A Healing Identity
This might be one of those posts that I'll be sensitive about as it is quite personal. Whenever I'm going through a hard time, it forces introspection and reflection and ends with unusual results.
Until the other day, I had never identified myself as being a healer. I'm still not sure that I can wrap my head around it. A healer was someone who worked in a medical field; a doctor, nurse, EMT, field medic, etc etc. Any hopes I had to pursue such a career were crushed at an early age when I was informed that I had no business being in the medical field with a diagnosis like mine. My perspective switched a bit from hoping I could be a good nurse to striving to be the best patient I could be. I learned things from nurses; they taught me to handle my own IV's, operate the pump, remove them, flush them, do the math, etc. I was pretty self sufficient until the day it all went wrong.
Over time, I finally did show signs of immunity to something, but it was my own IV medication. The quality stuff was shipped overseas during the Gulf War and I was left with a mixed fluid that made me feel strange and left a weird taste in my mouth. With each treatment, my breathing became more and more labored to the point that I had to stop the pump and go for a walk outside until I felt normal enough again, then endured the rest of the bottle. The last time I received an IV treatment I experienced an anaphylactic reaction; my throat closed entirely and I panicked and signaled for the nurse who wasn't paying attention, turned the pump off myself while mom was trying to figure out what was going on. I was deprived of oxygen long enough for gin blossoms to form around my eyes (and turning smurfy in color) and I remember thinking "really? I'm only 17. This sucks. Why didn't they listen to me when I told them it was the wrong medicine. Why does no one ever hear me?" and other various things you think of when you're 17, panicking, and trying not to die. It completely broke my trust for doctors to this day. Death and I have always rubbed elbows. Sometimes we play dominoes.
I moved away from any associations I had with healing professions which was likely to my detriment. Fast forwarding to now, I'd studied the concept of the wounded healer. I'd studied Reiki and some formal shamanic training. I'd studied Druidry and various ecstatic forms of ritual and Seership. I've got a spiritual toolkit on my belt that Batman might wish to consider, and I'm always learning more and I'd never dream of saying that I knew everything. Still, I'd never considered myself a healer until I heard myself described as being one of the Grove "Healers" at least three times in one day on Sunday. It was a weird moment, like that time when you let your sister pick out an outfit for you from her closet and you feel wrong. Not bad, just wrong. It fits, but it doesn't.
Labels are weird things; they never quite fit. It's exhausting to try to find a label that perfectly fits anyone. Since my friends and grovemates seem to think I'm a healer, I guess I'm a healer. It may take a long while for this to resonate, though.
Weird.
Until the other day, I had never identified myself as being a healer. I'm still not sure that I can wrap my head around it. A healer was someone who worked in a medical field; a doctor, nurse, EMT, field medic, etc etc. Any hopes I had to pursue such a career were crushed at an early age when I was informed that I had no business being in the medical field with a diagnosis like mine. My perspective switched a bit from hoping I could be a good nurse to striving to be the best patient I could be. I learned things from nurses; they taught me to handle my own IV's, operate the pump, remove them, flush them, do the math, etc. I was pretty self sufficient until the day it all went wrong.
Over time, I finally did show signs of immunity to something, but it was my own IV medication. The quality stuff was shipped overseas during the Gulf War and I was left with a mixed fluid that made me feel strange and left a weird taste in my mouth. With each treatment, my breathing became more and more labored to the point that I had to stop the pump and go for a walk outside until I felt normal enough again, then endured the rest of the bottle. The last time I received an IV treatment I experienced an anaphylactic reaction; my throat closed entirely and I panicked and signaled for the nurse who wasn't paying attention, turned the pump off myself while mom was trying to figure out what was going on. I was deprived of oxygen long enough for gin blossoms to form around my eyes (and turning smurfy in color) and I remember thinking "really? I'm only 17. This sucks. Why didn't they listen to me when I told them it was the wrong medicine. Why does no one ever hear me?" and other various things you think of when you're 17, panicking, and trying not to die. It completely broke my trust for doctors to this day. Death and I have always rubbed elbows. Sometimes we play dominoes.
I moved away from any associations I had with healing professions which was likely to my detriment. Fast forwarding to now, I'd studied the concept of the wounded healer. I'd studied Reiki and some formal shamanic training. I'd studied Druidry and various ecstatic forms of ritual and Seership. I've got a spiritual toolkit on my belt that Batman might wish to consider, and I'm always learning more and I'd never dream of saying that I knew everything. Still, I'd never considered myself a healer until I heard myself described as being one of the Grove "Healers" at least three times in one day on Sunday. It was a weird moment, like that time when you let your sister pick out an outfit for you from her closet and you feel wrong. Not bad, just wrong. It fits, but it doesn't.
Labels are weird things; they never quite fit. It's exhausting to try to find a label that perfectly fits anyone. Since my friends and grovemates seem to think I'm a healer, I guess I'm a healer. It may take a long while for this to resonate, though.
Weird.
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