Healing Out Loud | ThisWomansWords

Grace & Grounding: The Gospel of Healing

Healing Out Loud

By Shereá Denise

Oh, Lord, I want you to help me.

Help me on my journey.

Help me on my way.

Oh, Lord, I want you to help me.

While I'm waiting, I want you to help me.

While I’m waiting, I want you to help me.

Help me on my journey.

Help me on my way.

Oh, Lord, I want you to help me.

Song: I Want You to Help Me

In my last post I mentioned a retreat that I coordinated for women of color in my community in late October 2024. During the event I had two major realizations:

So many of the women in my life are amazing.
I have a chronic illness.

As you can imagine, the first realization gave me an immense sense of pride. Having so many of my people in one space being vulnerable with and learning from one another was mind blowing in the best possible way.

As you can also imagine, the second realization stopped me in my tracks. Per the CDC, “Chronic diseases are defined broadly as conditions that last [one] year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both.” When D’andre Hardy of The Seen Society provided the definition of chronic illness, I think I was unintentionally holding my breath as I wrote, “I have a chronic illness” on my notepad. In a subsequent conversation with D’andre I shared that I do not know if I am relieved by that realization or bothered that I still do not know what “this” illness is.

Something else that D’andre said reminded me of a conversation that we had in the weeks leading up to the retreat. We had discussed this idea that we should not look like what we have been through. In front of the group D’andre said that sometimes we have to show people what we are going through, that they need to see what we have been through. This connected to something that had been said on the first day of the retreat by Reketta Brown, “We are not designed to be isolated.” I recognized that I had been isolating myself due to my physical discomfort and increasingly present anxiety. Being at home with my partner was the only time that I did not feel like I was constantly caught up in a whirlwind of anxious thoughts of what could, might, or may happen with my body. D’andre described this perfectly when she spoke about the “mental gymnastics” required just to leave home some days. I find myself thinking through worst-case scenarios, making countless back-up plans, and adding extra items to my bags just to be sure that I can manage whatever my body may do or experience. My wife mentioned that it is like I am waking up with a new body every day. A body that I have to try to learn, understand, and navigate for roughly 16 hours. Yes, it is as tiring and emotional as it sounds and - honestly - it has been impacting my quality of life in ways that I still cannot fully articulate. I would rather stay at home than try to figure out where bathrooms are in new places, or to have my body tense up because of long road trips or bumpy roads, or to be fearful of eating or trying new foods.

While reviewing my notes after the event, I had to sit with many of the things that our speakers and panelists said. I had to process some very direct questions that I did not have complete answers to:

What am I rooted in?
Am I aligning myself to receive my harvest?
How can I be a better steward of my time?
In what ways could I be more optimistic about my health?
How am I taking care of myself at home? How am I taking care of myself at work?

I continued to think through these questions for several weeks, finding that they were a little more nuanced than they had seemed when I was writing them down. These questions required that I sort through some past experiences and habits while revisiting some prior conversations and advice that I had forgotten along the way.

What am I rooted in?

I am rooted in the idea and concept of community. So much of who I am, what I believe, and what I understand is connected to community. To building community, to improving my communities, and to making opportunities accessible to my community. My efforts to be accepted by communities that were not intended to be my own have also been my downfall. There are times when I have stepped outside of myself, trusted the wrong people, and put my personal value determinations in the hands of others.

Am I aligning myself to receive my harvest?

In some ways, yes, but I still have some areas and opportunities for improvement. Alignment has included saying yes to things I would have previously said no to. (Word to Shonda Rhimes!) It has also involved doing things despite being fearful of what may happen. If I let fear - especially relating to my body - stop me, I would likely never leave home. While this sounds really encouraging, when I dug into this question a little more, I began thinking about how I may be aligning myself to receive my harvest in some ways, but not actually expecting to receive my harvest. I felt like an athlete suiting up for the game who either never expected to get off the bench or who was worried about the mistakes they would make if the coach put them in.

I started interrogating why I was so cautious about happiness and joy, about how I subconsciously seem to always be expecting the other shoe to drop. These thoughts also led me to revisit the concept of “foreboding joy”. Foreboding joy was preventing me from embracing the mindset that should come with aligning myself to receive my harvest. I cannot recall where I learned this caution, if it came from past not-so-good experiences or from the tales of the adults who raised me. I say with the fact that this was something more than caution and something beyond my typical skepticism. This was no longer caution, but a genuine fear about occupying certain spaces and the many things that could happen to “humble me.” That is often what it seemed like my body’s reactions might be. Though I know the reason for these challenges is far greater than my ego, there were moments when that seemed like the only plausible explanation.

How can I be a better steward of my time?

This particular question is one that has been fairly easy to answer, but rather difficult to put into practice. I am working through how much I allow other people, perceived obligations, and questionable priorities to dictate my time and availability. Step one has been limiting the number of meetings that I agree to or attend each day. Step two is reevaluating my to-do lists. Step three is being honest about where I need help and/or where I cannot do it all. Admitting where I cannot do it all is particularly difficult for me because it makes me feel… inferior and/or ill-equipped. Anytime I think about my schedule and expectations of myself, I circle back to the Goopification podcast interview with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin. For the last several weeks, all of the balls that I am juggling have felt like glass, even though I recognize that they are not. I am settling into the idea that many of the deadlines in my life, I have imposed. I am also recognizing that the pace that I have established in some areas of my life is not sustainable and that that does not mean I am low performing. It means that I am human, that I am battling a chronic illness, and that my expectations of myself are not always realistic.

In what ways could I be more optimistic about my health?

No matter how many times I have read this question, what continues to come to mind for me is (1) how I define health or being healthy for myself and (2) genuinely believing that these health changes and challenges are all for a greater purpose and that healing is still possible.

To me, healthy means being well, feeling well, living a quality life without constant fear or discomfort. Part of being healthy also involves recognizing and appreciating my ability to be one of my own sanctuaries. I had to wonder whether or not I am making myself less well by focusing so much on my health challenges and my discomfort with what could potentially happen. (Reference: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFQfdn6j/)

As I have mentioned before, so much of this particular journey seems to be about mindset. I continue to struggle with my mindset as it pertains to thinking that my body is working against me, thinking that my body and I are separate entities that are often at war. A quote in a DailyOM email resonated with me regarding this particular struggle: “Your body is not working against you — it’s trying to protect you.” While it does not always feel like protection, I recognize that that is exactly what inflammation is intended to be.

Optimaskus: a mindset where one chooses to view life's challenges and negative experiences positively, and consciously adopting a positive outlook to reduce stress and foster personal growth.

How am I taking care of myself at home? How am I taking care of myself at work?

Boundaries have been key for me. Communicating those boundaries and being consistent with them have been difficult though. This particular question reminded me of a post from Twitter: “What if you admit that constantly overextending yourself and prioritizing the needs of others over your own is how you cope with yours being consistently unmet while secretly hoping that one day your actions inspire reciprocity even though you know they won’t?” (Source: Twitter)

To a degree, I am doing better with taking care of myself at home, but - too often - I am not taking care of myself at work. More often than not I am so focused on work and tasks that truly caring for myself gets left on the back burner with no heat.

Something else that D’andre mentioned during the retreat was how trauma and self-esteem can lead to lack of boundaries in certain areas. I definitely see this for myself with work. I over-perform in an effort to avoid the negative outcomes that I have experienced in the past - mistreatment, termination, harm, trauma.

She also discussed honoring ourselves and how one way to do that is by telling our stories. This confirmed my thought from the last post about the Grace and Grounding series being a sort of altar for me. These posts are me memorializing this experience and the lessons that come from it. They are me honoring my story and being assured that telling my story opens more doors than it closes.

I continued sorting through my thoughts on how much of what was happening with my body - especially the symptoms connected to my emotions - were actually the remnants of things left by other people. Think generational trauma and relationship trauma.

The speakers at the retreat reminded me that I should take additional steps to declutter and release what is no longer serving me. This is not just about seasonal cleaning at home and work, but also decluttering my thoughts and releasing the emotions that I have been bottling up. This includes my ways of thinking about how my life has to be lived and who has the authority to dictate how I live my life.

I was left considering points that were made about the cost that comes with saying yes to things, the ways I have not allowed myself to be nurtured, and the tools I am using for my healing. Some of the statements made regarding giving ourselves and others grace made me consider how often I push myself when my body is not at 100%, but I am more focused on being seen as being productive than being seen as human. I decided to begin asking myself, “What do I have the capacity for?” and to answer myself honestly so that I knew how I could show up or why I could not. Some days this looked like drastically reducing my to-do lists. Other days this looked like staying home and canceling plans with people or in spaces that make me uneasy. The catch was not thinking negatively of myself when my capacity was limited, to truly accept that needing rest does not make me lazy and that taking a personal day does not require me to be sick or have medical appointments.

While some things - like continuously tilling my soil - have become second-nature to me over the last several years, I have lost sight of other things, like the importance of laughter and the significance of finding community in this new space of learning about what is happening with my body and how to address it. I had truly gone into isolation, primarily because I realized that so few people could actually understand or relate to what I was experiencing. Though folks on Facebook and TikTok offered helpful insight and tips, some of them also promoted fear and despair. My own anxiety was doing enough of that. Striving to improve my mental health also meant knowing when to put down my phone or leave the Facebook group when the information shared created more worry, fear, or discomfort for me.

Kimberly Knight, a panelist at the retreat and a mental health provider, mentioned that her parents had always taught her to make short-term sacrifices for long-term success. I wondered if my current health changes were short-term sacrifices or if the ways in which I was changing my life and habits were the short-term sacrifices. Like, maybe I would not have to be gluten free forever, but that was necessary right now to prevent some of the reactions and inflammation from increasing in my body. As I sorted through what I was sacrificing, I found myself also thinking through the many battles that I had fought with my health and whether I was choosing battles that were not actually mine to fight. This reminded me of Dr. Anita Phillip’s sermon on surrendering to rest. I had done better in many ways, but I still had my moments where I was far from surrender and even further from resting.

The other speakers and panelists referenced things and/or asked questions like:

Daily Spirit Renewal
Eight Dimensions of Wellness
How can you make things more enjoyable?

In the week following the retreat, I attended an event for women of color in nonprofit leadership. During the opening session, Dr. Shinika McKiever discussed the importance of leading with authenticity and purpose. This was a full circle moment for me because another thing that D’andre mentioned at the retreat was showing up authentically at work to give others the opportunity to do the same.

I began thinking of my health changes as disruptors, similar to weeds. Though I understand that even weeds serve a purpose, I would be lying if I said that the negative connotation that we assign to weeds is not similar to how I tend to view my symptoms. They seemed to be something that would over grow if I allowed them to do so. This meant that I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to control the weeds. Was this me being a good steward of my time? Was this me remaining in survival mode even when a threat was not present? Was this part of what is keeping things from being more enjoyable for me?

Thinking about the negative connotation I had assigned to so many things about my current experience made me wonder how much authority I was giving these health challenges over my life. This brought me back to a sermon by Sarah Jakes Roberts where she discussed how giving too much attention to the problem can essentially make that problem your God. I was forced to revisit a question that I had asked myself a few blog posts ago: Had I allowed the health challenges to become bigger than they actually are? Was I focused more on the challenges than I should be?

As if on cue, I saw a few additional reminders that I had written down during the retreat:

Show up, but not in a way that is harmful to you.
Honor your mind and body with rest and nature. Avoid just being busy.
Carefully and intentionally preserve yourself.
“Don’t dwell in the drought.” –Tyronna Hooker
Focus on healing in your way.

In the days following these two wonderful experiences, I did a lot of resting. My body had handled the back-to-back events and my work obligations fairly well, but I knew that I needed to sit down before I got sat down yet again. While I was resting, I began circling back to different pictures and notes that I had taken over the last several weeks. One of the notes that I had referenced some profound words offered by Octavia E. Butler. (Note: I have found myself absolutely smitten with Octavia E. Butler’s words since reading Kindred a few years ago.)

“Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything.

God is Change - Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm.

From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving - forever Changing.

The universe is God's self-portrait.”

This quote made me think about another Sarah Jakes Roberts’ sermon where she spoke about what we have decided God is and how our heart posture and faith can sometimes limit God.

In early November, some of my bladder and gastrointestinal symptoms returned. I was also experiencing fatigue and my feet were rather inflamed. These symptoms were not nearly as severe as they had been in the past, but I would be lying to myself if I did not acknowledge the pain I was battling and the disappointment that I felt at the possibility that my 30-ish days of feeling relatively better were over and that I was potentially re-entering another season of flare-ups. Yes, I was catastrophizing. I fully recognized that, but I also recognized that I was excited about feeling better and it was unexpectedly taken away from me for a reason that I could not quite pinpoint.

During a follow-up appointment, the Gastroenterologist and I spoke about a few of my concerns. At the top of my list were the results of my iron testing, questions about Crohn’s disease testing, and my continued bladder/interstitial cystitis issues. Luckily, my iron stores had increased and I did not need additional infusions for the time being. There was nothing to indicate that I was or was not suffering from Crohn’s disease, so two tests were ordered to make a final determination. The doctor also provided me with a variety of options regarding my bladder which ranged from medication to nerve testing to an implant. We briefly discussed whether a probiotic would be beneficial for me. The doctor cautioned me not to spend too much money and to research probiotics - specifically ones that assist with inflammation - before purchasing anything. I spent the remainder of the month awaiting lab results, researching probiotics, and trying to find the greater meaning in my insurance company’s continued denials of the bladder medication that the Gastroenterologist attempted to prescribe.

Later in the month I listened to a sermon by Bishop T.D. Jakes called “This Season will Not Destroy You.” During the sermon, Bishop Jakes made reference to grapes and wine. I started searching for some of his quotes from the sermon and came across a website that summarized Bishop Jakes’ book, Crushing. Some of the key points that I noted were:

Embrace every stage and season of your life. Be the grape. Enjoy the wine.
There's not much you can do with grapes that will increase their value. There are only two worthwhile things you can do: nurture them with your hand or crush them under your feet for making wine.
It costs you something to be great - it costs you everything! Regardless of where you find yourself in life, you paid a price to be there.
Regardless of your background, you will have to trade something of extreme value for you to become the person God has called you to be.
“[T]he sprouted seedling could never understand the process of cultivation from its own limited point of view. Similarly, it is a striking blow to our limited comprehension of God to accept that he would use the most unorthodox procedures and inhospitable environments to develop us into something more.”

The quotes that stood out most to me for this particular season of my life were:

“Could it be possible that your current predicament is the winepress God uses to transform your grapes into His wine? Could being crushed be a necessary part of the process to fulfill God’s plan for your life? Could you be on the verge of victory despite walking through the valley of broken vines?”

I prayed that I was on the verge of victory, but - as the inflammation held steady in my lower extremities - I was not so sure that improvement was on the horizon. I had become cautious of being too hopeful or too focused on having a diagnosis, recognizing that neither of them guaranteed healing or full recovery.

“God uses everything (all things) for his good—and ours. (Romans 8:28) “”All” includes circumstances that leave you feeling powerless, vulnerable, and unsteady on your feet. The trials of our lives are used as a catalyst for growth, for the betterment of the gifts we have been given.”

I would like to believe that a big part of the reason for or the lesson embedded in my health changes is about confronting and improving my relationships with God and myself. We are taught that that is what these types of challenges are used for. For reevaluating, for reprioritizing, for making necessary adjustments. While I feel like these changes have definitely been a catalyst for growth and for betterment of the gifts that I have been given, I am not always certain about what growth and betterment look like. I am not sure that what I consider change, growth, and betterment are - in fact - change, growth, and betterment. If they were, why would I still be battling some of these health issues almost four years later? Part of me just wanted to wake up healed. At present I feel like I am in the midst of a major test with no clear guidance about the subject matter or the grading rubric.

This line of thinking made me consider another quote from DailyOM: “Have you ever found yourself brushing off uncomfortable feelings or telling yourself to just “get over it”? Unfortunately, that doesn’t make those feelings go away. Instead, they get stuck in our body, quickly turning into chronic pain and even triggering more serious health issues. When you learn how to effectively process and release these emotions, you’ll not only get an immediate sense of relief; you’ll also feel calm, at peace and free.”

Perhaps some of my growth and betterment journey requires me to change how I express and experience uncomfortable feelings. I do not know that I brush them off, but I definitely focus on solutions first and rarely ever experience the emotions associated with the discomfort. I am learning how those emotions being trapped in my body could explain some of my symptoms.

“…we are experiencing the inescapable trauma of the Lord trimming from us what we thought makes us valuable.”

This statement brought me back to my prior thoughts about why I had become so comfortable with being a resource and a busy body, with how I misplaced my efforts to establish community with feeling like my value could only be found in what I did for my communities.

I previously mentioned that my pain levels and limited energy had forced me to - in many ways - prioritize and show up differently. So much of that felt like a crushing, like I was being stripped of much of what I thought made me significant or that defined who I am. I also saw the reiteration of concepts like surrender and rest (yet again!) in the summary.

Bishop Jakes writes about the importance of surrender for survival. He also notes that “certain blessings and assets are found only in rest. Better still, some advantages emerge exclusively in and while being alone. I think my best thoughts when I’m alone, and I move faster without [the] weight of other responsibilities and distractions.”

I have spent the first three years of these health changes trying to stabilize myself. Prioritizing did not come from strategic thinking, but rather from having no real choice but to step away from some things and to stop doing others. This made me wonder: Are the changes with my health an example of God employing something different, yet effective, to help me learn to trust him differently? Since we already know I have my own hesitations about trust, this is a very layered ask.

“If there’s anything that God has always requested His people to do, it is to believe Him. For how can you seek or worship a God you do not trust?”

I realized that what I am being asked to trust is that everything that is happening is genuinely happening for a reason and - in the more difficult moments - I am not certain that I actually trust that.

“We know that everything we have been through is more than worth it because God has used it all, wasting nothing, to bring us to the point in our lives where we are now.”

A few reminders that I noted were:

“Pruning is not punishment.”
“The crushing of the grape not only expresses the juice from the flesh, but it also separates the unusable parts of the grape from the juice.”
“…you must embrace this aspect of the process, because the crushing is meant to do two things: get out of you what’s in you, and get the true you out of the thin skin that encases you.”

One final point that really stuck out to me was: “But the truth of the matter is that you are not what and who you used to be. You are not what you did. You are not your lack. You are not what people have labeled you to be, and God will continue confronting you to make you understand who you are.”

Circling back to the questions asked during the Human Healing Unlocked TED Talk, I decided to spend some time in November considering the following questions:

If I was a plant, what shape would I be in? What does the plant of my own life need? How am I doing with supplying its needs? How am I nurturing my life? Denying a plant’s needs denies it the opportunity to genuinely flourish.
How might my suffering be a gift?
What are your prerequisites for healing? What do you need to promote healing? For some seeds you need cold or darkness for the emergence of new life, for the emergence of healing.

My answers to some of the questions are still unclear but I know that the ways that my suffering may be a gift include how I have been forced into being myself and being accountable to myself when I step outside of myself.

Despite not feeling 100% in this moment, I consider it a gift that I can honestly admit that I am not at 100%, that I can appreciate the improvement in some areas of my health, and that I can enjoy the fleeting moments when my health changes are not at the forefront of my mind and I am able to bask in the moment or the experience. Perhaps that was part of the lesson too, learning not to allow the obstacles of life to steal the joy that could still come despite it all.