The journey toward emotional healing requires courage. We become ready to challenge the burden of our disappointment when we accept the risk of self-honesty. Healing begins once sadness, frustration, and dashed hopes are accepted and the myth of everlasting happiness, despite all that one has accomplished, is disabused.
Courage to heal is activated when we set aside the drive for comfort, security, and stasis and accept the possibility of unknown abyss. Only after mustering the courage to leap into one’s unknown may we discover that creativity and resourcefulness is innate. To be fully alive, each of us must grapple with the questions of who we really are, what we are here to do, and what it will take to heal ourselves.
To heal we must find the courage to shed our pseudo-self and embrace our real self. It can be a challenge to live our truths, set new boundaries, discover purpose, and embrace love. The very coping skills and strategies of our youth, and entrenched relationships that bring us comfortable recognizable patterns, may even hold us back; for in adulthood we may confuse familiarity for effectiveness.
In discovering the courage to be bold, we forgo what we are supposed to do in favor of what we know is right. Over time we have learned to live up to others’ expectations for what “should” or “ought” to be. But free autonomy provides each of us to simply “do the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons.” Each of us must subjectively struggle – deeply examining our thoughts and feelings – to discover our own concept of what is right.
When we begin the process of healing we discover, above all, true healing comes from prioritizing our being over our doing. In unblocking our truth, we must find the courage to live it. Acceptance comes from finding permissiveness to overcome the shame of our apparent flaws. Thus, healing may come from finding the courage to give ourselves what nobody else, possibly despite their best intentions, has even been capable of even recognizing. Where we have never even been acknowledged, we must open our eyes for understanding.