials
and temptations, because thesolution there would be to add
more, to do more.
The trials and temptations isadditive.
Often the healing work isactually in the abyss.
It's in the process of facingthe truth and then being willing
to make the sacrifice that isasked of us that we heal.
(16:58):
Those beliefs or identities orfears that we're holding onto
are causing harm to us, justlike that leftover stitch was,
and the journey will ask us togive them up, just like my body
was doing by bringing myattention to the fact that there
was something wrong.
Now I could have, I suppose,decided that my body should just
(17:20):
be able to absorb the stitch.
That's what they're made to do,right, so my body should just
get over it and do what it wassupposed to do.
But this happens with mentaland emotional injuries as well.
The assertion that it shouldjust get over it would not have
made my body any more able toabsorb what it apparently
couldn't absorb.
(17:41):
I had to respond to what was notwhat I thought it should be.
It's a lot easier to see thatwith physical injuries, but I
think the lesson remains thesame I have to respond to what
is, to whatever injuries orhurts that I have, not the ones
I think I should have or theways.
(18:02):
I think I should be over themalready.
So if something is coming upand asking for attention through
our reactions, through ourthought processes, whatever it
is, it's something that's readyto be looked at and, in most
cases, ready to begin thehealing process, and not that
it's going to be fast justbecause it was coming up.
(18:23):
Nor is it going to be easynecessarily.
But if we're able to notice it,if we're able to see it, as I
was able to see in my arm thatthere was something wrong, then
we can actually do somethingabout it.
And finally, often theseexperiences have multiple phases
or journeys to them.
I needed to have that moleremoved.
(18:45):
It was important, but it alsobrought other things to the
surface that then needed to heal.
There was the physical healing,but I also discovered in the
process that I had some beliefsand some thoughts about this
healing process that I needed tolet go of in order to be fully
healed.
So any work we do to movethrough these abyss moments
(19:08):
they're important it doesn'tnecessarily mean that all the
work is done or over with justbecause we've taken a step or
two.
Often these feelings orthoughts or impulses will come
up again and it's tempting tofeel like oh, I thought I dealt
with this already, why is thiscoming back?
I should be over this.
But in those moments, maybe itcan be helpful to think back.
(19:31):
On the Stitches analogy Everysingle problem I had was in the
exact same place on my arm,every single one.
But each issue was unique anddifferent in its own way.
It was never the exact sameissue and they all needed to be
taken care of in different ways.
(19:52):
So please don't feel that thework you did before was wasted
or that you didn't do it wellenough, just because something
is coming back to the surfacefor you.
You did the work and it wasenough, and now that you've done
that work, the next phase ofhealing is ready to be seen.
(20:15):
So, as I do this work withclients, I'm able to help them
to discover for themselveswhat's ready to heal, what's
ready to let go of, what do theyneed to do in order to move
forward, and really it all tiesback to coming to this
experience of our wholeness.
If something's coming up again,it isn't that we failed.
(20:35):
It's that the journey knowsthat we can do this now based on
what we've learned, based onthe work we've already done that
.
This is ready, so take from theStitches analogy what resonates
or is meaningful for you.
I learned a lot from it and Ireleased some things that were
ready to be released, and I hopeyou can find something in here
(20:56):
that helps you to perhaps seethese healing journeys in a
different way, because life is ajourney and it's time to start
living like it.
Thanks again for being here,everybody.
I'll see you next time, .
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