Can we Heal?

One of my central beliefs and hopes is that we can change our fate. This doesn’t just mean believing in our dreams and pursuing them. It also means striving to improve our wellbeing when we’re unwell. Maybe we won’t always achieve our desired goals, but sometimes we can. I think we owe it to ourselves to try.

The essence of my work—and this blog—is the idea that we should commit to our wellbeing. This doesn’t mean viewing illness as a verdict, blaming ourselves or others for it, or giving up because of it. We don’t have to succumb to our fate or get stuck feeling like victims of life.

My Journey of Healing

I wasn’t born lucky by any stretch. My life began with a big deficit—feeling unsafe, being invisible, overwhelmed by modern social expectations for a child. I spent much of my childhood in a fog of dissociation. To this day, I’m unsure if that stemmed from health concerns, neglect, or both. Lately, I lean toward health concerns as the bigger contributor. Watching my first child struggle to meet his milestones in his earlier years—milestones that didn’t come naturally to him—helped me make this connection.

I’ve spent most of my adult life addressing bits and pieces of my health. It’s not like I had much choice; I’ve never been healthy by default. My son and I share that. By the time I was 18, I’d already undergone at least five surgical interventions—starting with my own birth. Poor immunity and gut issues were constant challenges which doctors tried to fix this way. From adolescence onward, I’ve been at war with my body, needing discipline just to feel okay. Body dysphoria is real, and it’s not always about beauty standards. For me, it’s more about systemic issues in my body than my thinking.

This is where life gets complicated.

Public Resistance to Healing

Wanting to heal—and I’ll explain what I mean by that shortly—is almost seen as insanity in today’s world. I’ve never understood why so many people are resistant to the idea of healing or taking responsibility for their health. Why do people cling to the belief that things can only get worse once they’re diagnosed? Why dismiss natural, simple approaches to healing as “woo-woo” or quackery? It feels like we’ve regressed 600 years to an era where nature itself was demonised.

I’ve given up trying to understand this groupthink. If brilliant philosophers couldn’t untangle any kind of herd mentality, why would I succeed?

What Healing Means

So, what is healing, and why should anyone pursue it? There are countless reasons, but one is the discomfort of suffering clashing with an internal voice that says, “This isn’t the life I envisioned.” Or, as an anonymous quote I found online puts it:

“There is no greater battle in life than between the part of you that wants to be healed and the part that’s content remaining broken.”

I’ve seen people who seem content with their suffering. Some even use it to gain visibility and validation they might not otherwise receive. But many of us aren’t content. Speaking for myself, I have an internal drive to achieve, to go places, but my body and soul often say “no.”

To better explain healing, I asked ChatGPT for help. Here’s what it came up with:

“Healing goes beyond merely curing physical ailments; it encompasses the restoration of balance in the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. While curing focuses on eradicating symptoms, healing addresses the whole person, fostering personal growth and emotional well-being. People pursue healing not just to alleviate pain or discomfort but to reconnect with their true selves, find meaning in their experiences, and gain a sense of empowerment. Whether through supplements and remedies, emotional release, spiritual connection, or self-care practices, healing is a transformative journey that brings wholeness and peace, even when complete physical recovery is not possible. It offers the potential for relief from suffering and a deeper understanding of life’s challenges.”

I find this definition very reasonable.

The Challenges of Healing

Unfortunately, healing isn’t straightforward. Our bodies, minds, and souls are complex. That’s why many of us step outside conventional medicine in search of answers. Some even resort to self-diagnosis or fall prey to quacks along the way, hoping they will get better this way. It’s a symptom of our public health system’s inability to provide satisfactory solutions for our struggles—though, to be fair, complementary methods often fail as well. Worse still, in our attempt to help ourselves by trusting practitioners, we often endure doubt, insults, and misdiagnoses, regardless of the healthcare tradition we choose.
This disillusionment is why self-help and self-healing are such big trends. People feel betrayed by the system and take matters into their own hands.

A Personal Motivation for Healing

My child set me on this path. I’ve always been attentive to self-care routines, and they’ve helped me maintain—and even improve—my health over time. But my child wasn’t thriving from the start. Since birth, he seemed to be “somewhere else,” missing milestones, staying non-verbal until 3½. Neither conventional medicine nor naturopathy could help. That’s when I became a self-help junkie, taking charge of his care. Seven years later, he’s incredibly verbal without any therapeutic intervention except for my lifestyle changes, mostly diet, still different, but developing. It took a lot to get us here. And we lost every social support in the process. The idea of healing is so unpopular that I was not only doubted, but even attacked for my health choices, though there was nothing harmful about them. Most people are so stubborn about their beliefs, they wouldn’t even re-think their perspective if change was happening right in front of their eyes.

Healing Neurodivergence

The topic of healing gets even more contentious when it involves the brain and neurodivergence. Neuroscience confirms that our brains are neuroplastic and can change, yet many people with neurodivergent traits resign themselves to their diagnoses with all problems involved. I get it. Many have been broken by a system—parents, schools, medical professionals—that made them feel unworthy. Parents dragging kids from expert to expert often unintentionally reinforce this feeling of being a failure.

I speak as both a mother and a woman who’s been rejected for being different. I don’t wish my health experiences on anyone. That’s why I stay on the path of healing. I wouldn’t trade my sensitivity, analytic skills or personality for anything. I don’t think any neurodiverse person wants to become neurotypical. I certainly don’t, nor do I wish that for my child.

In the end, healing neurodivergence might not be about changing individuals anyway, but about fostering awareness and acceptance in society. True healing starts when we don’t have to fight for our dignity anymore and get the support we need. But societal education is tedious, requiring actionable changes in schools, medical institutions, and workplaces. This will take time.

At this point, research of how to help people with functional impairments to thrive is ongoing, with only limited interventions available, and usually to the financially privileged. So, in the meantime, it’s down to us to figure out how to live and thrive despite our shortcomings. I mean, I’m still functional. Also, life experience tells me that I am no less functional than many other people who are typical.

Embracing the Possibility of Healing

While my health is stable, my struggles with functionality remain. I see people in my environment improving with diet, exercise, therapy, or energy healing, to name just a few, but none of these have worked for me. I’ve tried everything without noticeable results. Then life nudged me toward considering the brain as the cause. Meeting families with healthy but functionally struggling kids—despite nurturing environments—opened my eyes. Rising rates of neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative, and mental health issues confirm something serious is happening, and this is worth exploring.

So, I’ve started studying the brain and experimenting with lifestyle changes that I hope will activate my neuroplasticity. By this, I hope to regain at least some functionality lost in childhood, during or before birth. I simply can’t accept that a smart person must live with such a broken brain.

Do I stand a chance of improving my neurological condition? I don’t know. But I won’t know if I don’t try. None of us health warriors know what we’re setting ourselves up for. We don’t know the final destination, we only have our hopes and dreams. I can’t say if hacking our biology is possible. I don’t know if we can heal. And, in the end, it may not be about healing anyway, it’s about making life work with what you have got, it’s about THRIVING.

But that’s just my perspective. What’s your take on healing? Have you tried or hesitated? Share your experiences or opinions—just please keep them constructive.