Healing the Tender Places of My Multidimensional Self…A New Year’s Resolution for 2022

Deep healing in mind, body, and spirit for optimal living.

When I was 8 years old, I ran as fast as possible from a cousin chasing me in my grandmother’s yard. I relished the fact that he couldn’t catch me. I was faster. Then suddenly, I tripped and fell, and everything went black.

Blood Everywhere

When I opened my eyes, about 3 people had me lifted in the air running into my grandmother’s house. They put me over the tub and ran cold water over my head. My uncle Johnny said, “We’ve got to get her to the hospital. She’s going to need stitches. She won’t…” he didn’t have to say the words.

Because when I looked over my shoulders, there was blood everywhere.

Stitches

“This is the last stitch,” the Doctor said.

“It better be,” I growled back.

“Chelle!” My uncle Nelvin chastised me for my outburst. “That’s not nice.”

The Doctor chuckled. “I’m sure she’s had better days.”

I felt the cold adhesive from the bandaid cover my stitches. Why was the bandaid so cold? I thought. “Do they keep the bandaids in the fridge?”

My stepdad covered stood with his back to the mirror in the hospital room. “Let’s go Knucklehead,” he said trying to make me laugh.

It didn’t work.

When I made it to my grandmother’s house, the women had cleaned all the blood off the floors of the porch, the floors of the house, the bathtub. The entire house smelled like a mix of pine sol and Lysol.

Waiting until everyone was preoccupied with retelling my story and their reaction to my pain, I went into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, I saw my stepdad’s sad attempt at a ponytail. It looked pitiful sitting next to my mother’s perfectly slicked ponytail twisted with a yellow bow at the end.

The bow was gone from my stepdad’s ponytail and it was strangely thinner. I untwisted the ponytail, turn my head to the side, and saw a bald spot covered with bandages. I wanted to scream. Instead, I cried. I didn’t want to worry my mother and grandmother.

Covering the Scar

“See, you can’t even tell,” my mom said as she covered my stitches with my hair in a side ponytail. “Next week the doctor will take the rest of your stitches out and your hair will grow back before school starts.” She turned me to face her and kissed me on the cheek. It was as if she was kissing the “boo-boo” to make me feel better.

She was right. School resumed in the fall and no one knew. No one could tell.

Tender Reminders

No one could tell I’d fallen. No one could tell I’d fallen, hit my head on a sharp rock in the yard, had stitches, and had a quarter of my hair shaved off. Years went by and it was just a story, a “remember that time when…”

Yet each time my mother would brush my hair, I’d feel it. I felt it every time I comb my hair as a teenager. I felt it when I’d wash my hair as an adult. I’d warn my hairdressers, and every woman who attempted to braid my hair too tight, “Don’t braid too tight. I have a tender spot from a childhood accident. Right here.”

Then one day after wearing my hair natural for 4 years, I didn’t feel it anymore. The tender spot was gone.

Using natural products to clean and nourish my hair and no longer chemically straightening my coils and curls had completely healed that wound. Now 10 years into my natural hair journey, sometimes I forget what side the scar is on.

Resolved in My Healing

Why did I share this story? What does this have to do with my New Year’s Resolution and my #ayearofhealing journey?

Well, you see, I have other tender spots, tender places you can’t see. You can’t tell they are there. These places need healing. These places need to be acknowledged, nurtured, and nourished to heal.

Hence when we commit to a New Year’s Resolution, we must be resolved in my commitment. I am resolved in healing those tender places. I have lived with them far too long. At times, I have reinjured them to straighten out the crooked places in my life.

I brush up against them and let out an “sss” sound. For those, I let in. I tell them without saying a word: “I’m tender here.”

The Daily Commitment

My New Year’s Resolution doesn’t begin on New Year’s Day, nor does it end on January 1, 2023. My New Year’s Resolution is a year of healing as a preset and foundation for a lifetime of optimal living.

In other words, I’m putting life back into my living in more ways than one.

• As a living spirit, I feast on joy.
• In my living body, I feast on a whole food plant-based diet, breathwork, and yoga.
• With my living mind, I choose self-growth, wisdom, peace, and harmony.
• I do it all to invigorate the gifts of creativity, the breath of life, and the power to manifest the life I want to live.

Physical Healing

My journey in 2022 is to heal and reinvigorate at the soul level. I choose living and electric foods because of what they can do for me on a cellular level. I am aligning with the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables because:

“Several recent meta-analyses have provided evidence supporting a positive relationship between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus, cancer risk, and mortality in general.” — US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

Also…

“The main proven effects are decreasing oxidative injury, and exerting anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects..” — US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

I choose breathwork and yoga for the same reasons. In all healing physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual prevention is always better.

Healing inflammation in the body is healing physical tender places. All the “itis” are inflammation, including bursitis, arthritis, and sinusitis.

Soul and Mind Healing

As a spiritual being with a living soul and mind, I nourish my soul with truth. The mental plane and the soul plane hold a lot of data we’ve uploaded from life. And it subconsciously guides our decisions and the moves we make in life. We ask “why did I do that?” We say “I know better than…” Yet and still, we are subconsciously driven to repeat the same patterns that lead us back to the same place in life.

We have to acknowledge the trauma and speak kindness, worthiness, and love to those tender places, then deliberately choose a different pathway until our minds get used to it.

I know my mind will resist, but my commitment is to continue to navigate my life in well-being and choose the path of love and fulfillment.

I am a Multidimensional Being…that reality can no longer be Ignored.

We ignore many parts of ourselves. We ignore these parts because they don’t seem to affect us immediately, but the various dimensions upon which our beingness exists need our attention.

We are spiritual beings and ignoring our spiritual needs is a form of malnourishment and starvation of the soul. We cannot heal those tender places by ignoring the deeper parts of ourselves.

Our body extends beyond what we can see with our physical eyes. Just as I healed the tender spot left by stitches with oils, butter, and balms. I will heal the tender places within the whole self.

No part of me will be left unloved.

Heal Naturally

Yes, friends, I have spiritual balms, oils, and butter to rub across these tender places and in 2022, I’ll be on this platform sharing them with you.

Mixing spiritual herbs and soul tinctures designed for self-love and soul evolution a commitment and life resolution.

As I transcend the pain story layered underneath Hidden beyond flesh and bone It’s time to heal, love, and live on.

So, fam, you know I’m curious. Are you resolved? What’s your New Year’s Resolution?

While this post is not an Entry for the Coffee Times New Years' Resolution Challenge…

Here are just a few writers you want to get to know:

Jesse Wilson, Dr. Preeti Singh, Yana Bostongirl, Christina DeFeo, Laurianne Muzangisa, Justiss Goode, Jim Farina, Javeria Pervaiz, Brenda Henning, Anastasia S. Manyonga

Family, Let’s Make 2022 the Best Year Ever!