In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness
An introduction to messy healing and to holding all the truths at once
Hi everyone, I’m Hannah– since childhood I’ve struggled with scoliosis, chronic pain, and complex autoimmune diseases. In the linear Western world it seemed like there was no explanation for any of this. Just bad luck, just how it is. I hit the circuit of doctors, I had the tests, I took the medications. Its hard to do anything else when you’re scared and desperate. Its hard to look for the deeper meanings, the uncomfortable truths, the things that might take profound time and patience to heal.
But now twenty something years later, I’m sad for the way I didn’t know that I could advocate for a greater impression of myself. I so willingly took on identities of being sick and fragile, and I tried to “good girl” my way through everything. Think elaborate allergy elimination diets, careful exercise allowances, and other perfectionist qualities. Like maybe I could be correct enough for this world if I just really kept it together.
Well friends, I’m here today to tell you that the linear perfectionist path is a path of self judgement, fear, and loneliness. The world I want to live in now? The messy world. I may not have all the answers, but I came into this world with inherent wisdom and worth (and so did you). I feel like every health issue I’ve ever had has stemmed from forgetting this, and as a result keeping myself small and quiet. Recently I oscillate between two experiences– feeling overjoyed that all my issues are related, and feeling overwhelmed AF that they’re all related. Its actually a lot easier to take millions of small tactical steps– like avoiding these foods, doing these stretches. Its so hard to come up with ways to address root emotional/spiritual causes in entirety that I guess I didn’t even attempt to do it until now. If we want to unearth the roots, we have to agree to getting messy in the process.
So in these entries we’ll dig all around in the soil– exploring all the “bad” things that have happened to me from my Western medicine trials to my bouts of chronic pain and loneliness. But we’ll also explore the “good” things that have blossomed directly as a result of this, including how I became a 500 hr certified yoga teacher, reiki energy healer, student of absolutely all the things which might bring me healing, and general deep well of a person.
And most importantly, we’ll explore everything in between, the messy stuff that defies the polarities of good/bad or right/wrong. The sheer chaos, the confusion, the defeats, the rage. I came up with the name Messy Healing and the icon of the spiral based on a phrase I found myself writing in my journal over and over again, that I was “swirling through life”. But wonder if its good to be in the swirl. Wonder if the swirl holds “this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness” (lyrics from “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan).
Shouldn’t we find out, isn’t that what our souls signed up for? To also quote Elise Loehnen in her book On Our Best Behavior “When we resist what’s hard, when we are not fully in it, swirling and splashing around in the muck and the mess, we grow tight and small. We atrophy.” If you’re not here to atrophy, if you believe in mining the human experience for meaning– then you are a messy healer just like me, and this is for you.