A Definition For Healing That Will Help You Grow

And one for Trauma that will help you make sense of the inexplicable.

Healing is integrating new learning into your life, patterns, and routine.

Healing isn’t ever complete or finished, but neither is learning. We reach healing milestones, like the first time you hear your own voice express an authentic opinion instead of mirroring someone else’s, or the first time a significant negative anniversary passes without your noticing.

If we aren’t growing, we’re literally disintegrating. If we are never done learning, we’re also never finished integrating that learning into our lives (healing).

The Germans came through with a creepy folktale to illustrate this point (Dankeshoen!).

Allow me to introduce you to: Struwwelpeter (pronounced: Struf-el-PAY-ter).
He’s a folk-tale character introduced to children as a negative example of what happens if you don’t heed the rules of hygiene and German cleanliness.

Struwwelpeter doesn’t clip his toenails or cut his hair; his shoes are too small, and he is sad. This is my son’s hot cocoa cup, that since writing this piece I am re-evaluating.

This hyperbolic example of self-neglect may be funny and/or the stuff of nightmares, but it’s lessons are real. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the people to whom we belong, to care for our mental, physical, and spiritual health. If we fail to do so, we turn…