Beyond broken bones & common colds, is “healing” even possible when there is so much injustice & pain in the world & in our bodies? 

It’s true- nobody escapes capitalism completely unscathed and people can be the worst and there is seemingly endless oppression & suffering. Some of us bear the brunt of these worldly illnesses more than others. People hold in their bodies injuries born of white supremacy & nationalism, of transphobia, racism, abelism, and lack of access to the land or resource. Others may carry abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, invisibility, erasure, assault, and other harms within us. Even when it’s not a narrative we consciously live from, harm & hurt can persist, making home in our cells & fascia & sadly, internalized even in our stories about ourselves. Sigh. 

Given all that, is healing truly possible? If by healing one is hoping that a person can resolve any suffering from them to be completely resolved, then no. Humans are interdependent beings, with each other and with our environments, so it’s not functionally possible for an individual organism to fully be rid of the living harms that pulse through our communities until we resolve them more globally.  I think we’d have to somehow systemically address todays ignorance, fear, and hate that compounds all our ancestors harms. The past & the present have us tangled in a knotted fireball of confusion & hurt and we are only *just* starting to have this conversation on a societal level. Meanwhile, some of our beloved community members are living under & dying in this blaze daily. So no- I don’t believe any combination of well thought out hashtags or workshops or healers or yoga poses or plants or evidence based research can absolutely extinguish such sparks in any one person so long as the flames are alive in our world. 

But what if we removing the hidden pressure & promises of healing? What if we build off of the understanding that given the hurt in our worlds, it makes sense that it will play out in our bodies one way or another? What if we contextualize our hard times in light of all this instead of beating ourselves up for not getting it more together or having fully actualized into the most vibrant woke healed version of ourselves? What if we stop thinking that healing is a destination where we wont be affected by our hurt world? What if we let it be okay to find relief in our precious embodiments even though others are hurting? 

So if healing means naming, addressing, struggling, softening, building, getting curious about, crying, raging, laughing, resisting, organizing, *living* in the face of the suffering… well then, yes: healing is possible. If healing means finding symptom resolve so you can send your bandwidth & capacity to something other than tending to the wounds, yes: healing is possible. If healing means addressing where the root causes of such oppressive forces live in our body, even if you can’t tackle the entire root cause globally- Yes, healing is possible.