This past week I was working intensely with several patients on the idea that surrender is sometimes the most healing, empowering, strengthening healing option possible.
Sometimes… to surrender IS to heal.
Sharing with my patients why SURRENDER = HEALING reminded me of this blog post I wrote last year, and I had a nudge to re post it again today.
Maybe you are the reader I felt that nudge for.
Maybe when life overwhelms you and cracks you open and forces your surrender, you are the one that I’m meant to remind today:
surrendering is safe.
The very act of surrender **CAN BE** the very act of healing.
Here’s more:
Working intuitively with patients all over the globe, I’ve learned a lot about loss, grief and healing.
I can say for a fact that what heals people in real life contrasts quite vividly to what I *learned* about grief and healing in med school.
I still remember being in medical school and learning all about the classic model of the grief process, set forth by the amazing and brave Elisabeth Kubler-Ross:
D A B D A
(I’m sure many of my readers, who are also healers and light workers, are familiar with this acronym:)
meaning:
D — denial
A — anger
B — bargaining
D — depression
A — acceptance
We learned in our traning how patients go through this grieving process in any order, and may take as long as necessary in each phase before coming through to acceptance of the loss.
What I have found though, is that this model does not serve us very well.
Yes, I could describe *some* of what patients experience in DABDA terms.
- “Denial†surfaces in the surreal feeling of not quite being able to wrap your mind around an unwanted event that is happening.
- I see a glimmer of the other phases at different times as well, but I never quite felt that DABDA captured the true essence of what healing is all about nor do I feel the final term of “acceptance†really capture the true beauty in the end result of the healing process… often time the patient is stronger and happier and more centered than ever before.
- There are so many gifts along the way.
- There are so many moments of breathtaking beauty, of love, of rawness, of support, of gratitude, all swirled into the moments of hurt, of ugly, of anxiety, of fear.
I began to identify a new way to think about the grieving process, one that serves us better…
…one that felt more accurate to my own personal experiences and the experiences of the patients I’ve worked with.
The new paradigm, for me, looks more like this:
Resistance —> Surrender
Not moving randomly through the 5 phases of DABDA, but moving systematically from resistance to surrender.
The sense of denial one typically feels in the beginning of a health challenge is pure resistance:
“This can not (or should not) be happening.”
Interspersed with sobering moments of:
“Yes, I can do this, I will do this, this *is* happening”
and what I notice is that each time patients surrender to what is actually happening, hope immediately return.
Then a backwards step into resistance, but then three more towards surrendering to the flow of what is unfolding.
I know that personally, for me, every single time I’ve taken a step backwards in the healing process it is because I am resisting it.
And every single time I’ve ever taken a huge leap in the healing process, it is because I was surrendering to the transformation and ALLOWING IT TO BE something more beautiful than had ever stood in it’s place before.
The ugliest messes have a way of being the most necessary, meaningful, healing experiences possible.
And even when our gut is screaming:
“no, no, no, no, NO!â€
… the entire time, our soul is singing:
“yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!â€
and surrender happens.
And healing happens.
And growth happens.
And my ability to heal and my ability to help patients heal has been directly proportional to my ability to surrender and to help guide surrender.
I wanted to share this here with you, in case this helps someone else that you know and love.
I strive every single week to provide a totally free, unique healing thought or idea or exercise or medical report or intuitive understanding…
…so that we can all be empowered in our OWN HEALING JOURNEY and to feel better as we heal!
There’s a novel concept: Healing should ***FEEL GOOD!***
That’s how you know you are healing!
Anyone can play with the process of healing and perhaps look at it as the process of resistance to surrender — maybe to them (as it did to me) it will feel more empowering than the 5 phases of DABDA.
Healing doesn’t happen in predictable phases… DABDA never seemed really described how it truly *feels* to go through a health challenge or transformation.
But resistance to surrender… yep, that about sums it up nicely.
Surrendering and watching what shows up feels ever so infinitely better than resisting what life has planned for me.
Surrender has shown me beauty, grace, love, unconditional support, strength, survival… and more of *myself* than ever before.
Turns out, stepping fully into the process of trusting what is unfolding is what real, deep, soul healing has been about all along.
Nothing else has quite compared to this messy experience of real life…
…of being cracked fully open until there was no option left but to surrender to it fully…
…and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.
So if you are in resistance, if you are in a situation you feel you didn’t choose, don’t want, can’t survive…
Let go and surrender.
Jump on in… the water’s fine.
Floating right along side you…
xoxox, Laura
Letting Go, by Suzanne Lucas
Giving up is merely quitting
Letting go is sweet release
Giving up is cries of anguish
Letting go is perfect peace
Giving up is hard and heavy
Letting go is loose and light
Giving up is simply failure
Letting go, success in sight
Giving up is very human
Letting go is most divine
Giving up is death at sundown
Letting go, the rising sun
Giving up is “There, it’s over”
Letting go, “I’ve just begun!”