I’d like us to find a new word for “Healing.” At least in the way it is often used.

Healing suggests to me a previous wounding—like coming from a deficit position of being damaged or injured, not completely whole or healthy.

And if that is where somebody is coming from, then a Healing might be a good idea.

I hear a lot of friends and colleagues talking about this experience or that being very “Healing”, but it is not my sense that they are particularly damaged, injured, or wounded. As they talk about it, I more get the sense that they really enjoyed it, that it brought them to another level of feeling good about themselves in the world. Coolio…

I would like to put forward the idea that we can participate in a ceremony or experience that feels really good, that is strengthening, or inspiring, or expanding, or transformative, without suggesting the person began from a wounded space.

You don’t have to be sick to get better. You can be in a really good place and have an experience that is uplifting, and brings you to an enhanced state of consciousness or well-being.

Well, maybe “Uplifting” is the word I am looking for.

I do not consider myself “Wounded.” Have some experiences in my life sucked. Yep, you bet. But I am pretty whole, pretty solid, pretty robust, hanging right in there with life.

I do not want or need to get a “Healing”—but I would always love to be Uplifted.

Language is powerful. People sometimes refer to things as traumatizing, when they were more likely inconvenient, or not what one really wanted to have happen, or embarrassing, or just painful. The word trauma gets watered down enormously, for my money, and the word “Healing” gets watered up enormously.

Just a thought. The way language is structured, and the way we choose to use it, has a great impact on the realities we create, the experiences we create for ourselves.

If you feel like you need a “Healing”, by all means go find one. But painting yourself constantly as Wounded and in need of Healing has an impact on our sense of ourselves, and I do not believe that is a good thing. At least for me…

But I am always up for a good Uplifting…

Dr. James Mick Nolan

505-699-7616

jamesmicknolan@gmail.com

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