The Slow Healing Movement

“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”

— Wendell Berry, Remembering

There is a Slow Food Movement. Why isn’t there a Slow Healing Movement? The Slow Food Movement is an international movement, started in Italy, that seeks not only to preserve a life affirming tradition of long, satisfying meals, but also to strengthen the entire ecosystem that supports it:  food, eating, farming, family and a healthy way of life.

Have you noticed that everything is now about speed? We don’t have time to do anything anymore. Apparently, according to a recent NYT article, we don’t even have enough time to be nice—we are so overloaded with stress and work—that we feel that we don’t have time to be civil or nice. No time to even smile.

It’s true that I am so speedy that I can get from Boston to Anchorage or Azerbaijan in a single day. I can get a pile of books delivered to me overnight. I can find articles or recipes with one question typed into Google. We are all faster than a speeding bullet now. We all have super powers. It’s not surprising that we all hold ourselves to superhero standards.

But healing, mending, repair, and really, any real growth—are not a speed events. There should be a Slow Healing Movement. There should be a Slow Growth Movement. There should be a Slow Parenting Movement.

I have a friend who is in the midst of some big home repairs and it is such an instructive sight. She has a contractor who is working his way around the entire house removing and replacing rotten sills and soffits; finding boards that need replacing-putting in new window framing. When you look at the house you can see new wood and places where the house has been patched. This is slow and careful work because the old wood needs to be removed, the area prepped and the new wood needs to be fitted. The work is still a long way from the final priming and painting.

Any real repair takes time, and yet the whole world is oriented to fast healing. Part of the problem is that we have come to believe in the speed of the cure—thanks to antibiotics. One pill, a few days, and we can feel entirely better. I am grateful to modern medicine for this capacity, but this time frame does not work on most of our struggles, or really, any of our development. I am not anti-medication, but I am pro-healing.

Repair takes time. Mending takes time. Growth takes time. And, like the Slow Food Movement, it is as much about the ecosystem we create to heal or repair in.

I have found that during times of repair or growth that I crave slowness like a nutrient. And I have found that when I can be brave enough, in a culture of speed, to give in to this craving, the mending really does happen. The emotional bones knit back together, grief recedes, my capacity expands. I get more sturdy, I grow into new places in myself.

Slowness becomes the wonderful and supportive cast that wraps itself around my broken places and allows some things inside of me to knit back together. And most of the time the shifts that I need to make are not massive. I am not talking about taking whole days off (although I have done that when needed), I am just making some different choices about time and pace.

I have found that during times of repair, I crave walking, rather than running. I want to feel my feet on the earth, I want to see the trees, I want to hear the birds. I crave reading, rather than watching TV or movies. I want to take in the world one sentence at a time. During times of repair, I need to go to bed earlier and do fewer activities. I don’t always have choice about what needs to get done for work, as my work is project based and it happens when it happens. But when I do have choice, and am able to slow the work down, I do.

As a therapist, one of the most constant refrains I heard from people was that they didn’t have enough time to take care of themselves. And often we both felt stuck in a bind: they needed to take time, or shift time to heal, and yet they felt trapped by their responsibilities and obligations. Healing felt like yet another burden.

This is why we need a Slow Healing Movement. Because it is really, really hard to fight the culture of speed. It is hard to bravely say, “I need to slow down to heal,” especially when you feel at your most vulnerable. It’s hard to feel like only one who needs to move slowly in a world full of fast people. But the truth is we all need it. We need it, our family and friends need it, our kids need it. We all need times of slowness so we can mend, repair, grow. And if we had a movement behind us, we wouldn’t feel so alone. We could have cool t-shirts or bumper stickers. We could have slogans or shorthand where we could proudly state, “Having a Slow Day! How about you?”

There is no ‘right’ way to slow down. The Slow Food Movement has really good food and good wine, which wouldn’t be a bad start. But beyond that—everyone needs to shift their pace, their speed, their space in really different ways. Some people will go running to slow down, and others will nap. Some people will take a break for lunch and others will work through lunch so they can leave early. Some people will want music and others will want silence. You just need to listen to that inner voice. What will help you mend? What feels so supportive that you feel like things can knit back together, that you can imagine growth again? What will allow you to take the time you need? How can we support each other to do the same?

Needing slowness isn’t an aberration or a pathology—it’s a normal part of any healing or growth cycle. It’s just as a culture we have gotten away from natural cycles. And like the Slow Food Movement did with trying to bring back the basic human need for community, conversation and food—The Slow Healing Movement can do this for our ability to bring time, relationship and care to the things that need mending. So, let's support each other, and let's support ourselves. For all the mending and growing you need to do—go ahead, Have a Slow Day!

© 2024/2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

It's never too late to start healing

I have heard so many people say things like, “It’s too late for me to heal what happened” and “There’s no one who could help me” or “I’m too old to get help for this.” These statements are some of what has motivated to write about trauma and to create a better understanding about healing from trauma.

I believe it is harder to heal from trauma the older you are—but not because you are old. As I have described in an earlier blog, repeated trauma or long term trauma is not one trauma. It is really 3 forms of trauma. The first form of trauma is the trauma that you experienced—the ‘what did happen.’ The second form of trauma are the protections –the defenses—the way of being that you created to survive the trauma. These protections become a part of your personality, your way of being, your habits and routines. And the third form of trauma, the unseen impact of trauma, is what didn’t happen- it is all the things you didn’t or couldn’t do or learn because you were living in trauma. It is the experience of peace and calm, it is where your attention could have gone if it weren’t focused on survival.

It is harder to heal from trauma when you are older not because you are old, and an old dog can’t learn new tricks, or there aren’t good people to work with you and your trauma, it is harder because you have lived for so much longer with the protections and defenses. You have lived so much longer behind your wall—and it feels impossible to imagine any other way of being. It feels impossible to imagine being outside of the prison with the wind on your face—in a world where you don’t know the rules. Healing from trauma means letting go of these protections—living without them—for moments at first, and then gradually for hours, days, months. And it means risking new behavior, risking experiencing the ‘what didn’t happen.’

And I describe it as a risk on purpose. Living with your old protections, living as if the trauma could happen at any time again—that feels safe.  There was Japanese Lieutenant Hiroo Onada who held out fighting on a Philippine Island from 1944 until he was finally found and relieved of his duties in 1974. 1974. The war had been over for decades. But continuing to fight the war sometimes feels more sane. It makes the war more worthwhile. It provides hope for a different outcome. It can be so hard to let go of the war knowing that when you do, it is really over. It happened and you can’t change the outcome. Surrender really is surrendering the hope for an outcome that can’t happen.

Leaving the world of trauma, of your protections, where you are always ready to go back, is a big move. And anyone’s hesitation about healing, about wondering whether it’s worth it, or whether they can handle it, is a valid worry. It isn’t easy. It involves a lot of hard work, and it involves a lot of grief. Only in the quiet after the war can you begin to remember and feel what it felt like during the war. When you finally start living without your protections, when you finally start risking the new experiences—really, only then, can you fully feel what it felt like to live through the trauma at all. And many people catch glimpses of this grief and think it would be impossible, think that they wouldn’t survive it, they catch a glimpse and they say, “No way.”. But they forget the most important thing: they already have survived it. The grief is old. It is painful, but it will go.

There’s no magic in healing. You won’t become someone else. But you will get to experience yourself without the emotions of survival running your life. You will get to see your life not just in a past-perfect tense of what happened and what might have been, but also in the present, and the future- of what might be. No, it’s not easy to surrender your island of trauma, the safety that you know, to risk a different safety, a peaceful safety decades later. No it’s not easy, but you were strong enough to survive—which means you are more than strong enough to heal.

© Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD 2014/2024

An Invitation to Change the World

You are hereby invited, encouraged—NEEDED—to change the world. Not the whole world, just a piece of it. Just the piece that you can reach. That you can see. That you can pick up and carry.

And maybe this isn’t so much an invitation to make change so much as it is a plea for you to value and honor the changes that you make in the world every day. Every time you share your love. Every time you experience joy. Every time you bring that bit of joy to your work or your relationships.

It always seems that someone bigger, or more important should be making the change. It seems like in order to make change, you would need status, or money, or power. But big voices have said important things in powerful places time and time again, and the mountains didn’t move at all. Because that’s not how change works.

We always look for big moves. Big changes. Events. This is not how change works.

What people call transformational change is really that moment of incremental change where there is a developmental shift. Where a perspective shifts. Where a capability emerges. You don’t get transformation without increments ---without the patience of putting one foot in front of the other. And you don’t get increments unless you are willing to believe that small acts matter.

I know that there are wrenching and painful and awful problems in the world right now. And I know that in the face of it all, it can feel like any act is too small. Or useless. Or pointless. I know that my small act today won’t change the course of a war, or homelessness, or poverty tomorrow.

But humanity and its changes aren’t linear. We humans move more like a murmuration than a machine. Someone shifts their course—inspires action in another and something shifts, slightly, but importantly.

This is an invitation to bring to the world ‘that thing you do.’ Whatever it is. With as much love and tender care as you can. With as much passion and fierceness as needed. With the quiet constancy that isn’t heard but is felt. It seems too small. But you have no idea how big it really is.

I know that when people bring their gifts to the world something changes. Somethings heals. Something grows. I know because I have seen it. I have felt it so deeply.

Just this week someone listened to me and helped me hold something old and hurt. Just this week someone took a risk and imagined a day where all of their employees got to have their experience validated—and with that validation and support, got to change the conversation. Just this week someone was brave enough to call a family member and share something that they had learned. Just this week someone shared their love and someone shared their stories of love. Just this wekk someone helped their child persist in their struggle. Every one of these moments moved someone else to listen, or to have compassion, or to try something new.

It's true that there are mountains big enough to create their own weather. But it is also true that butterflies fly thousands of miles to migrate. One flap of their wings at a time.

Emotions are contagious. Bravery is contagious. Inspiration is contagious. In the face of someone’s courage we are helpless not to be moved to be courageous ourselves. And when we are the recipients of someone bringing their love and passion to their day—we are changed—you know this to be true, you have felt yourself changed the way I have.   

It’s true that nothing that you or I will do on any given day will likely make the news or create an impact we can see. And even those who do make the news feel powerless and helpless much of the time to change the things that they want to change.

Our problem isn’t that we don’t have the power to make change. Our problem is that we don’t have faith in what actually creates change. We need to have a different faith about change. A faith that believes in the small act. A faith in human care and interest. A faith in human mistakes and moments of repair. We need a faith that believes that love transforms not because of what ‘it’ is, but because of its power to help you get every morning and be who you are, and bring the love you have to the world around you. We want the power of a waterfall, but forget that the power comes from infinite small drops.

© 2024 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

Oasis

It wasn’t any angel who hovered,

wings high, upright body,

head bowed, not in prayer,

so much as attention.

But really, any blessing

in a desert feels holy.

A small spark of energy

on a still hot morning

where all I can find are

fragments and pieces,

no threads to weave

them together.

Sometimes just enough has

healed to make the climb.

Sometimes the path through

the burning sand gives way

to water and a grove of palms.

Sometimes when it seems

you can’t take one more step

you realize that it’s breathing

and friendship that will always

save you—

and you remember to have faith

that the deep sacred well

that feeds the beating wings

of angels, (okay, hummingbirds)

and creeping lizards

and circling hawks

is also waiting for you,

just out of sight.

© 2024 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD