When we are real, we heal.

When we are real, we heal.
 
This phrase has been ruminating in me for the past week and feels so aligned with my work on the whole and who I am as a human. It is what I witness continuously in the coziness of my office, on intimate Zoom sessions, and in the groups and retreats that I offer and have participated in. 
 
When we are authentic and vulnerable and real about our lives and what our experiences have been, and are able to be received by another, (which is key!) then we heal in unimaginable ways.
 
When we are able to share our hearts, our stories, traumas and dramas….we lift the shame and remember that we are not alone. When we can speak our truth and be seen, heard, and witnessed in this place no matter how messy, ugly, or chaotic it may feel to us, we have the opportunity to release a layer of the gunk of the past and open to new possibilities in the present.
 
This is why we must create conscious partnerships, conscious relationships, and supportive and safe opportunities for us to be exposed and felt for exactly who we are.

This is why making it one’s mission to be authentically oneself is so crucial. To continuously turn within and cultivate an unwavering relationship with one’s true self, unabashedly unique and beautiful and messy and ever-evolving so that we may turn outwards holding the same qualities in our hearts.
 
This is why we must do our personal work so that we can build those inner muscles of strength, of resilience, of power, so that we can stay upright in ourselves and meet each other from that place.

We do our personal work so that we may hold each other in that space of reverence for our own humanity….without judgment….with compassion and empathy and love.
 
We heal when we are real. When we stay quiet or contained or contracted or collapsed in our relations, it causes grave harm. We are not able to unwind our bodies and systems. We build tension and dis-ease.
 
There is nothing more powerful than being real with our fellow humans and feeling seen for exactly who we are. It is so incredibly healing to just be yourself. To let go of the concern of what others think of you, to try and morph yourself into some vision that someone else has of you.
 
Being honest about what one is experiencing and going through takes a lot of courage. Being real and authentic about one’s struggles and challenges in this life breaks down the barriers of our humanity and allows people in.
 
When we are real, we feel less alone. When we are real, we are connected to something so much bigger than us. When we are real, we are present in the moment. When we are real, we can soften to the world around us rather than harden against it. When we are real, we are liberated from the shackles of pretending to be something we are not.
 
When we are real, we heal.
 
When we are real, we see, hear, and feel the world around us differently. There’s no gap in who we are and how we move to the world. To me, this is true embodiment.
 
Remember…choosing to be a fully feeling and embodied human is messy, uncomfortable, painful, joyful, vulnerable, and incredibly beautiful. When we cut off the range of our experiences of life, we short-change our capacity to heal.
 
To me, now more than ever, we need to be individually doing our own work so as to heal the planet on the whole.
 
Never underestimate the power of the individual to create ripples in the greater collective.