Healing Fatigue

We unschooled our kidsUnschooling means no curriculum, no worksheets, no testsWhat did we do? Lived life. Explored their questions.About 5 years in, they wanted to try schoolMy son had to take a placement test. He scored squarely in his grade level.Without having completed a single elementary lesson or scratch of homeworkI had not stressed for a moment about him learning his times tablesHis natural becoming carried him right where he needed to beHad I been micromanaging his learning by a prescribed set of rolling dictatesDid you do your homework? Are you ready for your spelling test?I imagine I would’ve been very involved in regular interventions to support his performanceAnd I think we both benefitted that that was not the caseTo some degree, this is how I’m feeling about healingOutside of physical procedures that usually have a start and end dateFollowed by perhaps shifts in behavior to support ongoing wellnessMany of us seem to have ourselves on a healing treadmillDiligently trying to achieve our 10,000 steps toward the self we hope to earnWe forget that wholeness isn’t an achievementIt’s the ground we start fromWhat if our healing is a natural process within our becoming that simply takes time and space to unfoldAnd what we really need to do is live life and explore our questionsMove towards what lights us up and away from that which constricts usThat discernment is our jobWhich requires sensitivity to this body in this moment in this spaceLike every other bit of life, we’re constantly becoming something newEven when that becoming looks like agingWe bring the resources of what we’ve been in the past to encounter what’s happening nowAnd let that update us instead of defending the old positionHealing occursBecause life, as Gibran says, cares for our growth as well as our pruningI say this as someone who has experienced a lot of physical pain and a lot of healingAnd significant emotional pain and healingAnd for all my efforts and devotionI’m not so sure that most of my healing didn’t happen naturally or at least in nature’s timingThat my machinations towards it were just thatIn any case, it has all informed my orientationThat we are whole, just as we areWe are becoming, because that’s what life doesAnd when I can soften into that knowingLife is interesting and surprising right here in my body and through my relationshipsNot a constant march of me trying to fix myselfThat’s what I really needed healing fromMaybe letting go of concepts of healing is where healing truly happens. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fallingtenderly.substack.com