“You must be healed before you can heal others.”
I hear it all the time, and I am here for the sole purpose of calling bullshit.
It's akin to insisting that one must first love themselves in order to be loved,
which plants the seed that those who are broken and traumatized do not deserve love.
I promise you that we are all works in progress, for all time.
Each soul who exists upon this earth, flesh and bones with love and pain,
we have our ups and downs, personal eras of greater peace and healing
juggled with fallow periods, the dark times of doubt, loneliness and fear.
Humans are complex beings, simultaneously frail and amazingly resilient.
We all have the capacity to help others to heal, while never being fully healed
or knowing all of the answers – to think otherwise, to believe you are perfectly healed
and anyone else is incapable of healing others – is pure ego.
The beauty of the human experience lies in diversity.
There are rarely hard, fast rules. We are all here with different lessons to learn, and to teach.
Quite often, we are unaware of the roles we play – in our own lives and others –
until old lovers, friends or acquaintances are long gone from our lives.
Few things are absolute in this wild, unpredictable world.
One thing I do know is that we are worthy of love and compassion.
Being broken does not make you unworthy of healing or joy.
Past mistakes do not need to be allowed to define your future.
You are made of stardust and magic, wrapped in a human shell.
The power you possess is immeasurable, when wielded with love.
We are beautiful, unique creatures, none of us better than others,
all of us doing our best to make it through each day in one piece.
I implore you to choose love and grace, to always be your kindest self,
to bite your tongue the next time you're tempted to judge others harshly.
If you can't help, don't hurt – just move on and find someone or something
you're able to love unconditionally, because that's what our world needs more of.
© Bri Crofton 2018