Permission Slip: This healing shit takes time
Regulating a nervous system so long dysregulated is no easy feat
Permission Slip: It’s okay if you’re still healing.
When it comes to healing, there’s no easy-to-follow yellow brick road.
No, we can’t sing and dance our way to Oz this time, Dorothy.
You’ve got a brilliant heart and a wickedly sharp brain and all this courage. Damn right, you do.
And still, there’s all the damn trauma and those pesky attachment wounds and the realities of trying to carve out a life from the margins of a system never meant to support and sustain you. It can make the path ahead look more like an impenetrable tangle of barbed wire than the gilded pathway to the emerald city.
And yet. You are still here.*
And yes. Whatever form your metaphorical ruby slippers may take, I swear to you that you’ve got them, and the power to use them. It is in you now and it always has been. Even when you can’t sense it. Even when you can’t access it.
Even when you feel as far from powerful.
Even when your very own wicked witch and her flying monkeys are circling close.
Even when you swear you’re the one about to melt.
Even when your triggers seem to rest on a hairpin trigger, and you fly from anxious to avoidant faster than you can track the swing of your own longings.
Even when you’d damn near kill to find your way back home.
Yes, Dorothy, your healing is the pathway home.
Unfortunately, we’ve commodified that healing into some glossy, for sale to the highest bidder, one-stop destination. X-marks-the-spot, pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, spin the wheel and claim your prize.
Do it right and you’ll be the winner.
Make it here and finally, you’ll be able to rest.
God knows we all need some serious rest.
But when we are one-step-forward and two-steps-backing our way along, making it to that final rest stop feels impossible. We must be doing it all wrong…right?
There’s a whole industry that rests its existence (and its profits) on convincing us of this. Why wouldn’t they? After all, this belief keeps us pushing buttons, pulling levers, and frantically pressing ‘buy now’ in hopes that we’ll finally be granted an audience with the wizard who can grant our deepest wishes.
For healing. For respite. For peace.
If only we worked harder/smarter/longer.
If only we meditated more, spent more time in nature, got this self-love thing right for once.
If only we could magically find the time/skills/capacity/resourcing/support.
If only.
Truth is, most of us are only beginning to understand how trauma works and lives in our bodies. Most of us have only brushed the surface of the body of knowledge that exists about somatics and the intricacies of trauma’s impact on the nervous system.
We’ve just barely integrated the nuance of the ways our lived experience alters the ways we can show up to our current reality. We’ve only just started collecting the language that will allow us to bring words to what is deeply real inside the bones and blood and bodies of us.
And most of us are doing all this learning and integration from a space of exhaustion, under-resourcing, and lowered capacity—a direct result of the systems that landed us here in the first place.
Truth is, most of us have been walking around in varying states of dysregulation for a damn long time.
Your nervous system is a stunningly beautiful and complex network of nerves and cells and countless other working parts that connect that brilliant brain of yours to the rest of your body.
It’s a staggering work of art. Entirely awe-inspiring in both delicacy and tenacity.
But it’s kinda like we’re all walking around with a giant fuse box that controls how every last one of our systems fire. And a good many of us are in dire need of a massive scale re-wiring. We’ve got crossed wires, blown fuses, and some shady grandfathered-in repairs.
Not up to code. Will not pass inspection.
Art by Erzebet Prikel (go check out all her brilliant work - I’m purchasing one of the anatomical hearts for my office).
As brilliant as you are—there ain’t no magic spell that can immediately untangle this—not even one cast by a being as powerful as you.
But somehow, even at its most out of wack, that system still keeps our lights on. Keeps us living and loving and believing and hoping and dancing and singing. Keeps us living.
Somehow we make it work.
Fuck yes, we are living miracles, every last one.
When your nervous system has made do with patch jobs for a lifetime, it’s not going to untwist itself overnight. Healing that dysregulation doesn’t happen with some half-assed rapid overhaul. Regulation from the root is going to take a slow, gentle and loving restoration. A recalibration over time, and with a whole lot of tender care.
But that’s what we are here for.
It’s true healing our nervous systems is less like skipping along the yellow brick road singing “we’re off to see the wizard” and more like taking a long bus route with a million and one stops along the way.
It’s an extended road trip and there are no shortcuts.
But don’t you dare translate this into some doomsday proclamation. Far from it.
Because when we call bullshit on the way we are told things ‘should’ be, we finally get to embrace what is real. And from what is real, a whole hell of a lot is possible.
Like Dorothy, You’ve got to expose the man behind the curtain and ground into your own power before you can find your way back home.
And like Dorothy, I know you’re going to get there.
Because long-ass bus ride or not, I guarantee along the way you’ll glimpse enough beauty to damn near take your breath away. That some of those frustrating and extended stops en route are going to land you in just the right place at the right time to meet the souls or encounter the energy that will be pivotal to your journey.
Yes, it might take you a good while to get where you’re heading, but that doesn’t mean you bought the wrong ticket.
Oz ain’t going anywhere, my dear.
It just means that healing is meant to be a slow and gradual process. Circular and circuitous. It’s going to loop back on itself and spiral in and out. You’ll expand and you’ll contract and then you’ll push past the boundaries once more.
You’ll cross the borderlands and liminal spaces and come face to face with your past right where it juts up against your future. You’ll have flat tires and sometimes you’ll have to call on your entire community to push the bus up one hell of a big ass hill.
What is healing really, but the brilliantly messy process of being alive? Of doing and undoing. Of coming undone and puzzle-piecing ourselves back together again. Breathing and breaking. Patching up, dusting off, and getting back on the road. Choosing to try again. Hope again. Love again.
Because every last one of those nerves and neurons and synapses? They are really just the stones of the yellow brick—each one part of the pathway made to keep our brain, body, and heart running the same route.
The route that leads us home.
Here’s the truth, love.
Regulating a nervous system so long dysregulated is no easy feat.
But you’ve got all the power you need to do it.
You always have.
Patience, grasshopper.
This healing shit takes time.
Remember. You’ve always had a heart that could move mountains, a brilliant as fuck brain, and more courage than you’ll ever need. Healing is just a matter of getting all those pieces working together.
(Permission granted to take all the time you need).
____
* All the rest aside. Those four little words "you are still here" are more proof positive of your tenacious healing power than any other spell I can summon—because how the hell is that not magic given what you’ve lived through?
Whenever you worry you’ve lost your way and you won’t find your way back, just close your eyes and whisper to yourself over and over.
“I am still here. I am still here. I am still here. You’d better believe I am still fucking here”.
Buy some red glitter and click your heels together if you want. I’m not sure if it will help, but it sure as hell can’t hurt.
Join the conversation:
Do you have any tried and true techniques for nervous system regulation or pathways to your own healing? I would love to hear about them in the comments.