In summer 2021 I realized I should talk to somebody professionally. Not just my husband or trusted friend but a therapist, a person trained in the connection of body and mind, who could listen and know what questions to ask, guide me towards deeper knowing and inner healing. Seeking therapy was an exercise in courage. For most of my life, I’d thought therapy was only necessary for the deeply traumatized and severely wounded. I write this realizing one cannot measure or compare trauma or wounds. We are human. We bleed and break. Our external circumstances can appear near perfection while our inner soul suffers invisible anguish. Sometimes we don’t even realize the extent of our own wounds until we start the process of better knowing ourselves.
I started therapy a year ago on a blissfully sunny autumn morning, a few months after becoming serious about my own mental health. Those first few months we met weekly, hot coffee in hand, facing a big picture window overlooking a small courtyard with a trickling water feature. For the first time in my life, here was someone asking me to expound on my feelings, not condemning or instructing, but inviting me towards contemplation. I don’t think I realized until beginning therapy how out of touch I was with my own identity. I didn’t know myself, the wounds I carried, what my soul desired. I knew I’d been awakening to it through the sacred art of honest (hopefully good) writing. My spiritual deconstruction, though incredibly painful and lonely, was also liberating. I wasn’t moving away from God. I was seeking Them. Like Jacob daring God to wrestle, I too dared God to meet me in doubt and belief and everything in between. I recently told my therapist the story about Jacob’s wrestling match with the Divine, about his new name—an indication of rebirth and renewed identity. I told her how Jacob encountered God in the wilderness and was never the same, how he bore a physical limp afterwards, and how those of us who spiritually wrestle carry our own spiritual scars.
Therapy has made me more empathetic to the human condition. In our finiteness, our slow decay, we are susceptible to physical and mental toil. We cannot attach a date to healing or recovery or repair. Grief comes in waves and so does depression, overwhelming feelings of loneliness, and despair. In my writing, I’ve heard from so many bearing various burdens invisible to the eye, but prevalent within their minds and souls. Many feel there’s no place to be safely vulnerable, especially in many Christian settings. There’s a temptation within Christianity, originating in gnosticism, to diminish the body and mind, to encourage human decreasing, to focus far more on depravity than belovedness. But as my brilliant friend K.J. Ramsey writes in her beautiful book The Lord is My Courage, “Belovedness is your birthright.” We were created in love, not wrath. In bearing God’s image, we contain multitudes of worth. It is a flawed belief that says your emotions aren’t worthy of expression, that it is sin to experience and express doubt, anger, despondency, grief. We are complex creatures, perfect paradoxes of hope and despair. There is goodness in naming what we feel, in being received in our rawness. Listening is an act of love, a gift we offer when words fall short and there are no clear answers or easy fixes. As communal beings, we need the healing properties found in the ancient act of bearing witness.
Therapy awakened a desire within me towards ritual, contemplative ancient practices, the reading of written liturgies and poetry. I am learning there is more than one way to pray, more than one way to meditate, more than one way to worship, more than one way to heal. And healing does not come through pretense or donning masks of ok-ness. I am learning I am not flawed for my feelings; I am not wrong for my sadness. I am being true to the realities of life that are simultaneously joyous and hard. It is an act of resilience to name truth without bending to a temptation to bypass where I am in this moment.
I see Jesus as the embodiment of sacred empathy. We don’t talk enough about Mary and Martha’s righteous anger, how in their grief over the death of their brother they yelled, and probably cursed the Christ. We don’t talk enough about how Jesus didn’t rebuke them for their lament because he understood the pain of loss, even he who knew the hope of resurrection. Being a Jesus-following human ought not strip us of feeling or compassion. It should make us the most compassionate, the most patient in conversations with those healing slowly, the most bent towards justice when abuse strips agency and “the body keeps the score.”
The Healing Balm of Nature
This past weekend, I participated in a ritual hike with a small group of mostly-strangers up in the mountains where the aspens are currently brilliantly, magnificently golden. The woods smelled of death—the acute, heavy essence of already-decaying, fading leaves that littered our path like forgotten confetti. We moved through haunting groves of bare trees, boots squishing through mud, breaths dispelling rapidly as elevation increased step by step. Small pieces of hail bounced off our covered heads, hit the ground, landed in puddles. Our trail grew wet and icy. And still we climbed. We climbed for the beauty of the forest in this perfect, brief moment of natural splendor when, for just for a few weeks, the cooling temperatures kill off verdant leaves and in dying, they become resplendent. We climbed for the grief we hold, the wounds we carry, the disappointments we’ve accumulated, the spiritual anguish we’ve suffered. We climbed to bear witness to each other and ourselves, to speak truth, to release, to be restored.
“To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation,” writes Wendell Berry.
It’s just a start, because healing and restoration is rarely immediate. But our little group feasted on creation that day in conviviality beneath or pine shelter amongst the aspens in a hailstorm, in silence and laughter. We came together, most of us strangers, to listen, to share, to be.
Sometimes in therapy, I find myself just being. There’s no expectation of performance or faking joy or positivity. To be human means knowing pain, the pain of bones growing and bodies developing, the pain of menstruation, the pain of childhood fading into adulthood, the pain of unrequited love, the pain of poor grades, the pain of rejection, the pain of disease, the pain, even, of death. The point of faith isn’t to dismiss deep feelings or mental struggles. Faith provides an avenue of hope in what can sometimes be season after season of despair. Faith provides a sense not only of divine camaraderie but also divine, overwhelming love. This is a love that can meet us in the wrestle, in overwhelming grief, in raw anger levied directly at the God some of us have been conditioned to only worship and never question.
My spirituality, body, and mind are not separate entities. They are mingled together in the complexity of embodiment. This was abundantly evident during our hike through the trees. As I moved along the path, paying attention to every step, silencing my voice, observing the sloping valley, touching dying leaves, I felt it all—the working-togetherness of each paradoxical component. I can speak the truth of pain and also be in the process of healing. I can hold faith and also meet with a trained therapist. I can doubt and also dare God to meet me. I am a multitude of many things. I am human.
Recommends
Book: Let There Be Art by Rachel Marie Kang — Rachel’s book is a beautiful invitation to every single person to return to the good work of making. We are so quick to dismiss our inner creativity, convinced we are not creative enough or good enough. Through stunning prose and poetry, Rachel reminds her readers that we were created to appreciate art in its various forms and take part in creating as co-creators. She writes so profoundly, “It really does matter to see the work of your hands as worthy.”
A Playlist: Feels Like Autumn — I couldn’t help myself and made an autumnal playlist featuring Brandi Carlile, Death Cab for Cutie, Andrew Belle, Bon Iver, and many more artists whose songs get me in the spirit for cozy cold days and bowls of soup.
Podcast Episode: The Daily — The Pastors Being Driven Out by Trumpism — This podcast is simultaneously interesting and sad. It features an interview with a pastor who slowly lost the respect of his church when he voiced his moral conviction against Trump. This pastor’s story is sadly not rare, and a picture of the damage done by the growing intermingling of politics and religion.
goodness, the spaciousness of therapy is a gift. I am grateful you have been giving that gift to yourself. and: the hike. I still can’t express what all it meant to me. Time to write some words to discover what I feel too. 🫶🏼
There is something about nature that is so restorative to our souls! I loved what you said about the importance therapy can have in our journeys of healing (and even self-awareness). Wanted to say thanks for these words and for the playlist you shared. I'm enjoying it!