Healing The HealersSample

Moving Forward

As clergy and ministers, we know that it costs us to care. We understand what it feels like to have hope shattered or one’s spirit wounded. We recognize when our bodies become numb or exhausted. No one is immune, not even the best of us.

We also know that we may choose to move forward or we may stay in a place of suffering and distress. As a healer, how you or I move forward or don’t, will predict how well we are able to help the healing emerge in others. Moving forward is the intentional choice of acknowledging and addressing symptoms, causes and impacts, and then creating a healthy pathway to live-out one’s mission as a healer.

We listen, we absorb and we help one another metabolize life’s experiences. We cannot do that without doing our own work first. I suggest three notions to tarry with as you reflect on “how” you move forward and prepare.

The first is an honest sense of expectancy. We begin helping others by expecting to be impacted but also expecting not to be contaminated or diseased by them. We enter aware that it costs us to sit in their suffering and yet, expectant for a light to shine, even in their darkness. The expectation of being healthy amid suffering puts my feet on higher ground.

A commitment to do one’s internal work is necessary to move forward with expectancy. That is the second notion, I invite you to consider. Doing your own work means participating in carving out the path toward where the light shines. Sharing your narratives with reliably caring people whom you trust helps to hold you accountable to your intention toward health. When the secrecy of symptoms get released, the benefits become more obvious and easier to embrace. 

Third, practice sincere self-care. On the deepest level, self-care happens when you experience joy and you feel revitalized. It means taking the day off and letting go of mistakes. Or walking and digging in the dirt. It means taking dance lessons and writing bad poetry. Ongoing self-care fuels us to use the full capacity of our gifts and skills for helping.

When you affirm a sense of expectancy, a commitment to do your internal work, and practice ongoing self-care you then are positioned best to move forward, to continue growing into who you are, and to be a shining light for those who we help.

Healing the Healers is an ongoing journey in which each conversation leads to another, and an essential resource as faith leaders increasingly face the call to lead their congregants through tragedy. 

More resources for healing in trauma can be found at HealingtheHealers.org.