The Hope Of Healing & The Healing Of Hope.

What if healing isn't about fixing yourself, but remembering who you already are? In this gentle reflection, we'll explore anxiety, hope, purpose, and the possibility that even our hardest seasons may be guiding us toward a deeper experience of love, presence, and meaning. Please note that this reflection is not a replacement for professional mental health support.

Transcript

Hi, My name is Allison, And I'm welcome. I'm honored that you chose to click on this audio to listen to today. And the way that I'm speaking it today is, Well, I have some notes in front of me about the message that I wanna communicate. I've got my ginger and honey tea right here to the left of me, And I'm kind of just, Going to see what comes out as I sort of tell the story. I've had the desire to talk about this particular topic for a couple weeks now, And yeah, I think we're here. I don't remember exactly when it started, But some point in my adulthood, I started having this pit feeling in my stomach, And that's how I knew I was anxious. And with working with clients, With just talking to people, Like friends, People out and about, I really started gathering that most people feel anxiety in their chest, And I was really struggling to meet anyone that felt it in their stomach. So I went and sat down and talked to a therapist, And what she notes is that that stomach feeling is a very old wound. It's something where I'm not responding to an anxiety of the present moment. This these old sort of beliefs just it's something old that's of course hurt me right that's what anxiety is it's an old fear and so I finally said okay I'm ready for this to go away and I'm ready to really invest and do something to get this taken care of I want change I really want change I don't want this to feeling anymore. So I made the decision to invest, Invest in therapy. And I say it this way because I think it's unpopular to talk about this, To even talk about the money, But honestly, It's such a major barrier and obstacle to receiving therapy, To making any sort of change in our life. It doesn't have to be going to therapy and giving your money to a professional. It's, You know, Paying for a massage or paying for just something in your life to be different. I don't have insurance. I'm self-employed. So I'm paying out of pocket good money and I'm doing it weekly. So it's a big, It's a major investment every month to do this. And Not to mention we have all these beliefs around money, Especially right now here in 2026. There are so many thoughts and feelings and I'm even going to say the word trauma around money and how we spend our money. It was major for me to at this point in my life say, OK, I'm going to invest in this, And if I go a couple times, I'm going to keep going because we're going to go to the finish line. We're going to see it through. I made the decision to. . . Invest in myself and my healing and my growth and really invest and say, I believe I can make my life and my existence different and better. Now I want to point out, I've been in therapy before. I've done lots of work before. I am a therapist, And before I was a therapist, I was also in therapy and doing lots of self-help work within myself. So it's not like this is the first time I believed in this work of therapy. I believe in it so, So much, I really do, But it's something, There's something different about when you're looking at your own case and you're asking, Is this bad enough for me to put this financial investment in it right now? Or is there something else I can do that's cheaper, That's not taking as much of my time? And to gauge that for ourselves can be really hard. That just adds to all of this breakthrough for me to say, Enough is enough. Here we go. I walk through the door of the room where I'm going to get therapy. And that particular day, My anxiety was very, Very bad. I didn't even have the oomph to even say, Oh, My day's fine. When just the therapist casually was like, Hi, How's it going? I straight face said my day is terrible. Let's just I'm ready to do this, Let's do it. And the type of therapy that I knew I was going in was a modality that's not talk therapy. You know, We're doing things, We're working with the body, We're working with visualizations, Bilateral stimulation, So it's a somatic experience, So I'm ready to go into my experience. I'm like, I'm ready, Like please, Like I need to let this, I need this to work, Right? And she asked me, What's your like pain level right now like suffering level and I said it they said I'm out of nine. I'm out of nine I can't I'm at my wit's end. So we go through this. This is the very first session. And by the end of it, Now granted, This was like almost two hours, Almost a two hour session. I said my pain level was a zero. It was a zero. By the middle of it, I was laughing and smiling. And by the end of it, I actually went to the movie theater and got movie theater popcorn, And then went home and watched a movie with my movie theater popcorn. And just enjoyed life. And so basically, Ever since I've been saying what this is amazing, Like, This is amazing. This is real. I went from a nine to a zero. This Faith and hope. I can see it. Change is possible. Change is possible. So I wrote a little thing about how I've been feeling about it. I've been filled with the kind of hope that I haven't felt in a very long time. Not blind optimism. Not toxic positivity. Real hope. The kind that grows when you've walked through darkness and discovered there is still light. The older I get, The more I believe that being human is both simpler and more difficult than we ever imagined. We spend so much of our lives trying to escape discomfort, Trying to fix ourselves, Trying to arrive somewhere, And yet the human experience has always contained both pleasure and pain, Joy and grief, Love and loss, Success and disappointment. The heart breaks, The heart heals, And seasons change. This is the deal we all signed up for when we arrived here. And strangely enough, There is freedom in accepting that. Because suffering becomes even more painful when we believe it shouldn't be happening. But when we understand that difficulty is part of being human, We stop wasting energy arguing with reality. We begin meeting life as it is, And then something remarkable happens. We start noticing the gifts that were always there. The warmth of a cup of tea, A conversation with a friend, A walk outside. These moments seem ordinary, But they are not ordinary. They are life itself. The miracle was never hidden in some distant future. The miracle was never hidden in some distant future. The miracle is hidden in the present moment. Now I'm pausing here, I wrote more. But being in that state where that discomfort was at a nine and carrying that around, It's like, You know, From personal experience, We just forget. It's like there are blinders that go up where we can't remember that the way to get out of the discomfort intuitively feels like running from the present, But it's actually being in the present. And in some cases, This is true, But more often than not, It's a lie that the relief is in the future. It's a lie that the miracle is in the future. It is. That's hope. That's what hope is, Right? But we can find 1%. We can find a piece of it right here in the present. We can get 1% of the miracle. If not 10, 20, 30, We can get at least 1% of the miracle. Right here in the present, And that's from stopping to pray, Stopping to meditate, Doing something that disrupts the disrupting thoughts, Right? Doing something to disrupt the discomfort of running from the discomfort, Right? The discomfort from running from the discomfort. I always talk about, There's the second suffering, This is a concept I didn't make this up but you know it's really well known but there's we we compile our suffering there's the suffering that happens but then the suffering because we're suffering which really gets us and I think all the research says the first suffering shouldn't even doesn't even last that long I think and it even it might too But so interesting. Went back to the miracle was hidden in the present moment. So I'll keep reading what I have here. Perhaps this is where the search begins. Once we recognize both the beauty and the heartbreak of being human, We naturally start asking deeper questions. What is all of this for? Why am I here? What matters, Where is God in all of this? And for some people, The word God feels comforting, The most comforting. For others, Maybe it's the word love, Maybe it's higher self, Whatever it is, I don't care how others interpret this, Right? It's just that bigger love and light, Maybe it's the word truth or beauty or presence, But it's the experience of what's higher. What matters is that beneath all our striving, There is a longing to reconnect with something greater than our fear. Ooh, Ooh, Oof, Again, Oof. I'm stopping here again too because it's just so good I'm 34 years old. I've been in the self-help game since I was 17. I've been on the spirituality train since I was 16, 17, A very serious one. And what gets me often, And I kind of see this in my peers, Is the cycle of we get closer to God, And then we fall away, And then we get closer to God, And we fall away. And sometimes what prevents us from getting closer again could be, I've done this already. We have this perception like, Already here, I've already been there before. And so that's not going to work. Because if I've been there before, How did I get back to where I'm at? So that must not really work. Because why am I back here, But it's really it's just that we're cyclical, We're human, We get on and off the train. We just do. One of my favorite quotes is, Ram Dass talking about how we're all just walking each other home. And I think it's true. I think every meaningful healing journey eventually becomes a spiritual journey. I believe it can't not. It just always will. And it's not because our problems disappear, But because we begin to see them differently. There becomes a point where we stop asking, Why is this happening to me? And we start asking, What is this teaching me? And again, There have been times in my life where I'm so rooted in asking what is this teaching me and so rooted in knowing there is no fruit from asking why is this happening to me. There's been multiple points in my life where I've been so rooted in that knowledge, Just my body really knew, I embodied knowing there is no point in saying why me. Absolutely nothing out of it, And I get absolutely everything from asking, What is the lesson? Everyone is my teacher. God has put every single person, Every single situation, Whether it's bringing me happiness, Or sadness, Or pain, Or bliss, This is my teacher. But the sad part, Right? The part that's so, So human is that I get off the train. I lift up those roots. Life happens and those roots get lifted up and I don't even realize they are and I find my thoughts and my, Yeah, I find my thoughts instead asking, Why is this happening to me? I can't believe this is happening to me. What bad luck. And then grasping, Grasping, Grasping for everything to go my way. But back to this writing, When we stop demanding uncertainty, And we start cultivating trust, And we stop searching for a life without pain, We start discovering a love that is larger than the pain, A love that can hold joy and sorrow at the same time. And this love whispers, You are okay. You have always been okay. You are held. And perhaps that is what healing ultimately reveals. Not that life becomes easier, But that we become more available to life, To wonder, To beauty, And to love. And once we find that, Even just a little bit, That 1%, We have one final responsibility, And that's to share it. Not because we have all the answers, Not because we're experts, Not because we've reached some spiritual finish line. No, No, No. But because someone else is suffering too. Someone else is afraid. Someone else is convinced they're alone, Just like you were. And our story then becomes a lantern for them. Maybe our healing gives another person permission to begin their own journey. Maybe our willingness to speak honestly becomes the thing that helps someone stay hopeful for one more day. And I believe this is why we're here. Everyone has a different purpose, Everyone has a different path, But this is mine. To be human, To experience both things, The sweetness and the heartbreak of life. To seek what is sacred in the midst of all of it, And then to share what I found. And that's it. That's what I wanted to share with you today. So you've made it to the end here, So thank you so much for listening. I hope to see you again in another audio.