The Healing Faith

(Authors Note: I wrote this for a class I took back in February of this year. I am posting it now and dedicating it to the subject of my essay, a beautiful woman who finally surrendered to her disease after holding out long enough to welcome her grandson, Marty, into the world. Faye, a.k.a. "Faith", was a beautiful spirit and will be greatly missed.)

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Faith looked up at me, her ocean blue eyes full of tears. Both of her hands cradled my arthritic one, palm up, held fast in her lap. She ran her fingers over my open palm, stroked it as one would a precious, delicate animal. 

"I've always liked you." She whispered softly, intensely. "You're like me, a wounded healer."

I groaned internally. There's that word again: "Healer". I tried to make a joke, tried to push the word away from me discretely, gently, unable to unify the concepts of "wounded" and "healer" within my being in a way that made sense. How do I fix others when I can't even fix myself?

"We're all wounded, Faith. That's why we get into this business." 

She gazed at me, liquid eyes holding back a storm of grief, if only for a moment. And then it broke through, raged through her and shook her body with its torrents. She collapsed against my shoulder, and I held her, my hand firmly against her back, right where her lungs would be. Right where, at this very moment, the cancer was devouring her alive. 

"I love you." She choked out the words, through tears and decades of pain, in the voice of a little girl who was badly abused by those who should have protected her. I couldn't heal her, couldn't take away all the horror she had experienced in her life. All I could do was be present, be silent, and be in a space that allowed me to honor the spirit trapped inside this quivering, fragile body. All I could do was provide the safety that she should have gotten fifty years ago when she was just as terrified as she was now. But that's where my capabilities stopped abruptly, a revved car that brakes just in time to avoid sailing off a canyon cliff. I could be a comfort to someone, maybe; a healer, I definitely was not.

For the past fifteen years I have had a love/hate relationship with this odd title of "healer". I remember graduating from massage school in 1996; I was strong, knowledgeable, and very good at what I did. I had learned my trade well, and I naively strode out into the world believing that I had the power to fix any chronic ailment that came my way. Within three years I was depressed and disillusioned. My clientele loved my work, but their problems continued long after I had first laid hands upon them. On occasion I had a brilliant success story, but that was more the exception to the rule; the rule itself was that chronic pain usually stayed as chronic pain, and the relief I was able to give was merely a temporary solution. 

I grappled with this new knowledge, this ugly blow to my tender ego. What was I missing? Did I not learn as well as I thought I did? I sought out other massage therapists, chiropractors, movement therapists and naturopaths. I learned different modalities in energy work and became a Reikki Master. I entered the world of the healer and I consulted many gurus who turned out to be wannabes with less education than me. They were broken people hiding behind professional masks, tripping out on the concepts of "peace and love heals all". If I could just raise my vibration, man...if I could just embrace the world in a giant love-hug, then I, too, would see the rainbow crystal healing begin. 

Disgusted, I walked away from massage therapy and became an office manager for a legal firm. A few years later I was running a business with my now ex-husband in real estate investing. Though I had continued to have a side interest in the healing arts, I had realized that healing wasn't my main talent and that I had to push it into a back closet somewhere and focus on other things. However, the original calling wouldn't go away; the siren kept singing to me in an ever louder voice, until finally that voice crescendoed into a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis when I was only thirty-five. As someone who never smoked, drank, did drugs or abused my body, I was blown away. How did I get an "old person's" disease at so young an age?

I was on the quest again, like it or not. I studied detoxification, food additives and GMOs, dietary changes, and how the digestive tract works. I became a colon hydrotherapist and fluent in the language of supplements, digestive enzymes, parasites and anti-aging products. I opened my own wellness center and studied more fecal matter than one person ever should. All this, and three years and many clients later, I was back again where had I started; I had one or two miracle stories here and there, but the chronic conditions stayed chronic. As far as my R.A. was concerned, not only wasn't it better, but it had progressed significantly. Due both to a bad economy and a frustrated soul, I closed my doors and tried to find a steady paycheck somewhere else. How many times did I need to be told that a healer, I wasn't? 

Against my will, my journey has continued. The body is far more complex than we can imagine. As the now office manager and technician of a wellness center that uses light, sound, frequency and vibration to realign the Autonomic Nervous System back into a relaxed state, I have learned quite a bit about trauma and how that trauma lodges itself into the wiring of a being, creating the way that being senses the world and interprets their place within it. 

What I am coming to find is that so without, then so within. Trauma will program a person to see the outside world as threatening; their cells will then mirror this belief, and while a person perceives that they are being attacked on the outside, the cells will begin attacking things on the inside. This then creates autoimmune diseases, food allergies, cancers and other system breakdowns. Trauma creates belief, and belief creates biology. We become our own sickness generators; the good news is that if we can create it, then we can heal it, as well. 

I am back to where I started, but this time, I am here with more compassion and ease. I cannot possibly be the healer of someone else; I no longer need to take that stress and responsibility on. I can only heal myself through changing the belief systems that hold me fast, as Faith did my hand on the day of her visit. I can only move forward if I am courageous enough to see my world as safe, see myself as carrying a special gift worthy of giving to others. All I can be for others is a teacher, guide, mentor, or companion. I can only remind people of the light that they themselves hold, and of the possibilities and potential that they themselves possess. 

As Faith got ready to leave that day, I hugged her goodbye. I looked deep into those ocean eyes.

"You're beautiful, Faith. You have much to give. The world needs your love, and the gifts that you'll be bringing back from this experience will blow us all away."

Those eyes watered again, and she hugged me, hard. Faith still has a lot of life and power left in that petite body of hers. She left, her husband wheeling her tethered oxygen tank out behind her. I had to notice that she's already stronger than she was when she first came in to see us months ago. She decided that she's going to make it, and so she will. Her own personal healer is working overtime, and I believe, with incredible joy. With some people, I worry, but I have no such feelings with Faith. She's beginning to understand that she's loved, and that one thought alone will make all the difference.