Real World Healing

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What is healing? That is the question I’ve gotten the most. I started putting together this book almost five years ago, when it was a video course with accompanying worksheets called No Bullshit Healing. That was back in Idaho, when survival meant everything, and so did nature. A lot has changed since then—world and healing course wise—and a lot has changed since the beginning of our individual existences as well as our collective existence as human beings on this planet. Real World Healing, as the book is now called, is much bigger than words and guidance written by an author (me). It’s a purified invitation and a safe place to remember who you are and what’s important.

When you can be real and honest with yourself, you can be real and honest with others. When you can love yourself genuinely the way you deserve, you can cleanse yourself genuinely of all the toxins and poisons, substances and people alike, that weren’t loving you back. When you can be a hero for that child sense within—the parent figure you needed—and all around be proud, you too have learned how to heal. There is no one path or easy way to explain healing, but I promise you (because it happened and continues to happen to me) that as you embark on your own inner healing, you will find that the path does become clearer. We’re meant to grow close to ourselves. That’s how we grow close to our lives, our natural world, and all the inner strength and wisdom that keeps us centered and learning.

I really do like that word “centered”, and what would we be if we weren’t continually learning? Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t have any one religion—I pull wisdom from everywhere, all my experiences, all directions, and all kinds of people and books. I don’t seek to understand or try out or study hard to learn—I mostly trust my feelings, center, and flow. What’s the gist of that? Taking what resonates and creativity. Before nature, it was my pen and paper a long time ago that gave me space to explore and understand more of who I am. That’s why I have a lot of empathy and understanding for others. I’ve been close to my deepest knowings and feelings for a long time. When we can make light of our shared intuitive pains and knowings, as a human race, we can heal the world. It is no joke. It is already happening.

And then nature—nature is the best. Nature is essential, inspiring, and where we get the most healing. Why couldn’t I feel it as much as a kid? Something in the way. That’s a good lyric from Nirvana. When we can get to our roots, reconnect with Mother Earth, and reconnect with all the genuine love she has for us, we’re free and unencumbered again. Hey, did I really not have a great connection with nature as a kid? No, I still did, just in a different way. Nature was my haven where feelings like sadness were okay. It was a secret place I’d run to, hide in, get hugs from, be held within, and absolutely get a taste of the immense beauty I’d eventually feel and rediscover as I danced, quite routinely by myself, in the sunroom of the broken home at night beneath the stars.

Girlfriend, you’re kind of sounding a little too close to what could be read as your no morals god awful biological molester trickster mother (remember, for those who don’t lol—it’s so nice to not really sound like her at all—from my first memoir where I wrote how she was scared of nature). Well, pish posh. Because surprise, healing is also about becoming so whole, confident, and comfortable within, you can hold that comfortability and confidence with anyone. Not so much a tumbleweed anymore, but a tree that can ground. No more growing trees without a ground (another good band lyric quote). That’s right. Healing is love. Healing is standing your ground and root, root, rooting, as well as root, root, rooting for others you care about. We were never meant to pretend and be silent. We were always meant to be real, and at times, help each other out. Healing is also community. I’m lucky to have one all my own now (everybody in Rhode Island knows what I mean).

Which brings me to animals—God, maybe the most precious and desperately-in-need-of-our-collective-human-healing beings on the planet. My heart pours open sometimes, and it’s not because it’s broken, but rather because I’m open to feel. I’m fully here and listening as I learn, so magically and more in awe each day, just how awake and communicating the animals are. It’s not a scary thing. It’s a centering thing. And it’s unbelievably natural too as fear on all sides is lowered and let go. A hummingbird dives in playfully toward me on the back deck, for example, because it saw me watching it on the branch above and it wanted to swoop down and get a closer look too. We all sense fear, at times, and when we can consciously lower that together, magic happens. I’m not here to heal you all to camp out with grizzly bears and test their limits (as also, hunters nearby hunt them). It’s all intuition again and remembering who you are in the wild. We’re a part of it all—connected and very much as healers, able to connect deeply. Stewards of the land. Maybe I do believe a tiny bit that humans are different from animals in that we owe them a better world. We have the power to make hell—we already have—but we also have the power to clean everything up and make heaven again.

I guess I’ll wrap up this blog post with lots of love for Mary Inwood, an old woman I met who was trapped in one of the human-made hells—a nursing home, which turns out is the same thing as a psych ward, I learned. There is no difference. In healing all directions and ways, there is a backwards flow of cleanup and learning, and also a forward flow of everything happens for a reason. Mary Inwood, and realizing the truth of nursing homes in general, was one of those reasons. She carried a stuffed cat toy in her lap as she glaringly wheeled herself around, observing and hating the majority of the staff in there. That could have been me—years and years from now, long after Scrat, the wholesome love of my life, having passed away. Mary Inwood adored that cat. The real cat—her cat that the stuffed animal represented. Nobody wants to be negative, especially healers, but God, at times like that when no one cares about you, someone’s gotta hate . . . sanely. And oh my God, are all the old people trapped in there ridiculously loving, hilarious, brilliant, feeling, and sane. Sane, sane, sane in a kooky world that loves (loved—let’s hope for that past tense more and more) labeling people according to the fucked up symbols they learned in school (Hello, Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz, authors of The Fifth Agreement—a book that is all about releasing the schooling of made-up symbols) and also denying them life by fearing death and not trusting the natural way. Keep people outside. Let them be and let them connect with nature.

Mary Inwood’s son couldn’t believe how much Mary changed after meeting me. Of course she did. I could see and understand her. I actually cared about her. That might sound rude and none of my business, but it is someone’s business when people are being thrown away. Fuck that. Let’s make our boundaries and protect ourselves, and as Mary Inwood lovingly put, take out our little trash cans, as the kids are doing nowadays, and toss out the people who don’t really love us. She was hurt by her son, but knew too he didn’t know better. Let’s all know better now, for ourselves and others. It has taken all my heart, all my skill, all my intelligence, humor, music, etc. to finally shine some light ways out. Because, like Mary Inwood, I know that system so well from her perspective, I also know how much none of us would ever wish it upon anyone else. She is a healer by simply existing and being herself.

I love people, I love animals, I love nature, and I love this life, and through it all, Real World Healing is the best of absolutely everything I have to give. Now let me fade into the background as simply the author, after everything personally here I’ve shared, so you can enjoy your own journey and the flow of wisdom that was always meant to heal and come through you.