The Healing Process

Sometimes when you are healing, you can take one step forward and two steps back. Almost two weeks ago I got a Monroe piercing.  Some people say that they are nurturing their inner child, but much of the time lately I feel like I am nurturing my inner rebellious teenager, as evidenced by this need to poke a hole in myself.  The first few days after I got the piercing, I had a lot of difficulty getting used to it. The labret they put in at first is extra long to allow for swelling and I think mine would have accommodated Angelina Jolie and Mick Jagger's love child.  Every time I tried to bite or chew food, not to mention talking, my teeth would pull it from the inside.  It was no fun.  Gary took me to Cherry Bomb tattoo and piercing parlor a couple of times to get the jewelry changed which helped quite a bit.  Little by little it was feeling better, until a couple days ago when my teeth caught it and gave it a good pull that grabbed the front end and pulled it through my lip. OUCH!

I share this story of the piercing because it seems to be the way of healing.  In this process there are stops and starts.  We gain ground and start to feel a sense of wholeness and suddenly and often unexpectedly that same ground seems to drop from beneath our feet, leaving us reeling again.  But healing must occur and we must expect that it does not do so in a linear fashion.  If we choose to forego the healing process our only option is to remain battered and bitter.  It seems not a choice at all to me.  Healing is not easy, and it requires that we deal with our scars, but wholeness is always the goal.  I read something beautiful recently from Little Bee by Chris Cleave about scars:

"I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."

I survived. When the bad memories come, the pain creeps to the surface and demands acknowledgment, I remind myself that I survived.  These things did not kill me then, and they will not kill me now. Like my piercing, the pain will serve it's purpose.  In time, healing will come and with it a beautiful scar as a reminder that I survived.