Tag: healing

The Road to Remission

Synopsis: HEALING = LOVE OF ONESELF

My guess is that we all know someone near and dear to our hearts who is suffering from a serious illness. Or you, yourself, may be in that condition. Psychologically it’s an unnerving place to be, teetering between uncertainty and hope about the outcome.

When life comes at us this way, like a train wreck, it causes us to look within and without to the cosmos for reasons. Most of us are wired to seek answers, to seek knowledge, to better the planet, to better ourselves. To heal.

Author Anita Moorjani, who battled cancer for years right into the hands of an NDE (Near Death Experience), wrote in her book, Dying To Be Me, “To cherish myself, was the key to my healing. To be me is to be love. This is the lesson that saved my life”.

Can it really be that simple? Maybe we can learn from the lessons she took from her NDE. Let’s take a look. It can’t hurt.

Some people bristle at the notion of loving oneself. It can bring up feelings of guilt and unworthiness or thoughts of ego inflation.

Self-love is not selfish. Love is who we are. Selfish is an earthly human judgment and often stems from a deeply felt insecurity. Insecurity is fear. Fear is limiting. Being Love is expansive. It dissipates fear and rises above the duality of judgment between right and wrong. It just is.

Our childhoods were filled with lessons of right and wrong, as our parents or caregivers–sans playbook on perfect parenting–did their best to instill in us societal do’s and don’ts.

Our essence of Being love slowly got whittled down into conformity to social norms. “Be this way so you don’t embarrass us.”

It can take a lifetime to unlearn some of the teachings of well-meaning parents who loved us or who, we perceive, didn’t love us enough.

And it can take years to develop a disease, which, I believe, is an indicator that we haven’t yet cleared the path back to Love of Self.

How do we get there? Am I even on the path or have I wandered into the brambles?

No matter. Wherever you are, start there. Your actions of self-love will lead you back. Try courting yourself like you’ve just fallen in Love.

  • Splurge on 5 bucks for a bouquet of fresh flowers, from you to you.
  • Draw a bubble bath, candlelit for ambiance, music for relaxation and inspiration.
  • Watch your favorite movie in your pjs.
  • Give yourself a hug, a foot and shoulder massage, a pat on the back.
  • Take a 5 min. respite, away from the needs of others, in the bathroom where solitude and privacy is “acceptable.”
  • Make decisions based on your needs first and stick to them despite feelings of guilt. Guilt is self-judgment, not self-love.
  • Make a list of things you love to look at, to do, to feel, to hear. Then seek those out.
  • Show yourself unconditional love, as you would a friend or a loved one.
  • Say, “I love you” in the mirror. This can be very powerful. Feel it, truly feel it as you say it.

You don’t have to be perfect. Perfection is a judgment which is unattainable! Allow yourself the beauty of imperfection. Love yourself unconditionally.

You’re already on The Road to Remission.

An exercise to clear/heal the 5th chakra

I’ve had chronic neck pain and stiffness for years. I’ve thrown everything at it, but, so far, not the kitchen sink. That could make it worse.

Here’s an exercise that I read in a book and decided to try. It suggests going back in your mind to troubling incidents, and finally saying what you wish you could have said. It’s a very healing process.

What I wish I had been able to say…

…and maybe did say when I was an infant and my mother had postpartum and general depression: Where’s my mommy? Why is no one hearing me? Mommy, can’t you hear me? I need you! I’m hungry and I need to be held! I need your touch! I need to feel connected to you. I need to feel safe. I don’t feel safe. I feel cold. I need your warmth. Mommy, please come. Show me that you hear me. Show me that you care. Where are you? I need to see your eyes. I need to feel you close to me! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a!

...when I was a young teenager and my mom asked me to sit with her while she lay depressed, sinking into the couch: Mom, I wish you didn’t feel so bad. I want to be happy and go outside and hang with my friends. I feel trapped. I feel like I can’t move. I feel like I can’t breathe. I think you might hate me if I say No, get up, and leave the house. I wish my siblings hadn’t left home. I wish you and Dad hadn’t divorced. I can’t handle your pain, Mom, it’s too much for me. It’s too big, too deep. I love you, but I can’t fix you. I just want to run and go have fun and forget you and your pain. I want to escape. I feel I’m being held hostage by the pain of your own childhood trauma. I need to go! I need to go! I need to go! I wish I could stand up, walk away from you, and go.

…when I was 16 and my step-mother gave me the 3rd degree over many dinners at their apartment while my dad remained silent, except for occasionally chiming in his support of her: I’m not going to college because, frankly, I’m emotionally stunted from having been raised by a depressed and often emotionally unavailable mother whom my sister and I chose to live with after the divorce because we are girls, after having first chosen our dad because the lawyers and my parents couldn’t bring themselves to make the decision for us and now, hey, Dad, why are you double-teaming me and not letting up when you see tears of humiliation and shame roll down my cheeks because I am unable to give satisfactory answers about college and “Why do you love that boy?” Dad, please! I need you to defend me and tell her to back off, but you morphed into an obedient puppy when you married this loud Jewish woman who is seventeen years your younger.

…when my father and step-mother said that my adult boyfriend of several years could not be included in the family group photograph until we were married because he was not officially part of the family: Well, then all you married people can’t be in it either if you can’t guarantee that you’ll never, ever get divorced. This family photo is just a snapshot of who we are as a family right now, in this moment. (My “boyfriend” and I are still not married, but have been together for sixteen years. One married couple in the photo has since gotten divorced.)