What I Learned About Healing

Closing my eyes and learning to heal the scary places

I was an active kid and a varsity athlete in high school and college. I regularly cut, strained, pulled, and broke my body parts. Sprained ankles, broken fingers, Osgood-Schlatter, tendinitis, torn rotator cuffs, broken noses, and shallow and deep gashes torn by pens, knives, glass, scissors, and steel. I took healing for granted. I didn’t always heal straight, but I learned that my exterior was tough and resilient and could mend from just about anything.

I didn’t feel my interior, where the danger was gathering as I grew into adulthood. There were places I wasn’t ready to look. Inherited cholesterol and repressed emotions clung to the walls of my arteries and eventually blocked my heart. The danger showed up on tests, but the tests didn’t hurt, so I didn’t acknowledge I had a problem until it was too late. I didn’t want to see below the surface. At 46, after a heart attack and quintuple bypass, avoidance was no longer an option, and I faced an extended period of recovery and healing.