What does healing mean?

I hope this helps some people rethink what healing means 🙂

If we only consider healing in a very medical sense, being completely cured, we can miss out on other ways to be healed that doesn't mean complete cure. Let me explain.

The social model of disability was made as a response to this medicalised view of our lives and that all the problems we have when we are ill or disabled come from something wrong with our bodies. It suggests that actually, we are more disabled by things outside of our bodies including other people's attitudes, Physical things and environmental things. So what the social model does is split the two things up and call them different things. Impairments are what is different about our bodies that may need medical help or treatment, but a disability is a man made thing that affects how our different bodies interact with the world. 

This was a great idea, because it meant disabled people could have something to fight for that unites them, and can make life better for all different bodies. It shifts the blame (and the solution) back onto society to change and include all bodies however different they are.

So for me personally this idea was very healing, because it meant that a lot of the bad stuff I had faced was no longer because of me, but because society wasn't set up for me, and it was them that needed to change. If a disabled person who needs a mobility aid finds a building only has steps, it's not their fault that they can't walk up them, it's the fault of the building for assuming that everyone can walk up stairs. If a disabled person can only work 2 hours a day before becoming tired and needing to stop, it's not the fault of the disabled person that the world of work expects a 7 hour day, or a 37 hour week. I also have come to realize that this goes both ways, and that I can also make changes to the way I live to make it easier for me that doesn't involve following "the rules". If it's easier to use an electronic can opener, it doesn't matter, the can still gets opened, or in my case, actually gets opened! ( That's because I'm left handed and can't open cans with a tin opener!)

So that was the first thing I learnt about looking at healing differently when I was doing my degree. The next thing is something I'm looking at now on my postgraduate degree. 

Whilst this idea is about mental illness and wellbeing it can be useful for everyone to think about it in relation to healing even if we can't be "cured". 

The idea of personal recovery in Mental health means living well within and despite limitations that are imposed on us, or because of our different bodies (this includes brains!). It's about finding meaning and a purpose in life that might be new or different to before illness, but is still just as valid. Recovery is about a whole person, and a whole life journey. It's about finding hope in the darkness, and remembering that even the tiniest flame can burn bright in dark times. Linked very close to this is social inclusion, which is very important in the recovery idea.

We can't do this journey alone, we need others to support us, and we can also support others, in a 2 way exchange of interconnection. We also need others to socialize, work with and to serve and be served by. 

I hope you can find new meaning in what healing means with these ideas and perhaps see that God is healing your life, perhaps not in the way you expect.