The word heal comes from the Anglo-Saxon haelan which means to be or to become whole. To be a woman healing myself is to be a woman becoming whole; giving myself the time and the space I need for the journey. No one grows up without wounds–emotional wounds, spiritual wounds, psychological wounds. I may want to forget how I have been hurt, bury it and just move on, but sometimes my wounds keep me from becoming all that I want to be, and so I need to pay attention to them, giving myself what I need to heal them.
Healing is discovering all the secret places inside of me, especially the ones I feel ashamed of or frightened by, and befriending them. Healing is the process I am engaged in, and not a specific outcome. I fill my life with people and things which nourish and feed me and I try to avoid anything which is not healing for me; anyone who does violence to my unfolding. I do not know what the outcome of this process will be, what my healing will look like, or feel like, even to myself, because healing is always creative. Yet I have come to trust that, no matter what it looks like, feels like, or sounds like; no matter how long it is taking or how foreign the territory, I am a woman healing myself.