Questioning the Meaning of Healing

I have always been an introspective person, but the pandemic allowed me to reach something deeper underneath many layers. I’ve realized that my whole life I’ve worked towards trying to bring light in order to heal or shrink a void inside me.

I’ve been working to understand my life in order to forgive where I need to- whether it’s myself or others. To understand my context so I can heal- with the goal of having resentment or that thin line of anger and reactions I wasn't proud of

slowly

go

a w a y .

I kept telling myself that I was doing all of this out of self-love, that way I was proud of my actions because healing and understanding would reassure these actions come from a place of love.

I have travelled different countries,

analyzed and dived into philosophies of life alien to my own,

I have walked miles upon miles,

read, done therapy, meditated, sought and sought, but all of it with the perspective of

u n d e r s t a n d i n g my life in order to heal and have that fill void filled, making it go away.

I tried to fill it with the love of my family, my partners, connections with people I met in my travels, of the beautiful repertoire of places I visited... and of myself but just a little.

All of this went on inside me, but to people that knew me and loved me I was the life of the party, a joy to be around, lightweight, always shining.

And although I have definitely developed a closer relationship with myself, although my actions are now more conscious and my love of self has increased, it has only done so for the beautiful parts, and that void or “sadness” remains there as a part of me that I was not proud of. It felt like a constant reminder of my failure.

The irony behind all of this is that I really do consider myself a happy person, and when I laugh or smile- which I do a lot of-, it is always genuine. I do not consider myself a depressed person hiding behind the mask of a happy, funny person. I see myself as both, with deep joy and sadness and I feel both intensely at different moments.

I have realized that my approach to this needs to change because I was actively neglecting, suppressing and trying to ignore an integral part of me by only focusing on the parts that made people comfortable, and that "made my life easier".

Even though I have learned so much that my soul, heart and mind have stretched allowing light and knowledge, the void is not budging. All the light and beauty became an accessory to the void rather than a replacement of it.

Maybe it’s not about bringing light so that it goes away, maybe it’s not about learning about this life in order to heal so that it goes away. Maybe I need to sit with it, welcome it, love it, and ask it what it needs. Maybe it’s such a deep pain/void that the work needs to be much deeper and with a different approach.

I may have suppressed the expression of this void because of my deep desire to be light, to be happy, to not feel so heavy, when in reality I have realized I need to allow it space in my art, my writing and dance, so I can live it, embrace it, allow it to feel safe and liberate it into the role it’s supposed to be playing in my life.

I am the only one able to satiate it and I haven’t allowed that. It has been part of me since the moment I was born, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. But I was the one that assigned it as something negative and unwelcome. It became an extra limb that I had been ashamed of and not proud of and it took me some time to understand that it is trying to teach me something I haven’t been ready to learn.

I am ready now.

I want to love my shadows. I want to understand more about that work because it is completely foreign to me. I have obsessively focused on the light, and I believe it’s been out of fear of the opposite. And now I believe that this void is something beautiful that needs to have its own space of expression.

This is where my art comes in. This is alchemy.