By Deborah Blackwell

“It’s time for you to heal.” Sir Husband looked at me with a sweet smile as we were en route to the doctor. He was referring to the refrigerator incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. I accidentally slammed my head into the bottom of my freezer door handle, which in theory sounds harmless. The velocity was so great that, in a stupor, I actually reached up to see if the handle was in my head. It wasn’t. But I had a mighty concussion.

“You try to heal, but you keep compounding it,” he said. “First salmonella. Then POTS. Then a concussion. Sheesh Deb, we need to fix this.” Sir Husband is a “fixer.”

But his words, “It’s time for you to heal,” were truer than he realized. Because a few days after I banged my head, I had an epiphany. Fixing is one thing, but healing is another. In my moments of concussion disconnect — from routine, activities, technology, and daily life as I knew it — it dawned on me: I have to be the meme.

Memes can often seem like fairy-godmother wisdom thoughts giving us advice to feel better…be enlightened…feel peace…heal. They’re easy to read, easy to understand, and they seem so simple. But just because social media inundates us with them, doesn’t mean they heal.

I’ve been working on healing for a very long time. Long before memes even existed. Healing is a big word in our culture that essentially means transformation. Physical, psychological, behavioral, social, spiritual SELF-transformation. Healing is huge. And after the head bump, I started to wonder, will I ever be or feel healed? How many memes will it take? Because practically speaking, it’s not always easy to put meme inspiration into action. 

Ponder these ~ 

“You can start over at any time. Your day is not ruined. Your world is not over. You do not have to be the same person you were five minutes ago. Take a deep breath and start over.” 

That’s great! But define “start over.” Need an action-plan for that.

“You can forgive some people without welcoming them back into your life. Apology accepted; access denied.” 

Not always possible. Sometimes they’re there by default. Then what? 

“Whatever life brings, accept it as if you had chosen it." 

In the midst of feeling discomfort, this takes serious guts and often time to accept whatever life brings, let alone choose it. Need to dig deep for this one. 

“If it’s out of your hands it deserves freedom from your mind too.”

Sure. But have you ever really tried to remove your thoughts? Thoughts change, but they also persist. It takes practice to quiet the mind. 

“I used to think I could fix anything in my life if I just tried a little harder or gave it more time. But some things aren’t meant to be fixed. Sometimes all you can do is make peace with it, and move forward, knowing you did the best you could.” 

Yes indeed. It’s the actual moving forward part that takes action and effort.

Healing isn’t just fixing, or even recovering, or curing. It’s being. It’s a concept trying to direct us along our path toward inner peace. The kind of peace that comes from deep within, underscoring our beliefs, our values, and well, our existence. Slow. Steady. Rock-solid. Unshakeable peace. No matter what. We can’t take a pill, or use antiseptic cream, or slap on a Band-Aid®; we actually have to do the work in the moment, whatever that means for us. Slow. Steady. Rock-solid perseverance. We have to be the meme.

I’m still trying to heal from the concussion and guess what. Life goes on, creating challenges, raising issues, providing complications, and offering opportunities to practice what I read. 

It’s time.