The Art of Returning to Yourself

I was sitting at a dinner table with 16 beautiful women in New York last week and we fell into a conversation about healing modalities.

One of the women at the table began to talk about how we really need to explore other healing modalities outside of talk therapy. I considered her thoughts and agreed. I, too, think we should step into alternative healing modalities. And I think we should lean into the ones that fit us.

When we think of healing, I’m sure many of us think about correcting hard trauma. In my opinion, we often need to heal from the energies around us — the disappointment, the quiet grief, shit, the Teams call we had that day.

All of these things stay in our bodies, and we can heal them with the things that bring us joy. And not just ordinary joy — transcendent joy, the kind that lifts you and makes you feel lighter at the end of it.

At that same table of 16 women, I turned to one of the women and asked her, “What do you have going on with music?” She looked perplexed and shook her head a little as if to say, “I don’t have anything with music.”

I looked at her a little longer because usually when a question like that comes up in my spirit, there’s a very specific reason.

I asked her again, “So you don’t do anything with music?” She almost said no again and then pivoted, “Well, I used to play the violin.”

For the next five minutes, she told me that she was a prodigy violin player for most of her life but quit at 15 when her friends and family tried to push her to compete.

“I didn’t want to do that.”
“It was just for you,” I finished her sentence.

“It was just for me,” she responded.

The thing she had fallen in love with, the thing that healed her — was being pressured to be something other than what she intended it for, and that made her put it down. She hasn’t gone back to it since.

“I tried when I was 17,” she said, “but the teacher wasn’t as good as me, so I quit again.”

“I think you should pick it back up,” I said.

She looked at me and explained that she’d just given one of her violins to her niece, and then shared that both of her kids are drummers.

I redirected it back to her — “I think you should get back to it. I think it heals you.”

She made a face as if she’d take it into consideration, and I didn’t push any further.

I think about her in this moment as I struggle to sit down at my desk and do the thing that heals me — write.

I found myself doing everything other than writing. Suddenly the hair dryer that had been sitting downstairs for a week needed to come upstairs. Maybe I should draw instead. Oh actually, I need to go to the bathroom.

Anything to avoid actually sitting down to write.

And to be honest, my only excuse is that I’m tired. The reality is, I felt like nothing would come out, and I would struggle, and it would be hard, and I didn’t want to experience that. I didn’t want it to be hard.

I even tried to hijack my husband’s productivity by asking him to write with me, but I knew I had to go find that healing for myself. I had to just sit down and write.

And so I did.

I often think about how so many creatives, artists, and neurodivergent people identify the things that heal us. As people who feel everything, see everything, and experience everything at a high frequency, it’s extremely important that we find ways to heal.

And by heal, I mean helping ourselves feel better. Whether it’s our own trauma or trauma from others, we all have a thing that heals us. Something we have access to. Things we don’t have to pay for.

Oftentimes, it’s the thing you used to do as a kid for fun. The thing that brought you joy. We grew up, but our soul still finds joy in some of those things we did as a kid.

Some of us, like my friend above, have trauma around that thing. Maybe someone told us we’d never be good at it. Or we were stripped of it. Maybe it felt inadequate or our parents told us to grow up. Whatever it is, that thing can still heal us.

We just have to lean into it.

If there is something that has been asking you to return to it — whether it’s a song, a rhythm, an old hobby, an adventure — consider that it may be your soul trying to heal you. Directing you toward the thing you need that will bring you back to yourself.