healing – Page 2

The Mist Between Worlds

As the laptop screen dims on another workday, Annie feels the familiar call of her evening ritual – that sacred pause between who she needs to be and who she truly is. The shower beckons, promising its daily transformation. She has learnt to trust these shower routines as her daily alchemy, transforming work-worn moments into peace.

Disconnecting from outside chaos, she steps into her bathroom leaving her phone behind. Her bare feet touching the bathroom floor, she is aware of each step. She looks at herself in the mirror, loosens her neck, and takes a deep breath. She brings herself to the moment before turning the shower on.

Steam begins to rise, creating a dreamy veil in the bathroom. A lavender candle flickers in the corner, its gentle aroma mixing with the rising mist. She steps into the shower, letting hot water stream over her like a waterfall of mercy, each drop washing away the digital echoes of the day. The bathroom slowly fills with fog, creating her own peaceful sanctuary.

A variety of soaps wait for her to be picked up, each fragrance in her collection speaks to her differently – lavender whispers calm like a twilight, rose calls for a walk in a lovely garden, jasmine carries echoes of childhood summers when fresh blooms adorned her hair, and citrus sings morning freshness. She holds each bar as if reading a story through her palms, letting the day’s need guide her choice.

Today her hands reach for the rose soap, which melts between her warming palms like a flower opening to morning sun. Each bubble carries memories of garden walks, each fragrant swirl a gentle reminder of beauty in simplicity. She watches the lather trace patterns on her skin, letting the water’s rhythm wash away the digital static of her day.

After the cascading waters release their healing, she envelops her body in a cotton cloud towel, this simple act as a continuation of her evening grace. She walks slowly towards the mirror and meets her reflection with a smile. She opens the drawer and gets a few oils out and carefully places them. She mixes the Vitamin E infused coconut oil with a few drops of lavender oil and rubs them against her palms until warm and gently applies them on her skin passionately feeling every bump. She listens to her skin, her body and what her body tells her. She massages her stomach, legs, hands with oil. Next, she gets her favorite Shea oil and rubs along with a few drops of lavender oil in her palms until warm, and applies on her neck and face in a slow mindful upward circular motion.

Each mindful touch – from trimming nails to brushing teeth – becomes another note in the symphony of self-care. She then gently massages castor oil into her eyebrows and eyelashes.

She pauses and takes a moment to smell the oil from her palms, gazing at herself with gratitude for her body, acknowledging the beauty she is, as she is a child of the Creator Himself.

She wears her sleepwear that her body can breathe in, combs her hair parting sideways, applies her favorite rose scented cologne behind her ears.

Facing the mirror one last time, she sees beyond the reflection to the journey of her evening ritual. The day’s tensions have dissolved like soap bubbles, transformed into something lighter, clearer.

As she winds up in bed to self-reflect with her chamomile tea, she feels restored to herself – not just clean, but renewed. Her gratitude flows as naturally as the evening’s ritual, each word a testament to this daily practice of coming home to herself.

In Nature’s Gentle Presence – A Story of Healing

Depression crept in during what felt like the darkest phase of my life. Years of carrying unexpressed feelings had taken their toll – childhood hurts, trauma, and patterns I hadn’t even recognized. I had developed ways of coping that I didn’t even realize were coping mechanisms: trying to keep everyone happy to prevent any discord, bending backwards to maintain harmony. Yet paradoxically, I would sometimes experience sudden bursts of anger toward loved ones – reactions to hurt that would erupt because I had no other way to express my pain.

Growing up in a joint family, where multiple generations lived under one roof, I learned early to navigate around tensions. When voices were raised or feelings expressed too freely, punishment followed. These lessons stayed with me, shaping how I moved through relationships, always trying to keep peace at the cost of my own truth.

After my father’s passing, old hurts surfaced in ways I had never experienced. Grief opened doors I had kept tightly shut, and through them came waves of resentment and pain. Life seemed to conspire to bring more difficult experiences – harsh words from others that cut unusually deep. I felt myself breaking.

Ironically, in my darkest moments, I stopped doing the very things that had helped me before. Meditation, which had been my anchor, felt hollow. Talking to understanding friends seemed impossible. I retreated into silence, feeling utterly alone and unrecognizable to myself. The ways I had learned to cope, to find joy, to make sense of life – nothing seemed to work anymore. I felt lost in a deep shame, afraid to be alone with this version of myself I no longer knew. All my efforts to choose happiness felt like they had been just surface-level pretense.

But something in me kept moving. I started to run – not for fitness, but from an instinct to survive. I ran from my fear, my anxiety, my pain, pushing myself as far and as fast as I could. Tears would stream down my face as I ran, and I stopped caring who might see.

During this time, I also began talking therapy. These sessions helped me untangle mental knots I hadn’t even known were there, helping me understand patterns that had been invisible to me before. While therapy helped clear these mental blocks, nature offered something different.

Along my running route, I noticed a tree. It stood tall and kind, and something about its presence spoke to my heart. I began to stop at the bench overlooking this tree during my runs. I would sit there, relaxing my body as I had learned in meditation practice, talking to the tree as a friend. I found myself sharing freely about how I had been feeling, and asked for its help to find positivity and happiness again. Each day before leaving, I would hug and kiss the tree goodbye. These moments made me feel understood, assured, and strong – as if the tree knew exactly what I needed without words.

Gradually, I began to notice it wasn’t just this one tree – it was all of them. The plants, the breeze, the birds – they formed a supportive presence I can hardly put into words. Something deep within me recognized that I was part of this greater whole, all of us held in our Creator’s loving embrace. I wasn’t alone; I had never been alone.

I found myself spending more time outdoors, hiking alone, simply being with nature. My meditation practice returned, deeper now, grounded in this new understanding. Later, at a retreat, my spiritual teacher led us in meditation among the trees, and I understood why nature had felt so healing – when we open our hearts fully to the present moment, we can feel our Creator’s love flowing through everything around us, connecting us all.

Depression, though once so overwhelming, gradually lifted. The combination of therapy helping me understand my mind’s patterns, and nature helping me open my heart, created a path toward healing. Now, finding peace is as simple as sitting on my balcony among my plants, watching the sky, listening to birds. In these quiet moments, with my heart open and present, happiness flows naturally – not for any particular reason, but simply because I can feel our Creator’s love in everything around me.

This lesson remains: we humans aren’t separate entities striving alone, but integral parts of a greater whole, all held in our Creator’s loving embrace. In nature’s presence, I found not just healing, but a way back to that endless love that had been there all along.

Learning to Let Go

I’ve been thinking about an old story from the Mahabharata lately, one that keeps coming back to me. It’s about Karna and Duryodhana, two friends bound by loyalty. Karna, given away as a baby, grew up facing endless whispers about his birth. In Duryodhana, he found more than just protection – he found validation, someone who made him feel seen and worthy when others looked away. This validation created such deep gratitude in Karna that he stayed, even as Duryodhana walked a darker path.

Sitting with this story, I began to see something in myself. We all have our own version of Duryodhana, but it’s not another person – it’s a voice inside us. I’ve come to know this voice well. It validates every hurt, justifies every reaction, makes every emotion feel right and true. Just like Duryodhana did for Karna, this voice makes us feel understood, making it harder to see how it slowly leads us into darkness.

At first, it feels like comfort. Like having a friend who always takes your side, who has an explanation for every emotion, a reason for every reaction. But lately, I’ve noticed something about this inner voice – it never lets me move forward. Instead, it keeps me centered in my own story, making everything about me, my hurts, my reactions. When I listen to it, I sink deeper into darkness, into fear and anger that feel impossible to escape.

The strange thing is, even when I realized this wasn’t helping me grow, I found myself so deeply entangled with this voice that I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began. It had become such a part of my identity that the thought of letting it go felt like losing a piece of myself. I was stuck, not because the voice was helping me, but because I had forgotten how to exist without its constant validation.

But here’s what I’m learning – letting go doesn’t have to be a battle. Just like a plant withers without water, this part of ourselves grows quiet when we stop feeding it our energy. We don’t need to fight it. We just need to gently turn away, to say, “I understand you were trying to protect me, but I don’t need this protection anymore.”

Sometimes I still hear that voice. But now I know I have a choice. I can either get tangled in its story of hurt, or I can simply return to this moment, where life is actually happening. It’s like stepping out of a dark room into sunlight – suddenly everything is clearer, more alive.

In these moments of clarity, I feel closer to something bigger than myself. Not lost in yesterday’s pain or tomorrow’s fears, but here – where peace lives, where love flows, where I can finally be who I’m meant to be.

I’m discovering that true freedom isn’t just about breaking free from that voice – it’s about releasing ourselves from all these stories we’ve wrapped so tightly around ourselves. When we stop making everything about us, stop needing that constant validation, something shifts. We find ourselves able to move more freely, to see beyond our own small world of hurts and reactions.

And when that old familiar voice comes back? I remind myself: I don’t need to push it away. I don’t need to feel stuck in its grip. I just need to let it be, while choosing to stay here, in this moment, where life is actually happening.