Arriving at the home of a hospice patient one morning, I immediately notice a change in her behavior. \u00a0Carting her oxygen tank behind her, she shuffles over to meet me and hugs me with her tiny arms. \u00a0I can barely feel her physical presence, but her essence seems stronger than I have ever experienced it. \u00a0Pulling up her shirt, she says, \u201cCan you see that my tumors are shrinking?\u201d \u00a0I notice that the growths, to me, appear to be larger than they were at my previous visit. \u00a0I also observe\u00a0<\/span>that she has lost even more weight. \u00a0She says she weighs 84 pounds now, but she looks slimmer than that, her thighs not even the circumference of my upper arms.<\/span><\/p>\n

We settle in for a chat, her words delivered rapid-fire with great excitement. \u00a0She tells me all about her family\u2019s Christmas and instructs me to gather materials so that she can share with me the beauty of the gifts she had given and received. \u00a0By far the greatest of these gifts she is sharing with me is her healing. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For about ten minutes, she has so much energy ~ almost exponentially more than I have ever seen. \u00a0Eventually, she says, \u201cI\u2019m a bit manic today; can you feel it?\u201d \u00a0Although she has a history of Bipolar Disorder, I have never seen her like this. \u00a0Is that what this is, a manic state?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know my family is worried to see me acting like I am manic. \u00a0But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what this is.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d I ask.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is me getting better. \u00a0I know I being cured. \u00a0I am not dying anymore\u201d. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I wondered: \u00a0Is she being cured?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or is she, perhaps, being healed?<\/span><\/p>\n

And is there a difference? \u00a0Through my years of dying and accompanying others as they are dying, I have come to know the vast distance that exists between curing and healing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several years after my first surgery, I was speaking to a beloved family member about the possibility (or, from the viewpoint of many of my doctors, the inevitability) of me having another surgery. \u00a0She was shocked to hear that there was a likelihood that I would need at least one, and perhaps several, more invasive procedures on my heart and lungs in order to live. \u00a0\u201cWhat?\u201d she cried, \u201cBut I thought you were cured?!\u201d \u00a0Many, many people had hoped \u2013 or perhaps even assumed \u2013 that one day spent in the operating room would result in my body\u2019s magical transformation into the shape and condition it was in years ago. \u00a0However, this did not happen. \u00a0While my surgeons were able to stall the advancement of my condition for several years, they were not able to reverse the damage that had already been done to my heart and lungs, nor was it possible to \u201cfix\u201d me so that from that day forward I would have no further damage occurring to this area of my body.<\/span><\/p>\n

I found that most of those people closest to me became uncomfortable when I attempted to discuss death at any level of depth. For the most part, it seemed that they wanted me to have been cured, to never have to worry about dying again. This was not my experience. I was not cured; I was left with a serious heart and lung condition that severely compromised my health. My body would never return to the physical form it was in before this illness was introduced into it; likewise, I could never return to the spiritual or psychological condition I had been in when I first met death through this experience. I could not forget what I had learned, I was not willing to stop visiting the states that I first encountered during my months of dying, and I did not desire to simplify the process in order to make others more comfortable with it. <\/span><\/p>\n

I absolutely was healed. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I had not been cured . . . and this was a problem for some of my friends and family members. \u00a0It had been difficult for them to watch me growing more and more ill and to face their fears of losing me. \u00a0So many of them had created a fantasy of the quick and easy erasure of my condition with no evidence that it had ever occurred. \u00a0They were not alone; often, in our culture, we are searching for the magic pill that will make everything better, the time machine that will return us to the state of health we were in long ago. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This constant desire to return to things, times, and conditions that have passed has everything to do with curing and nothing to do with healing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo heal\u201d is derived from the Old English word <\/span>haelen,<\/span><\/i> meaning \u201cto make whole, sound, and well.\u201d \u00a0True healing does not necessarily involve returning to a previous state of health. \u00a0Instead, healing is the continual process of becoming whole \u2013 being whole \u2013 even when parts of our being do not function according to any ideal concept of health. \u00a0It is possible to heal regardless of the medical condition we may have, because healing is something that happens from within us. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, curing is something that occurs <\/span>to<\/span><\/i> us rather than <\/span>within<\/span><\/i> us, and it relies on the removal of all signs of illness or infirmity. \u00a0It fascinates me that we use the term \u201cto cure\u201d to also describe the process of saving or preserving meat, often by covering it with salt and nitrites in order to make it last longer. \u00a0Isn\u2019t that also what we desire in our own curing \u2013 that we preserve one specific state of health as long as possible?<\/span><\/p>\n

There have been times when I wanted my body to be cured \u2013 to be rid of any trace of heart and lung disease and to stop progressing in illness as I grew older. \u00a0During these times, my model for my health and healing was something that was outside of me. \u00a0I wanted my body to look or function in a certain way: \u00a0the way it used to look or function or the way someone else\u2019s body looked or functioned or some idea of how a healthy body <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> look and function. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At these times I was not focused on making myself whole, sound, and well, except in the very specific terms of a single concept of what that might look like. \u00a0These fantasies were based more on curing than on healing. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although my condition has not been cured, I continue to heal each and every day. \u00a0If I had my heart set on being the Amy I used to be, the Amy with a perfect heart and two fully functioning lungs, I would be in a continual state of suffering. \u00a0But I eventually learned that I had to release that Amy \u2013 the Past Amy and any Future Amy in order to create Healthy Amy right here, right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a friend of mine shared with me his experience of receiving some test results and finding out that he was HIV-positive. \u00a0The doctor sat down with him and told him that the person he had been previously was dead. \u00a0That from now on, he needed to care for himself as he was in this new incarnation, to behave as if he were an entirely new person. \u00a0Although he was taken aback by the physician\u2019s directness, my friend really took in the words he was told and opened to their wisdom. \u00a0In the days following that visit, he worked very hard to see himself as an entirely new person, to release any attachments he had to the body and life he used to have or to any constructs of the body and life he \u201cshould\u201d have. \u00a0He came absolutely present with where his body and life were right at that moment, and from there began to create wholeness, soundness, and wellness.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not the person I was twenty years ago, not only because I now have a new heart and one lung that no longer works, but because I am different each and every day. \u00a0Each part of my being \u2013 physical, emotional, mental, and energetic \u2013 is in a state of constant flux. \u00a0And when I try to return to a state that was present years ago or to maintain any specific state at all, I am moving against the current of life. \u00a0Healing involves us moving with the flow of life, creating wholeness within every aspect of our beings at all times. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And healing involves surrender.<\/span><\/p>\n

Surrender does not mean giving up on well-being \u2013 quite the opposite, in fact. \u00a0What we are surrendering is our <\/span>idea<\/span><\/i> of what that well-being will look like. \u00a0We are surrendering our control over exactly the ways in which it will manifest in our lives at any given point. \u00a0We are letting go of all of our attachments to one specific concept or manifestation of wellness so that we open ourselves up to the truth that there are countless opportunities for wellness in each and every moment of our lives. \u00a0I came to know that this is what my patient was doing, even as she showed every sign of coming nearer to death.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy family members do not want to believe that I am healing,\u201d she whispered to me. \u00a0\u201cThey say that they do not want to have false hope.\u201d \u00a0As I watched her, radiant with this new energy emerging through her emaciated and exhausted body, I thought, \u201cThey are wrong; this is her way of healing.\u201d \u00a0Was that time of \u201cmania\u201d leading up to her death part of her healing? \u00a0Did she really think that her tumors were shrinking physically? \u00a0Or had she become aware of them shrinking in her vision of herself, in her experience of herself? \u00a0As she sat on her bed, her body the image of everything our culture tells us is sick and weakened and dying, she shared with me a life force that was strong and vibrant and filled with love. \u00a0Isn\u2019t that healing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Her chuckle was weak but sincere ~ \u201cThis was my third last Christmas, you know. \u00a0I have had three Christmases that were supposed to be my last. \u00a0I\u2019m not sure if next year we\u2019ll be saying it is my fourth last Christmas or my first new Christmas.\u201d \u00a0I think that her last Christmas was both her \u201cthird, last\u201d Christmas and her first new Christmas. \u00a0It was a time of great healing into wholeness. \u00a0That was her final last Christmas in that bodily form, which would never be cured. \u00a0Three weeks later, she said, \u201cI am ready to die now.\u201d \u00a0And she closed her eyes forever, absolutely well and whole and healed.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arriving at the home of a hospice patient one morning, I immediately notice a change in her behavior. \u00a0Carting her oxygen tank behind her, she shuffles over to meet me and hugs me with her tiny arms. \u00a0I can barely feel her physical presence, but her essence seems stronger than I have ever experienced it. \u00a0Pulling up her shirt, she says, \u201cCan you see that my tumors are shrinking?\u201d \u00a0I notice that the growths, to me, appear to be larger than they were at my previous visit. \u00a0I also observe\u00a0that she has lost even more weight. \u00a0She says she weighs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n