A Healing Journey, Part I, The Road Map

As a junior high student, it intrigued me when I saw early maps of the “New World.” How was Amerigo Vespucci able to plot this vast, unchartered land mass which eventually would bear his name? Before air travel, how could anyone take on such a seemingly impossible task of diagramming anything more than a large city?

Maps have been an important part of human navigation for millennia, and now technology has made them available to anyone with a smartphone. Additionally, in today’s society, the word map is frequently used in figurative ways. We can map out a single day or an entire family vacation. It also refers to a general direction or course in one’s life. Someone can map out their college education or career goals. The hope is that these kinds of maps will help us get to the most successful and productive destinations in our life.

Unfortunately, these types of maps don’t have convenient, step-by-step directions like the ones GPS provides us. They are maps we mostly plot ourselves, and no matter how much care we may have taken during the planning stages, they often require deviations and might steer us in a completely different direction than we originally anticipated.

The Journey

From the moment of birth, we begin our life’s journey. In the very beginning, it’s mapped out for us by a parent or caregiver. As we grow older, though, life gets more complicated and sometimes these journeys can become quite overwhelming. No two people have exactly the same journey. Even if those two happen to be headed to the same destination, one road may look nothing like the other person’s does.

It’s not always clear whether our next journey will be challenging or not, but there is one journey which many of us may overlook or perhaps consider insignificant. However, it is likely one of the most difficult journeys we will ever have to face. It is one which I call the “Journey of emotional healing.”

At its core, the term “emotional healing,” sounds only beneficial and something that every person could benefit from. Many of us have suffered through traumatic events especially during childhood. Healing from those incidents will undeniably help. But I’m afraid that many well-meaning people see emotional healing as something that someone else may need, or it’s looked at as more of an event or an occurrence rather than a journey. My belief is that emotional healing is one of the most important things any person can do to live a fulfilling and meaningful life, and like every other meaningful objective, it takes desire and commitment over a period of time.

Emotional healing may be confusing for some because we’re not always sure when or if we have truly experienced it. When we get a cut on our hand, we know it’s healed after we no longer see any evidence of the original injury. But it’s not quite so cut and dry with emotional wounds. Fortunately, there are similarities between physical and emotional healing, and these parallels can help us better understand how emotional healing works.

Many emotional wounds occur during early stages of development because of our vulnerability. As infants, we are completely dependent on those around us and thus develop a sense of trust for others, and that everything they do for us is only to our benefit. It doesn’t take much for someone we trust to do something intentionally or not that can damage or stunt our emotional growth. These wounds often are left on their own and likely compounded over the years. Imagine the harm that would be done if you had a physical wound that bled for decades without healing. Emotional wounds can have similar effects on our lives.

Choosing to embark on an emotional journey also means we may need to face some memories or feelings that severely damaged us in the past; ones which we may have done our best to minimize or tried to forget the pain they inflicted on us. As adults, we’d rather dismiss these bygone events that may also appear trivial compared to some of our present-day challenges. We may tell ourselves that since the bullies are no longer around to taunt us or the people who violated us are dead, there is nothing more we can do about it. Besides, we’re adults now, and we just need to “suck it up or “shake it off.” It’s absurd to think that these decades-old issues should continue to have any control over our lives. I know. Because I had these very same thoughts.

My own Healing Journey didn’t begin until my early fifties. That’s not to say I never experienced healing previously, but it’s when my intention became focused specifically on healing, and it became the goal rather than a happenstance or side effect.

Choosing to begin a Healing Journey is not an easy choice. Most often, it begins at the end of a serious, or shocking incident. Mine was driven by the end of my first marriage. Something had to change, and I was determined to chart a successful map moving forward.

No one, not even the best therapist can hand you a map and say, “Follow these steps and you’re assured complete success.” That was precisely how I hoped my therapy would go. “Tell me what books to read, how to think, what to do, and I’ll soon be fixed,” was my mindset as I began my therapy sessions. Thankfully, emotional healing will help you see where your course went wrong and how to chart them more successfully for the future.

Over the next few articles, we’ll discuss the “Healing Journey” in more detail. How to know when it’s begun, how we know when healing has occurred and most importantly, what does it look like to heal emotionally. After all, if we don’t know what the destination looks like, how will we know when we arrive?

The subject of emotional healing is one I find extremely fascinating. It is undoubtedly something we all can benefit from. Yet how often do you hear good advice on how to make it happen?

It is a frequent topic of news and podcasts, especially after tragic events. You’ll often hear, “This city will need to heal from this tragedy…,” yet rarely does anyone ever talk about what that map looks like or how to get there.

I hope you’ll follow along and perhaps begin your own personal journey. Feel free to leave comments or questions. Reach out to others who will also benefit from learning about a healing journey and invite them to join. Together, we’ll all create a journey well worth mapping.

If you have questions about your own healing journey and are interested in delving further with me, my goal is to help guide and empower you on your own journey of healing and personal growth. Feel free to email me at Jdunia@gcegroup.net. Thank you.