Do You Really Want To Be Well?

"cause wholeness is no trifling matter."

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?…Just so you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”

— Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

I previously wrote about being tired of healing, a piece where I sincerely laid my heart out on the page. I didn’t expect for it to get the response it did, but I realize now that perhaps it resonated with many because a lot of us seem to be in a similar state right now: we’re exhausted.

Healing, and exhausted.
Grieving, and exhausted.
Being, and exhausted.

Merely hanging on by a thread, and exhausted. Smiling, outwardly, yet deep down wrestling with an exhaustion that sombers our bones.

The consensus is — we as a people, as embodied beings of the world around us — are exhausted. Witnessing mass casualties. Carrying grief. Grappling with the wars of our own minds. Experiencing more burnout and loneliness and depression than ever before.

The fact of the matter is that life is happening, and it is happening to all of us. Quickly, drastically, unrelentlessly. Yielding to no plea, no outcry, no yearning for rest.

We move with the urgency of the world, rarely extending space and time to do the true tending that needs to be done— the tending to that requires us to meet ourselves with grace, but also to take responsibility for ourselves, for our individual and collective healing. The tending to that requires us to handle the wound.

Society tells us that the agenda of our trauma is to devour us, break us, keep us from being whole. And at times, it very well can do that. You can feel when grief has changed the texture of a person. You can hear when pain has turned someone discordant. Trauma does possess the power to ravage, to fracture, to impair — and when it does, to face the wound does not feel like a point of safety.

But our trauma also possesses the power to make us more informed. More embodied. More symmetric, as in well-rounded. As I become more in tune with myself and the wounds that I carry, I’ve realized that trauma can also bear an agenda to lead us to the well of healing — a place of spiritual self discovery.

I was reading an article about how trauma plays a role in purpose, and in part it said: A person’s purpose is born of both shadow and light, both trauma and joy. As people, we love to make trauma wrong. As a result, we make anything that comes from trauma wrong. Trauma doesn’t only play a role in the dysfunctionality, weaknesses, and problems of people. It also plays a role in the functionality, strengths, and advantages of people. So, it can be said that trauma is often at the root of people’s failures. It is also often at the root of their success, too.

Sitting with this, I reflected on how I tend to greet my trauma. With clenched fist. A stone heart. A tune of woe is me that makes it hard to get up from under the bruise. But what happens when, rather than ignoring or denying our trauma, we invite it in as a guide? What happens when, rather than being trauma-led, we become trauma informed? What happens when, rather than remaining in the same patterns of brokenness, we decide that we are ready to be made well?

What happens is that we take up the weight.

As things tend to be ushered into my life in divine timing, my dad sent a sermon to our family group chat a few days after I wrote the piece about being tired of healing. You don’t have to be religious to get the meat from the bones here — I think the message rings true for all of us. In summary, the pastor spoke about how fused people become to their trauma, and how many don’t really want to be made well. Because, with being well comes “new responsibility, new accountability.” More is expected and required of you when you are well. More weight, when you’re well.

One particular point that stuck out to me in the sermon was this statement: “You love your trauma. You give identity to your trauma. You build a whole ministry around your trauma.”

And that’s what keeps you in the rhythm of your trauma.

For many of us, our trauma has become welded into our DNA. Our bloodlines reek of it. I know that deep down within, I carry the wounds of my mother, my father, my grandparents, great grandparents, and so on. To be the one who takes on the weight of stopping a generational bondage from being passed down can be a grueling calling to step into. To be the one who decides to be made well is heavy. Because we oftentimes get to a point of accepting our trauma as a part of who we are. “We drift into acceptance of changeable circumstances, believing that things will never change,” — even when they very well have the means to.

Many of us don’t want to be made well because we love our lack of responsibility and accountability too much. “You’re sitting in a prison cell yet the door is wide open. You just don’t want to walk out.” To be made well is to be awakened, and some of us aren’t ready to own our ignorance, own our shortcomings, own our mistakes.

Many of us don’t want the weight of being well.

A couple days after listening to the sermon,

ẹniafẹ isis

coincidentally shared this note:

Cause healing is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.

Perhaps healing hurts more than staying wounded. Opening our eyes takes more than remaining ignorant. Advocating for what’s right weighs more than not speaking on issues we think don’t affect us. Owning our mistakes and apologizing to those we have hurt is more than continuing to lack accountability and responsibility.

We often cling to the rituals that keep us in the cycle of our grief, of our trauma. As individuals, as a collective whole — we are wedded to the ways which keep us bound, anchored by the weight of our own suffering.

Wholeness is a surrender, a risk that not many are willing to commit to. Because healing is about getting to the root, handling the wound.

Being well isn’t a destination. It’s a consistent practice of healing, a relinquishing of the bruise that we hide our lives behind. Perhaps that’s where the weight lies, in accepting the responsibility that comes with being made whole, and for some people it feels easier not to.

But, my darling, a lot of weight when you’re well. A lot of weight when you’re unwell. Choose the weight you want to carry. Choose the heavy you want to be. And ask yourself: What does it take, to really be well? What is the weight, to really be well?

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