Healing, from a spiritual standpoint, is a lot like physical recovery. It takes patience, sometimes it’s deeply uncomfortable, and most importantly, you can’t force it—it brings you comfort and completion when the time is right.
And while that sounds simple enough, deciding to heal and free yourself from pains and traumas is no easy feat. Because we all know this on some level, it’s a huge reason why some of us never begin the journey in the first place. Simply put, it’s scary.
But it doesn’t have to be. Here are 3 easy steps to starting your spiritual healing journey with no pressure or judgement from others, but especially not from yourself.
Create a path that your inner child can walk, too.
“Inner child” is a buzzword when it’s time to talk about healing, but just because it’s popular and somewhat misinterpreted, doesn’t mean that the concept as whole isn’t useful.
In fact, it’s the most useful when unpacking difficult things in adulthood because it reminds us sometimes the best way to accept and move forward from things that have hurt us doesn’t always require us to go down a traditional path to wholeness.
Things like talk therapy, journaling, and learning to “sit with” recurring uncomfortable feelings are helpful when you need to be triggered into realizations, but can be counterproductive when the time for release finally comes.
Cue the inner-child work.
Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t mean you should sit down and play with toys or draw like your 5. In actuality, moving from a space where your inner child exists requires you to be the version of you that isn’t overly-concerned with judgement and structure.
If that means allowing yourself to cry when your feelings are hurt or running around the park like a wild woman when you need to release tension, or even giving yourself permission to hug your mom after a disagreement—by all means, do it.
Whatever it is that awakens the part of you that wants to be free, include that side in your healing journey and nurture it often.
Create a healing routine built on patience.
Have you ever heard the popular saying, “rome wasn’t built in a day?” If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, it means that great things take time to build up. And quite naturally, the greater the thing, the greater the time—and ultimately, more patience.
It’s great that you want to workout, limit meat intake, finally cut off your toxic ex—whatever. But don’t forget that even when unhealthy things aren’t good for us, they still provide a twisted sense of comfort all because they’re familiar.
So before you take on new wellness goals and resolutions, be realistic about how much time it’ll take. No, you won’t lose 20 lbs in a week. You won’t stop loving them overnight. It’s dangerous to try that really hard yoga move right now.
Give yourself some patience, give yourself some grace—and I bet it’ll also inadvertently begin healing your desire to unnecessarily rush.
Focus on undoing before redoing.
Healing to me is a lot like dealing with box braids. You can hide or manipulate the new growth all you want, but when it’s time to take the braids down and start fresh—it’s time.
That’s a bit of a funny comparison, but it holds true when you’re trying to heal. Sometimes we forget that it’s not enough to find the root of the problem and work with it as is—you literally have to undo what you’ve been conditioned and programmed to be, do, and think.
Sometimes that means just rebraiding what you already have—knowing that you have the right materials available to you, but you just need to update your understanding of it.
Other times, it takes a whole new hairstyle—accepting that what you’re used to is no longer working for you and deciding to start fresh by trying something completely different.
No matter what path you’re personally on, both of these will require you to undo before you take the leap and redo.
