Song dedication: Lifted Away by JOSEPH

(This is not to depreciate the work of health care professionals, many of you are my friends and family and I respect your healing abilities and thank you for your dedication and sacrifice. This is also not to dismiss the efficacy of pharmaceuticals to help your mind or body feel better, function, or just get thru your day in one piece. This body of writing is simply my personally profound reflection on my own healing journey that has led me to feeling the healthiest I have ever felt in my. Entire. Life. )

Omg. This is me! This. Is. Me! As I fought back tears watching the first 30 minutes of the documentary, “Heal”.

I had a similar reaction to audiobooking “When The Body Says No” by trauma specialist Gabor Maté. That at the time, a very different time, was a mirror of my pain body. The part of me I had buried deeply and had recently awakened with a vengeance in the fall of 2017. That was when I realized something was really really out of alignment. That “something” was at least 92% of my life.

Above in the featured image are “The 9 common factors of spontaneous remission” the list researched by one of the doctors featured in this timely documentary. And if we compare trauma for just a moment, we are talking remission of late stage cancer and other “untreatable” diseases and disorders (specifically auto-immune). The nine things were me. The things I learned to accept as my work the past 3 years; what I had taken 41 years of my human-life-form-existence to fully realize; this was precisely what I had figured out innately in the deepest knowing I possessed. Only to watch this documentary reflect back my deep sense of knowing and gratitude for their willingness to say these truths out loud so maybe more people could choose something better.

My chronic pain and migraines (anxiety and depression) could have been indefinite (indeterminable in longevity but mentioned by some “to accept my diagnoses as part of me for the remainder of my life”). My first few GPs looked at me apathetically with a shrug of thems-the-breaks, kid….muttering some version of…Some people (lots of people) get sick. We don’t always know the cause which means we don’t really know a sure-fire cure, either. But what I am licensed and educated to do is know the corespondent pharmaceutical to dampen your symptoms to give (possibly) you relief (with hopefully none of those cautiously noted possible yucky side effects). Sorry but…we just aren’t in the business of “chasing ghosts here” (literally that was the term one GP said about my sudden onset of chronic migraines at the age of 37, minus the sorry…he was quite rude about it actually).

But thank God, something else told me this underwhelming option was only one of my choices. Which I began to explore (right after I called a new clinic while crying in my car after said Ghostbuster-hater-GP told me that …”asking for a neurologist referral was essentially wasting resources when I could just take the beta blockers (like he does for his migraines)…because we don’t Take TIMe OFF WORK Ffffor HEADACHES!!”) Mmmmmm…I’m sorry I must have misheard you over your aggressive tone because that sounded like incompetence to me. Or perhaps he was having a migraine?

I just didn’t know what other choices I had in the moment because I was taught to trust medical professionals to “help me get better” because somewhere and somehow along the line they knew my body better than me? But how is that possible? How could anyone know my body better than me after sitting with it in a beige disinfected exam room for 6.8 minutes every 6 -24 months? But that doctor helped me, you see. By pushing me away from the traditional symptoms-based medical framework, by literally rejecting me and my concerns to find a WHY for my illness; he unwittingly forced me to step up and be my own effing best advocate. And I’ve never looked back. Good day to you kind doctor (tip of my hat to ya) warmest fucking regards. Truly.

Over time however, I have been able to build the space and awareness to better listen to my inner voice. My intuition told me to read this, watch that, listen here, investigate this, try this healer or healing modality. And eventually I was what this documentary talks about; healed.

Don’t get me wrong, I had help every step of the way, carefully selecting who got to be there for me in their own rights and gifts, my team on my own terms. So I didn’t do this independently to a degree. But it was I, who made the conscious choices to challenge the status quo of traditional western medicine and treatments. And now, today and the past 6 weeks, here I exist in a body that is strong, healthy and vibrant because I chose to heal via the deeper spiritual pathway that all humans have access to when they choose to unblock the barrier that seems to keep you hidden from it: The truth.

The truth is: We heal when we choose health. We heal when we face the truth about ourselves, about our society, when we face that our judgement only serves the purpose of humans keeping other humans “down” rather than embodiment of acceptance to give a hand up, so that all human beings can stand on equal foundation. The microcosm and macrocosm are interdependent upon one another. It is alllll connected. When we feel this beyond knowing it in our minds, when we begin to listen to and trust our intuitive selves-the energetic being, that animates this temporary bag-of-skin-and-nothing – we will be set free of the thinking prison many of us find ourselves in “sometimes”, “often” or “Always-I’m-fine-everything-is-fine” fervour.

You can heal, I believe this in my core because it has become my reality. We can heal when we finally believe we deserve to surrender to this truth.

(Here it is one more time, it’s that good. Read it, note that 7 of the 9 on this list are social-emotional-spiritual, the other important fraction being dietary. Read it and find a way to be it. Please. You deserve all of this.)