If your culture celebrates the beginning of January as "New Years," my greatest prayer for you is that you are able to lean into the inherent {goodness} of your being, just as you are, with no need to discard or "start over" any part of you. This doesn't mean staying stagnant and suffering. It means all of you, every part, deserves more love, not less. Our truest growth comes from that well-spring of the heart. This means holding our traumatized parts and discovering the seeds of love in them and their ability to grow and blossom into our most profound beauty. This means feeling those parts all the way through to their most terrifying core, and speaking love to them. Mothering them, fathering them. In a new way, a higher way. In the way our inner children are crying out for, that far surpass the abilities of our own caretakers when we were children, when we received our caretaker's view of the self and the world and were imprinted with it as "truth." We must offer our traumatized parts a place to exist and new courses to take, when they are ready. And with enough time, patience, practice, {safety}, support and presence, they will be.
Don't start over on this day. Breathe into the miracle that is your body in this moment, into the warm aliveness that courses through your veins, your lungs, the tears in your eyes. Step outside. Feel the winterglow of the sky space all around you, holding you, touching you, meeting you, meeting your life.
I am sorry you were not taught how precious you are. May the circle of seasons in this time of your life be full of many moments of remembering this, of feeling this, of knowing this, of living from this. Of seeing it in your own heart and in the eyes of others.
Detoxing can be many different ways for many different people. The most important thing about it is that it needs to work for you. It needs to feel right & good & doable. It needs to be a gentle opening into a new way of life for you. It can not be a one-size-fits-all forceful plan that does not take into account your own completely unique being, from your physicality to your lineage to your emotional trauma. All of these (& more) are necessary pieces so that detoxing supports your highest health & purpose, with who you are & where you are at in your life.
Detox can look like eating a lot of fruit & salads. It can look like transitioning from a Standard American Diet to eating Organic. It can look like replacing factory-farmed meat with grass-fed. It can look like going gluten & dairy-free. It can be nothing but consuming fruit. It can be letting go of sugar, or just transitioning to natural sugars. It can be making herbal teas or taking epsom salt baths or finding a way to ensure 8 hours of sleep at night. It can be crying (tears are an elimination channel for toxins, believe it or not), or laughing or drinking more water. It can be water fasting, or intermittent fasting, or finding natural ways to encourage more bowel movements.
Detox can also be about finding ways to relax the body, mind & feelings. This is actually the most important thing, long-term. Most of us do not know how to fully relax into ourselves, our hearts, our bodies, our minds, our lives, or with each other. We are on-edge most, if not all of the time. We must find out why & work on creating as much peace & safety for ourselves as possible, as often as possible.
Detox is a beautiful healing art & it’s necessary for it to be your own. It’s wonderful to feel moved & inspired by others & what they’re doing to change their health for the better, but that doesn’t mean those ways are right or ultimately supportive for you. We want to repair ourselves in ways that we are ready for, that will truly & fully benefit us for a long time to come. Foot step by foot step, back to the love, goodness, & innocence of our holiness.
I want a quality of life for us all that is full of Goodness & Wholeness. This is what moves me forward in this detoxification work. It is not popular work. It is not work that calls to just anyone. And yet, it inspires & moves me. It is deeply needed & will become increasingly so as our world decomposes in order for healthier ways to grow.
But goodness & wholeness? What do they even mean and how do they relate to us & life? In their basic, modern use they no longer have meanings that stop our feet in their tracks, but they should. These words have everything for us in them.
What is the life found within these words?
Goodness. To feel that you are good. This is huge. {{ Beyond huge }}. Why? Because barely anyone feels this way about themselves, others, or the world, & I mean genuinely. So we hide & deny & suppress & don’t heal, because we are riddled with shame & the belief that we (and others & the world) are essentially evil. Bad. Wrong. Separate from any higher power. This is such an ingrained belief within humanity in this day & age. It fuels so much of our dysfunction, violence, & fear. But to {{ know & feel }} that you are intrinsically good. That so are others in their most basic nature. Not in a way that excuses the horror of human action, but just to feel the thread of truth beneath all things, which is {{ Goodness }}. It is a very powerful & liberating knowing.
And much like goodness, we have wholeness. A cohesive goodness. No part broken or without value. Again, this should never be used in a bypassing kind of way that ignores, dismisses, or minimizes harmful human action. But wholeness knows that every part of us is innately divinely intelligent with one-of-a-kind codes & keys for our healing & freedom; for our journey of Coming Home to all that we are, in our wholeness, in our goodness. This is why being transparent about absolutely everything, with radical compassion to gently carry us through the stark, bare (often heart-breaking) honesty, is the clearest path to who and what we really are. And to our power as a Loving Force.
How does this relate to detox work? Detox work is all about freeing the physical body & finer bodies. All the harm & violence that humanity has ever created through the making & unleashing of chemicals, genetically-modified foods, fast food (not even truly food), as well as the war we have unleashed upon ourselves, others, the earth, & all creatures :: by choosing to detox it all we are saying {{ Enough }}. We are directing & liberating all of that out of our cells & emotional bodies. We are vowing not to carry it forward, as it has always been, into our future & DNA (& into our children). We are truly transforming all unresolved matter & bringing it to the warmth & light (literally, as a physical process). This is healing. It is both the oldest, most ancient set of healing skills as well as the future of keeping our bodies alive as the decomposing process of our current world structure continues to build in its momentum, calling in whispers to the blueprints of a new earth.
