Getting Healthy, What’s it Going to Take?

I recently had this conversation via text with a friend of mine who is a fellow healer. Odd right? People think as healer’s we have “being healthy” figured out across all realms – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. But we don’t. We’re figuring it out, going through the motions, on our own journey just like everyone else.

My friend / fellow healer will remain anonymous, but here is an excerpt from one of my texts in our dialogue.

“I haven’t accepted that I can’t just eat a little bit of sugar. A little usually turns into more, and then more the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and then more quantities each time! UGG! What’s it going to take for me to commit to a healthy lifestyle for myself? Because I know it’s my access to less anxiety, less being in my head, more peace within myself, more time for rest, play, intimacy and creation. Why the hell am I still blocked to committing to this for myself?!”

Because “just committing” to not eating sugar doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried that. Numerous times, in numerous ways, and the reality is, it just hasn’t stuck. Perhaps I’m not ready to give it up. Perhaps my mental or emotional body still needs it for some reason I am not conscious of yet. Even though I wake up in the morning ready to be done with it, a lot of times by end of day I’m wondering about it, if I’m going to eat it, and if so, what version. This is definitely a current blind spot, one I’ve been looking into and “working on” for a long time, and it has gotten better, but sugar does still hold a charge for me. Just like alcohol does for some people, or cigarettes, or cannabis, or shopping, or sex, or whatever form one’s attachment may come in.

What I’m discovering is that this attachment is covering up something else. It’s distracting me from feeling something, because the sensory overload I get from sugar often numbs out whatever emotions or things are at the front of my experience I don’t want to deal with. And feeling whatever is there scares me, even though I don’t know what it is. So fear of the unknown. The “thing” of what it is, may not even be anything that scary. I’m inclined to think it’s just the process to finding out what it is that scares me the most.

Am I ready to give up sugar? I think the more accurate question is, am I ready to acknowledge my emotions and give them a front row seat in my life?

I want to yell YES! But I also want to be realistic.

I am ready to begin intentionally making space for my emotions as they arise. And that is it for now, I didn’t learn to walk in a day, so I acknowledge that’s all I can commit too, for now.

Aho!