Healing

Healing is hard work.

Raw and oozing emotions coursing through tense veins.

Tension reeking havoc on your very muscles.

Sleep evades even though you desperately seek it.

When sleep comes, it brings along the unwelcome guests of night terrors and sweats.

Healing is hard work.

Why do people feel entitled to bodies that are not their own?

Taking away someone’s dignity and shattering it into a million shards of sharp glass.

Making them afraid to walk once it gets dark.

Wishing they could live in the shower to wash away the filth and grim.

Healing is hard.

Hard when the wounds are so deep all’s you can do is lay in bed for hours on end.

Hard when you hate the body you worked so hard to start to be comfortable in.

Hard when you have to swallow pills twice a day every day.

Healing isn’t done alone.

It’s done in the presence of community near and far.

Comes in the face of a pastor showing up at the ER even after you forget to tell them your home.

Comes in the face of a pastor giving you the gentlest hug and holding that embrace for a moment.

In that brief fleeting moment you feel safe and secure the most you have in a week.

Comes in the form of an e gift card so you can get supplies to take care of yourself during shark week which you haven’t had in months because of HRT.

Comes in the constant support of friends and chosen family texting you and responding to texts making sure you are okay.

Healing may be hard work.

But it’s work that must be done.

Slowly the emotions will stop oozing and begin to settle.

Slowly tension will relax and quit coursing through the tightened veins.

Healing comes one cup of mint tea in a huge mug at a time.

Healing comes one gentle welcomed embrace at a time.

Healing comes in reminders to be gentle and kind to oneself.

I’m down but not out.

I’ll get up and pick myself up with the help of community and God.

I’ll dust myself off and start this healing work.