Like practicing faith, or a craft, or a trade, you learn how to do things right by doing a lot of things wrong. You observe yourself in the aftermath of your actions to see what worked and what didn't. You take what worked and graft it to your routine.
The process functions best when you can avoid beating the shit out of yourself for making mistakes in the first place.
I’ve been learning what it means to practice healing. I think of it this way:
A mistake is a stumble. Beating the shit out of yourself for failing to be perfect? That’s rewarding yourself with a face-plant on the concrete.
You commit an act of self-healing when you throw out your hands and catch yourself.
That takes practice.
I resist doing this simple act. I’ve practiced bouncing my head off the ground after every stumble and let me tell you, after 39 years of training, I am GOOD at it. Better than good: I’m AWESOME at inflating every mistake until it’s Kaiju-sized. My brain looks like Tokyo after Godzilla’s gone on a bender.
I practice healing when I accept the consequences of a mistake without using it as a means to diminish myself.
You are the sum of ALL your actions, words, gifts and blows, your slips, your tumbles, your moments in the sun and your jail time spent in the dark. You practice healing when you choose to restrain yourself from swinging wild in your rage. You practice healing when you choose to bleed your pain away by acts of kindness instead of compounding the agony through cruelty towards yourself or anyone nearby. You practice healing when you risk opening yourself to the prize at the center of a mistake instead of turning away for another round of I’m Such A Fuck-Up.
And by you practicing healing, I mean me, too.
I’m taking it one drawing at a time.
