How to Empower Your Healing Story (A Manifesto)

We All Have a Healing Story

We all have a healing story, don’t we?

Fatigue and chronic illness are stories.

Recovery and failure and pain are stories.

They may be stories someone else wrote and handed to us. Or perhaps they’re stories we created ourselves to wrap our minds around fatigue and suffering and disappointment.

This is how it is. This is how it will be. This is my truth. This will never change.

You Have a Healing Story

Yes, you have a healing story. But the important question I’d like to ask you is this: is your healing story ennobling? Does is elevate you? Does it leave room for hope?

Or, has your story slammed the door on all possibilities for a positive outcome? For healing? For a better future?

Empower Your Healing Story

This is where we’re heading: to empower your healing story.

Not to change the facts or make things up. But to stop thinking we have all the facts when we don’t. To stop the audacity of despair when we have no idea what the future holds. To claim our power to change, to shift our perspectives, to grow, and to heal.

Yes, my friends, I’m talking about creating stories of hope and promise to help us rise and discover our true potential. Knowing we are the architects of our stories however unknowingly we’ve adopted them or lovingly we’ve crafted them.

Our Stories Are Not Fixed

See, our stories aren’t fixed.

Our minds get fixed on simple ideas we’re told and don’t know how to change. But we get to write our own stories the way we want. We get to call our power back.

See, our stories can change. We’re wired for change. As we apply the science of human potential—epigenetics, neuroplasticity, core biology, and body-mind psychology—we’ll recognize our old worn out stories, reimagine them, and create new empowered healing stories.

How Do We Empower Our Stories?

How? How do we empower our stories?

By calling out our dead-end perspectives. By looking for new possibilities. By choosing hope. By seeking inspiration and ideas and alternative viewpoints.

Let’s breathe life into those worn out old stories that hold you back from the healing that is your true potential.

Call Back Your Power

Let’s call your power back from the “experts” who you’ve asked to heal you but who don’t know you as you know yourself. And from the culture that defines what you deserve or should expect, undermining the truth of what you know is best for you.

Honor Yourself

Let’s honor how you know you deserve more. Can expect more. Are worthy of more.

Say “Yes” to Your Healing

Let’s say “yes” to your healing journey. Of claiming the truth of who you are and what you know, the truth of your worthiness to heal, and the truth of your strength to do this for yourself. Let’s say “yes.”

Recall How Healing is the Primary Urge of Nature

Let’s recall how healing is a primary urge of nature and as integral parts of the natural world we are no exception. Just as we see lands ravaged by fire, earthquakes, or tornados recover and thrive once again, often in unexpected and spectacular ways, so can we. We must remember that. We can heal from suffering and devastation. We get to play a powerful role in this healing and direct it to our advantage.

Greet Your Fellow Travelers on This Healing Journey

And you know what’s truly mind-blowing? We get to align ourselves with fellow travelers on this healing journey. Comrades who, just like us, question the unacceptable status quo, seek the truth, and are willing to stand apart from the rest to claim the truth of who they are and what they need to heal. That’s so us as well!

Shine Your Light—Heal the World

Let’s empower our healing story as we find our strength and beauty and light. Because as we heal our light will shine more brightly. We’ll get to radiate this light all around us, becoming beacons to others searching for a better way. In this way our healing also heals the world.

Start Now

Let’s start now. Let’s give ourselves permission to begin this healing journey. To claim our power, our resourcefulness, and our wisdom to know what’s best, to own our bodies.

I am so grateful you are here. Let’s empower your healing journey—your story of healing—together.

Karyn

Resources

Karyn Shanks MD. How to Empower Your Healing Story: What are Stories? 2019.

Karyn Shanks MD. How to Empower Your Healing Story: By Reimagining These Five Stories. 2019.