Chronic Illness, Communities of Care, Disability, Facing Challenge, Healing, Peace, Personal Growth, Resilience, Trauma, Wellness

Three Lies We Tell About Health & Healing

While in community recently, I had the eye-opening opportunity to witness many misconceptions about healing and the healing process. Sadly, many so-called healers even hold these beliefs, and perpetuate them to their clients and the broader community. I decided to share these misconceptions here and also share what I’ve learned to be true.

Misconception #1: “If you live with a disease, you are unhealthy. If you are physically “well,” you are healthy.

Health is more than the absence of disease. You might have heard this statement before, or seen it floating around the internet. It’s worth reflecting on. Health is more than just being free of disease in the physical body, and it’s not a one-time event that happens and lasts forever. Health is the sum of all the factors of our lives that intersect and form our well-being. How are your relationships? Do you feel held in community? Are you fulfilled and satisfied with how you spend your days? Are your material needs being met? How are you treated in the broader society in which you live? Do you reside in a safe and supportive environment? Do you live in a state of chronic stress? What is your relationship to your past; are you living in unforgiveness or bitterness?

There are so many factors impacting and creating a person’s health in any moment. Also, our state of health is constantly in flux, depending on all of those factors. To reduce someone’s health to simply whether they have disease in their body or not is extremely simplistic and short-sighted, missing the important nuances of what composes a life.

Furthermore, there are people who have perfectly “healthy” bodies who are quite sick in their souls, and vice-versa: you can be spiritually and emotionally whole (well) and still experience physical challenges. 

Misconception #2: “If you would just solve your emotional trauma, your physical health issue would be cured.”

If this is true, there is no hope for Black people nor any oppressed and marginalized group. We would be guaranteed to be physically sick forever and always because our existence comes with guaranteed and ongoing trauma just related to living in the world as a marginalized identity alone. Weathering is real – but I don’t believe that it has to be that way; we can do better as a society.

Furthermore, if this statement is true, then our most enlightened spiritual teachers would not get sick – and especially not at the latter part of their lives, when they are most “realized” and awakened. In fact, this is when most of them do get sick – just like people who have not walked an intense spiritual path.

We live in flesh suits, and those suits are not perfect; they do break down. They are impacted by all kinds of assaults continually throughout our lives – in our air, our water, our food, and more. And yes, also by emotional trauma. Sometimes physical issues are the result of being impacted by environmental racism, or even medical mismanagement. There are many factors contributing to our health or lack thereof.

One of the hardest things for people to confront as they grow and evolve spiritually and personally is that they still encounter challenges with their physical self. They still get sick, and may even face serious disease. Many struggle because we hold this belief deep down, that if I could just get over my childhood trauma, if I can just resolve the pain I have toward my parent, if I can gain self-worth or get over the person who left me, if I just pray enough or grow spiritually enough, I won’t get/be sick anymore.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Spiritual growth does not make you exempt from the possibility of illness. There’s no perfect formula for healing and there is no guarantee. As Caroline Myss says, healing is ultimately an act of grace. It can’t be achieved by the quick-fix methods we try and use to be cured and cured for good. Often the process and journey of seeking healing is the healing. In my own journey, I sought and sought until I discovered that God is the healing. If I have the absence of disease but no relationship with the Healer, I would not consider myself well. My journey of seeking healing gave me God, in truth, and that is the healing. Everything else – including any improvements in my physical body/health – is a bonus.

Anatomical Study, Solon H. Borglum, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Misconception #3 “Illness is a punishment for something you did and being ill means you are somehow deficient, flawed, and less-than.”

Illness is not a punishment.

In fact, having to walk through the path of living with disease can sometimes even be a portal, a lesson, or a training. Sometimes it even ends up being a way for your life to shine and release a light that would not have been brought forth in you or your life in any other way.

(Please note: this is not a glamorization of illness, by any means. I don’t believe that illness is of God, but I do believe that God can use the difficult things of our existence for good.)

Viewing people with illness or physical limitations as if there is something wrong with them, or if they did something to cause it, is how we typically view sick people – with lots of shame and judgment, (which fosters exclusion rather than belonging, by the way). We rarely ever talk about the strengths, gifts, and capabilities that sick and chronically ill people have, gifts that they’ve developed precisely because of how they’ve had to survive and exist while living with a health challenge. To look at them as somehow less than someone who seems to be in perfect health is dangerous, flawed, and lacking in humanity and empathy. Productivity, physical strength, and a certain appearance (“looking healthy”) are prized as markers of status, success, and wellness in our society. There are other markers I suggest we lift up higher – markers like character, integrity, empathy, emotional intelligence, and qualities of care.

Back to the nuances. Some people have an encounter with disease or illness as part of their life’s path and movement into their calling. This happens with many who are called into healing work, such as the initiatory illness that is a part of the shamanic path. How would someone truly be able to heal and empathize with sickness if they had never had to grapple with it themselves? There are also many instances where healers have profound healing abilities in that very area of illness or limitation that they continue to live with. Some of these nuances seem unfair and hard to make sense of, but it’s worth simply witnessing and accepting, even if you can’t fully understand it.

Again, there are so many fine shades to this topic. It cannot be over-simplified.

Furthermore, illness often functions as information. The body is on our side; symptoms manifest not as a punishment but as communication about what’s going on within us, whether physically or emotionally and spiritually. Getting sick often causes people to re-evaluate how they’re living and to change their lives through making more life-affirming choices. We don’t need to fear the body, but rather to befriend it, to listen to it, and to witness all the ways it is on our side.

The truth: We don’t have ultimate control. Grace is required.

Many of these misconceptions are used by folks in healing and spiritual communities to lure hurting people into spending money on their services and being dependent on them. Don’t fall into the trap – choose healing practitioners and guides who believe in your healing potential and see the fullness of who you are in this very moment, who see your beauty and strength beyond whatever limitation you’re currently facing.

“The Seine at Giverny,” Claude Monet, National Gallery of Art

The bottom line is that we don’t have ultimate control. That is the hard part, the grief that we all will have to contend with at some point. Every one of these misconceptions above comes out of the view that we ultimately have total control over the health our bodies; “If you would just….then you would be healed.” The truth is that we do not; we cannot. There are countless factors impacting our lives and our health, we don’t have control over all of them, and even the most good-faith efforts will not ensure that we escape illness and difficulty. Our bodies break down and we all eventually die. Healers get sick, healers die. We don’t have the formula to ensure that we’re always well. No one can ensure that – not doctors, not herbalists, ministers, nor gurus. We rely on grace, every day.

Healing is not linear and it’s not a one-time event. It’s a long journey – it’s a lifelong path. You’ll always be healing; if you’re lucky, you’ll be healing all your life. As my teacher says, healing is like peeling layers of an onion – you address one layer and find that there’s another layer waiting to be addressed. Healing is not just about physical wellness, but about how we exist in the world; how we deal with our past, present, and future; how we treat ourselves and others; our relationship to the earth; our relationship with the sacred; and so much more – and the manifestation of all of these things in our lives. It is anything but simple, and for the journey we most need the simple gift of self-compassion.

The question is not necessarily one of “How can I be healed, right now, once and for all?,” but also one of considering the skills and quality of spirit that the healing process can develop in you, if you let it. How can you more skillfully meet the challenges in your life? How can you use what you encounter along your life journey to cultivate ever deeper love, for yourself and others? How can your relationship with the Divine help you navigate life’s struggles?

It’s about knowing that good can come of this, too.

May you be at peace today.