How to make healing and change sustainable
I’ve seen a few comments here and there about how our current time and our current revolution is not a sprint, it is a marathon.
Well, I beg to differ. Let me explain.
Even a marathon must come to an end. And usually at the end of one, even if someone is trained and prepared, they are exhausted and dehydrated. Their muscles and cells have been broken down and need repair. They’ll need to recover for some time. One can’t run a marathon indefinitely.
Good, safe, sane and lasting trauma work means a lifestyle approach. It means learning a new language. It means becoming someone who we didn’t used to be and then taking it in slowly, gently, and being wise with our energy so as to NOT re-traumatize and hurt us, others, or our environment more.
It is not a fix. It is not a sprint. It is not a marathon.
It is growing capacity. It is learning. It is resting. It is sensing. It is being responsible for what we are feeling and needing to express.
Good trauma work means no longer identifying as a victim and healing the wounds that were caused by being victimized.
It requires having both our HIGHER brain online and involved with curiosity, while also allowing our mammalian autonomic nervous system and all its energies to move through, up, and out (but again, with safety, without harm, nor re-traumatizing).
Doing good trauma work also means knowing that we won’t always be perfect and we will make mistakes, and then moving forward from them and learning how to do it better.
To do this means being gentle on ourselves (and others).
It means being wise with our time. Resting. Pausing.
It also means resisting the temptation to get sucked into patterns of survival that will undoubtedly burn us out (again), and this burnout is why we can’t keep a flame of change, revolution, and evolution going strong.
Healing humanity will not happen as marathons or sprints do: with a start and end. It will happen when it becomes a new way of living that can be sustained gladly and indefinitely.
Learn more about Irene Lyon and her work here: www.irenelyon.com
