What comes to mind when you think of healing?
When you think of healing, what comes to mind? Is it only something that is called upon or considered in times of despair and hopelessness? Is it beyond us? Only the domain of guru’s, tonic’s and chance. What if the process and experience of healing was at the heart of our very nature – as available to us as our very breath? In the very ordinariness of our humanity. It is my sense that it is in the very way we live our lives; the intention we bring and the way we see ourselves and each other that blinds us from seeing and blocks us from accessing the capacity to heal and be healed. I believe that these are attributes that lie at the heart of who we are and what we were made for. This recognition is what the world has always and will always need. We are the answer we have been looking for.
Why ‘The Healing Tide’?
Naturally enough, in setting up my own business, I pondered deeply on the name. After considerable play and thought, the word ‘healing’ did not go away.
In Old English, the term healing stems from hǣlan – which is to ‘restore to sound health’. It’s Germanic origin heilen also refers to the notion of wholeness. The fact that healing rose to the surface in my search for a suitable name makes sense to me now, given the connection to these origins.
Do we value or even believe in healing?
That’s all very well for me – but what about for you and for the rest of us? As I reflect on the very notion of healing, what emerges is a sense that it is seen as a phenomenon that is either not possible, irrelevant or unnecessary? It might be that the dominant cultural orientation towards progress and control does not entertain the idea of falling or failing? And it’s not that we need to live with an intent for either of these outcomes – life takes care of that. Rather, the very reality and possibility of being healed infers that there is something to be healed from. Such thinking distracts from the path and prize of progress. But as we really know, in quiet moments or out of the depths of despair, beyond our pursuit of preconceived progress and enticements, heartbreak and hurt are either near and/or present.
Think on these words by poet and philosopher David Whyte:
If heartbreak is inevitable and inescapable, it might be asking us to look for it and make friends with it, to see it as our constant and instructive companion, and perhaps, in the depth of its impact as well as in its hindsight, and even, its own reward. Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is an introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the ultimate letting go.[i]
We wouldn’t go there if we didn’t have to. But there is this thing that has happened/is happening to me and/or the world. We know what happens to our general health if we choose to hide and repress and it’s no wonder, it’s hard. I know. The energy of shame and the power of trauma are beasts – but they can be tamed. Again, turning to these beasts brings relationship to the fore. Being accompanied and witnessed by another repairs rupture great and small.
Is healing a part of what it means to be human?
All of this leads to a consideration of our worldview – the way we look at the world and the way we live. My life has led me to believe that living, by its very nature, invariably involves us directly in a mystery – who of us alive could have known what we have and will encounter? To be human is to be involved in this mystery. It is deep, wide and true and certainly far more than achievement and progress. It is rich beyond any measure and we do ourselves and each other an injustice with such reduction. Being open to life in this way gives us all an opportunity to go deeper – both personally and communally. It engenders risk, yes, but it contains fullness of life and the opportunity to live with passion and purpose. Such living cultivates authenticity, compassion and real power. Such living risks the need for healing and healing seeds the risk of living again and again.
Are you living on the outside of what you could be asking for from life?
In contemplating the nature of life and healing, I am led to reflect upon the story where Jesus (Mark 10:51), is approached by Bartimaeus (a man who is blind). In the midst of the encounter Jesus asks “What do you want me to do for you?” It is for me a telling question, for in its asking, we are exposed to the reality that if we know what we want then we can ask for it and we might just get it. When we really are brought to our knees, knowing what we really want and really need, then we are at the threshold of glimpsing its possibility. Accompanied by the presence of love (a trusted friend, community, therapist) then we can walk the road we haven’t wanted to walk down towards something more spacious. It’s hard, but it’s real. It’s not shiny, but it’s soulful. It is progress of a different kind and one that the world needs more than ever.
It really depends on what you want and what you want to ask for?
The shape and movement of healing
Healing is a broadening and a becoming. It is a gift that opens us up to possibilities we could never anticipate beyond the closed world we sometimes create and inhabit. You and I were made for far more than that.
[i] Consolations: Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, by David Whyte, A & U Canongate, 2025
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