What I mean when I say healing

I received a couple of messages from other practitioners (Instagram/Facebook) after my recent post. While some disagreed with me (which is totally fine), I wanted to explain when I use the word 'healing' and what I mean when I say it.

I use the word healing carefully.

Not because I’m avoiding it, but because I think it gets misunderstood. Healing is often pictured as fixing something broken, or curing an illness, or undoing what’s already happened. That’s not the work I do, and it’s not what I’ve seen actually help anyone.

What I’ve seen, again and again, whether I’m sitting with a child, a family, or an individual, is something quieter than fixing.

It’s regulation. It’s a nervous system slowly learning it’s allowed to settle. It’s someone building a strategy that gets them through the next hard moment, then the one after that. It’s a relationship strong enough to hold weight it couldn’t hold before.

None of that erases the past. It doesn’t need to. Healing, as I understand it, isn’t about undoing what happened. It’s about building capacity to carry it, respond to it, and eventually move with more ease alongside it.

That’s the work whether I’m supporting someone through trauma, walking alongside a family trying to repair what violence has damaged, or sitting with a child learning to feel safe in their own body again. I’m not fixing anyone. I don’t believe people are broken. I’m there to walk alongside them while they find their own way through, with tools, safety, and someone steady beside them.

If that’s healing, then yes, I’ll use the word. Just not the way it’s often used.

Jessica