A Heartfelt Message on How to Heal and Thrive Right Now

You might be stricken with Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome or unrelenting pain. Perhaps it’s brain fog, headaches, insomnia or other symptoms with a mind-body connection. No matter the name, doctors can’t seem to help. You long to return to yourself. To feel vibrant, alive, connected. To feel part of the human race. To belong.

You yearn to walk on green sweeps of earth, run on rugged edges of cliffs, wade in wild tributaries of water. To lift weights like a ninja. To dance in the new moon. (Even your dimly lit living room will do.) Like a child, to create and to play! Maybe your hands want to mold clay into pots or make paper into paintings. Or you desire to parent with patience and purpose. 

You long to be useful to yourself and others. Stretch out your hands and feet where they’re needed. Do the work you came to the world to do. To give yourself so fully to that work, you barely notice sweat beading on your brow.

You remember what it’s like to feel alive. Even if you only recall scarce moments, they dwell inside you. You must again experience this joy of being! In your bones, you ache to feel connected to yourself, other beings, the natural world, something greater than your small, suffering self.  

Here’s a secret: It’s possible to open to peace right now. Yes, just as you are. Can you feel a glimmer of calm in your innermost body? Some part of you dwells in quietude, even in the midst of human turmoil.

How can you reach for ease right here and now? You might start with acceptance.

Feeling unwell can’t steal your serenity, even though your situation may be seismically different than you’d hoped. Situations don’t make us happy. Haven’t you once been miserable when things were going your way? Open your mind to possibility! Ignite your imagination! 

Your body may feel like a box of burnt matches or a bag of drowned stones. It’s not easy to endure. You are more than your symptoms. Unbearable as they feel, they are ephemeral sensations, like grey storm clouds or gold lightning bolts. If you pay attention, you may notice they shift.

What you call symptoms aren’t always the same. Like nature’s fury, they might be clearing you out for a sunlit sky of powder blue.  

Your body has a right to exist as it is. Sensations are not mistakes, even if they represent a long-gone or overinflated sense of danger. Trauma, or even stressful events, can keep the nervous system activated. This isn’t your fault. It’s your biology.

But you have human powers of asking, listening and sensing! You might ask: What is the message in my body?

Perhaps it’s time to stand up to fear, to set a firm boundary, to breathe deeply into your belly, or open to everyday joy. To reclaim what you want to do!

There’s always a cool drink in a patch of sunshine or hot tea on a rainy day. There’s a hammock to be strung under shimmery leaves or a furry mammal seeking to be stroked. There’s a spiral-bound notebook ready to receive your emotional landscape.

Scribble it out. A tree can transmute things you’d never tell your therapist. 

Like an ant in the shadow of something towering, high places can seem out of reach. When we’re wandering lost in the dark, it can become our new orbit.  When we feel sick each moment of each day, it can morph into our identity. Tiny pill baggies replace our field of dreams. We know we are headed South to the Sahara but our True North is snowed in. 

In such times, we must pause and reorient. Stop walking the wrong way. Find a new view. Look up towards the stars. Reach deep inside where answers reside. Allow what is present. Instead of waving your fists at the heavens and demanding “Tell me how to heal now! I’m done with this!” pretend you are a scared and wounded child in need of steadfast love.  

Ask these questions again and again, without conditions: “What emotions am I feeling? What do I need to feel safe?”

Wait with the patience of a saint. Shake out anxiety. Wrap your arms around shame. Watch rage rise up like flames! Let grief pull down like earth. Hold hands with fear. Place your palm over your heart. Allow the emotional visitors you’ve shut out, but do not let them overcome you. Feel the ground beneath your feet. If it helps, find someone with a soft heart and smooth nervous system to sit across from you and listen.  

Whisper to yourself in the words of a lover. I’m right here. I accept you. I care for you. I want to know you. Your secrets are safe. I will no longer withhold my love because you feel unwell for this is when you need it most. I hold you with devotion no matter how you feel or what you can do. 

Without expectations, watch what happens. You’re not trying to dismiss difficult feelings any more than you’d wave off a tornado. You’re nurturing yourself because you are suffering.

Healing and thriving is, most vitally, about loving the messy and mysterious family of you. Your estranged stepchildren need to know they belong, too. 

Recovering from mind-body symptoms isn’t an “abracadabra, presto, you’re gone!” kind of magic—although sometimes it seems like it. Healing happens day by day, with the constancy and curiosity of a student studying a new language in a foreign land.

Verbs are essential: being, believing, supporting, softening, listening, loving.

You’re learning the language of your nervous system. You’re cultivating a conversation with your innermost self.  

This capability opens space for your mind and body to work their own kind of alchemy. So that moment by moment, you enter into harmony with yourself and your life. You recall the bygone symptoms with the fondness of a long-lost friend, grateful for who they helped you become.