“Healing?” or “Maintenance?”

-To understand that “healing” isn’t reserved for the sick.

Some of my best healing work has happened with people who are at death’s door, or who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Why? Because they have nothing left to lose. They’re desperate, and they’re willing to try anything.

A young, healthy person, on the other hand, often thinks they don’t need to heal.

The word healing sounds like something for someone else — someone broken, someone older, someone sicker.

They might even laugh at the idea.

And in a community, there’s the added layer of image — people don’t want to be seen as “the one who needs help.”

But here’s the thing: overgrowth always starts small.

It can start with something completely harmless, even healthy.

One KitKat becomes two. Two become three. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole box.

Now you’ve got a candida overgrowth — literal yeast growing in the folds of your body — and no matter what diet or supplement you try, you can’t seem to get rid of it.

The same thing happens in our inner world.

A desire to grow in your company becomes a desire to be on top.

That desire grows into control, and control grows into fear of losing control.

Eventually, it becomes its own self-sustaining monster — a mental and emotional overgrowth your “inner cleaners” can’t sweep away anymore.

My job isn’t just to help people heal when they’re in crisis.

My job is to help people maintain their inner garden before those small, harmless things turn into invasive clusters that take over.

Because once an overgrowth becomes self-sustaining, it’s a lot harder to clear.

So maybe we shouldn’t even call it healing.

Maybe it’s just maintenance.

And if you keep up with maintenance, you’ll never have to wonder how it all got so out of control in the first place.