For me, recovery is only part of the healing process. Healing has many more dimensions. Healing continues until I die. Until I take my last breath, I will be healing from childhood sexual abuse. Yes, I can recover from addictions and other unhealthy behaviors, but that doesn’t mean I’ve healed. The strange thing is, I think this is good news. Let me explain.

I see recovery as a step in the healing process. The dictionary states that to recover means to get back to normal, to restore to usefulness. Recovery, which can save you life, requires the changing of behaviors and a commitment to one’s self. Commitment to self includes the physical self as well as the spiritual self.

In my experience, recovery seems to focus a great deal of time and energy modifying people’s behavior to get them back to ‘normal.’ This keeps the focus on the past.

For instance, in the 12-step programs, the emphasis is on recovery from addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, food, work, and so on. The way people introduce themselves at 12-step meetings is, “Hi, I’m _______ and I’m an (alcoholic, drug abuser, sex addict, compulsive overeater, workaholic, etc.).

To heal is, by definition, to make whole, to restore to original purity or integrity. To heal is to return to our original nature, that state of grace in which we were born. In order to heal, I must consciously choose to be whole again, claiming the severed and lost parts of myself. I must acknowledge all of my parts—those parts that I am proud to share, those parts that darken and cloud me on even the brightest of days, and those parts that I lost conscious memory of in order to survive.

Living consciously means knowing my deepest self: being aware, noticing, sensing, and recognizing what I am choosing for myself. Conscious living entails trusting my intuition and my gut feelings, and acting on them accordingly.

Survivors may exhibit inappropriate behaviors that are signs that something very deep and central to the core of their being is out of balance. These behaviors are clues to recognizing that pain and holes exist that are much greater than the survivor knows how to express.

Many survivors that I have met and worked with have turned to drugs, alcohol, self-mutilation, and attempted suicide to numb the pain at the core of their “be-ing.” The pain of abandonment, the misuse of power, and the betrayal of trust by the perpetrator, who 90% of the time is known to victim, is so great that survivors may abandon themselves and unconsciously turn their power and trust over to a chemical such as alcohol or a mutilating tool such as a knife.

Through recovery, these behaviors can be changed. The survivors may stop drinking or doing drugs, become clean and sober, quit mutilating themselves, or lose their suicidal despair. However, until the root of these behaviors is consciously addressed and integrated into the healing process, one may slide back or relapse. When one is healed, holes no longer exist for old behaviors to fall into again. The holes have not simply been over, they have been filled.

For survivors of childhood sexual abuse such as myself, many things lie at the root of these harmful behaviors: a sense of abandonment, feelings of being no good, loneliness and isolation, physical pain in the body, and the belief that there is no hope, no way out of the situation. As a child, I always felt lonely, isolated, and different from my friends. In high school, I had many friends and never understood why they liked me. I used to think, “If they only knew about me, they wouldn’t like me either.” I felt hollow inside the trunk of my body.

When it came time for me to marry, I was afraid my future husband would reject me, wanting nothing to do with me, after I told him about my childhood. To my surprise, held and nurtured me in a way I had not experienced before with a man. I sometimes think he loved me all the more for the pain, abandonment, and loos that I have experienced in my life. He sees the inner and outer beauty in me that I was never able to see and acknowledge in myself. Moments after I shared with him that my father raped me, for the first time when I was eight-years-old, he gave me his grandmother’s hand mirror, saying, “I want you to see the beauty that I see.’

Because the very soul of the survivor has been perpetrated, penetrated, and denigrated, it is at the soul level that we must choose to be consciously whole if healing is to occur.

For me, healing is a life-long process—this process continues until we take our last breath. In a process, it is what happens along the way that is important. Consciously choosing to honor the beautiful being that you are, claiming a fully rich and nurturing life for yourself, and experiencing the connections you feel with your friends, loved ones, and Mother Earth are all activities that are part of the healing process.

As you well know, if you have experienced sexual abuse, life is full of paradoxes and seeming inconsistencies. Accepting and integrating the paradoxes and inconsistencies in your life may be the greatest challenge you have been given. It is sometimes difficult to accept that the same person who supposedly loved, cared for, and protected you is the very person who violated your boundaries, your body, your thoughts, feeling, and betrayed your trust.

It is you who must love, care for, and protect you. It is you who must establish and protect your boundaries and your body, allowing no one to violate them. In the healing process, life, power, and strength are yours to choose. You also have choice in how your respond emotionally and mentally to what is happening in your world. You do have control over how you think and feel about yourself. Recognize this and begin believing and feeling the powerful and strong being that you are.

Recovery, as I see it, is a big step in the healing process. You are actively engaged in the healing process when you are in a recovery programs and are consciously changing your behaviors; and when you claim the healer within yourself by honoring all of you—your body, your feelings, your thoughts, your dreams, and your spiritual self.

Some exercises, activities, and therapies that are helpful in claiming honoring your be-ing are: art and music therapies, dance, theater and drama. Bodywork, retreats, meditation, and quiet time alone can also be healing to the spirit. Keeping a journal of your ideas, thoughts, dreams, and feeling is a way to record where you have been and to see how far you have traveled. It is a way of listening to your body. Holotropic Breathwork, a self-induced non-ordinary state of consciousness, uses the breath to access memories, experiences, and emotions from the past, and to claim the healer within. Any activity that you feel healthy about and that actively engages your body will accelerate the healing process. Spending time in nature, walking, hiking, or lying in the grass are some of the most peaceful and connecting activities you may ever experience.

There is no better time than now to begin and continue the healing process. The path ay be rocky, slippery, and steep with deep waters to cross. Metaphorically, it may be cold, wet and windy; dark and lonely. You may trip, slide back, feel like you are drowning or falling off the edge at times. As survivors, we have all experienced some form of this.

Healing and coming back to wholeness requires conscious choice, and lots of diligent lonely hard work on our self. It isn’t easy, though the payoffs—experiencing life as a whole being rather than a being with holes—are great. Healing is something you have to do yourself, but you don’t have to do it alone.

First published in The Healing Woman

volume 1, number 4