Healing has its own time line.

There are phases of healing that align with the natural developmental cycles of our human nature. We are tied to the spirals of patterns that make up the natural world as a whole.

The idea of linearity was introduced in patriarchal culture as a way of controlling that which is not controllable—the inherent change of what it is to be alive. The soul is not linear and is suffocated by this way of living and breathing patriarchal air seeped into our culture of healing and change.

If we are caught in the illusion of healing as a linear experience, it makes it hard to win with ourselves. It keeps us trapped in a trauma loop of self-hatred, addiction, and codependency that we beat ourselves up for—for not being able to get out of.

If we are comparing our evolution against static, linear structure of healing that is imposed on us via images rather than substance, there is nowhere for love to take up residence in the dynamic, in the rising and falling nature of our inner world.

It’s no wonder we live in a world where we struggle to deeply love ourselves, even though we know we “should.”

Narcissus, after all, did not actually know his own interior life, so he fell in love with his image.

This is what linear-focused, pathologizing models of healing do to us. They force us to heal into a system that is not healthy, that normalizes gaslighting, codependency, and addiction while simultaneously pathologizing these healthy responses to an unhealthy world.

It forces us to create an “image” of ourselves that we would love, or that our ego perceives would get us the love we long for. We then spend our life, and even our healing and spiritual life, trying to get ourselves to fit into that image so we can finally be free. The illusion of freedom is an interesting and exhausting one.

The inner parent keeps us in a linear way of comparing ourselves to ideals, images, and linear structures of thinking about what it is to be human…some that actually serve to dehumanize us so we will consume more.

Our inner child can’t thrive in this internal, or external, political dynamic of unnatural healing and change.

This is crazy making. It keeps our wheels spinning. It maintains a certain level of self-doubt and disconnection from our souls, from the depths of our hearts, and from surrendering into a fully nourishing, loving, and life-affirming source of life itself.

One that is real. One that holds the spirals of our growth and gives us the resilience, strength, and wisdom to know how to navigate the spirals of life in the depths of our being where the shadow and light dance together, one and the same, over and over again.

Trauma healing is not linear!

Often we heal the most available layer, then we live our lives, enter the cauldron of relationships and purpose, where more and more is revealed. As we get older, deeper layers come up or the planets align to initiate us deeper and deeper into the archetypes our core wounds hold for us.

The keys for our North Star are in these deep dives where new wings wait for us, over and over again. The direction of our destiny is the path, the healing happens on our way there, not in trying to perfect an image of ourselves before we even start the journey.

There is nothing wrong with you if you find yourself revisiting patterns or if you experience a deeper wave of grief from old trauma. Especially with complex trauma, the true self was never known to us in the first place and becomes revealed, little by little, one dance around the spiral at a time. The more safe a vessel we become for our soul, more of our own essence can return to us for integration and love.

We can harness this by learning the dance, creating structures in our daily lives for rituals, prayers, and seeking refuge in that which gives us our life. There is something stable underneath all of it. A benevolent wisdom and gentle love that holds us, longs to give us respite in the in-between when the next things must die.

Many of the antidotes to codependency are in the daily patterns and habits we develop, tending to the inner parents, cultivating a deep devotion to knowing the rhythms of our inner spirals, making friends with the archetypes we carry, and cultivating nourishing practices that serve as a refuge where the patterns, pain, and grief can be offered up to the altar of life.

Death of patterns in the service of more life, expansion, and awareness.

The more light, the greater depths of shadow we can see and offer again to the light of love.

Let’s do this dance.

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