Healing and the New Day

Well, the spiritual impact of disease and healing seems to be the topic of choice. Not just Woman in the World and her bout with appendicitis, but my friend Joan is writing about healing, too. Ok - I'm in!

The connections between illness and spiritual awakening are familiar ones to me. It was a summer spent in the hospital thirteen years ago that launched me on some of the spiritual work I find most valuable now - not because of some big confrontation with death (although there was a bit of that), but because I'd been longing to make that change before the hospital stay but denying myself on the grounds of too little time, too little money. My body blew that argument out of the water, pointing out that there was plenty of time and money to be sick and in pain. Finding the time and money to be happy took on a new meaning after that.

But maybe more important are the profound little changes that illness and healing have brought me. Like the vow I made many years ago in a healing ceremony to caress my body each and every day of my life, viscerally remembering how astoundingly grateful I am to be incarnate. In the beginning, that vow took a lot of attention. Over time it became second nature, something I did easily, casually, reliably.

And then it expanded from there. I began seeing myself in mirrors and acknowledging my reflection in the same way, caressing the image through my glance, loving myself for being myself. It became my own private joke, a wink I shared with myself, an affirmation that continually caught me by surprise and never failed to feed me.

Now these caresses, this intimacy with myself, have become my foundation, my way in the world. Yesterday morning I glanced in the bathroom mirror and felt a thrill, seeing the lover in myself. Today was more about curiosity, glimpsing the way age is changing me, expressing itself through me. Whatever the flavor, each day is welcome. And that, I must say, is a healing many times over.