I met with yet another doctor last week.  I knew it was going to be interesting when he told me,

‘You’re REALLY sick!!  You have every single genetic marker for ____.  And on top of that, all the genes for ____,  ____, and ____ are all up-regulated.

Your clinical picture is SO classic I’m going to use yours as a case-study in my graduate seminar.’

Now, before you get your undies in a bunch on my behalf (if that’s how you do), I knew all of this (intuitively) before I had this consultation.

And I have known now for 2 years that I would heal completely.

Yes, it’s been a bit of a shit-show at times.  Emotionally challenging doesn’t really even begin to describe it.

At the same time, the last two years have been the happiest, most free, most emotionally and spiritually fruitful of my life.  It’s funny how that works.

A few months after I had the clairaudient moment of hearing and knowing in my bones that ‘I will heal completely’ — and I knew that that meant at every level of my being —

I realized that I had to completely stop asking ‘How’.

Totally and completely stop asking myself, the Universe, God, or any one else How To Heal.

‘How To’ is a question of the mind.   It is a mental-gate question.  It is about DOING.

And I knew that it was all the ‘doing’ that got me to this point in my life where my body was no longer a hospitable place.  Who I had been living as for the last almost 5 decades was RESONANT with a seemingly incurable autoimmune-like illness.

Despite being told that I’d have this autoimmune condition my whole like, there I was, completely certain, knowing in my bones that I would heal totally.  Like whole and wholly vibrant and alive and in love with my life.

There were many, many days (and nights) where this felt like a cruel joke, a cosmic taunt.

But giving up the How has changed me profoundly.

First, because ‘How’ is filled with hubris.  With the arrogance that we actually can— and should (hello, Western Medicine) — beat the system.  The system being the way that our body speaks to us in symptom metaphors that, should we choose to ignore them, will simply become metaphoric 2x4s.

And this “dis-ease” has been a cosmic 2×4.

Day in, day out. 

And what has transformed my life, my heart, my mind, my marriage, my mothering, my work, and little by slowly, my body more than anything else has been to ask ‘What Is’ questions.

‘What is’ is a question of the heart.  

A question of the body.  

It is a felt-relationship question.

A question rooted in being-ness.

What is my relationship with this illness?  With this symptom?

What is this illness showing me, literally and metaphorically?

What is in the way of completely healing?

What is my work here?

What is being gifted to me through this challenge, this pattern that appears to have no resolution?

‘What Is’ questions actually have no distinct, certain answer.  

They are something we lean into, rather than nailing.  Unlike ‘How To’, there’s no landing to stick with ‘What Is’.

They come with zero guarantees, just like Life.

But what they give us that ‘How To’ questions can never offer is a deeper intimacy with this walk we are on.

They offer a dignity that the competency of knowing ‘How To’ can never give us.  

While ‘How To’ grasps for an illusion of safety and control, ‘’What Is’ invites us into a lived-awareness that we are always safe, always held.  Even in the deeply painful and life-altering challenges we face.

‘What Is’ questions are about being with this moment as it reveals itself to us.  They teach us how to Be With What Is through a self-compassionate lens of curiosity.

And for me, they have lead to the one question that has given me more freedom, love, and joy than any other, and that is the question of ‘Who Is’.

Who Is the woman who heals completely?  

Who is the woman whose heart is open, who is feelable by life and those she loves?  

Who is the woman who loves herself to her very edges?

‘Who Is’ questions are like throwing a grappling hook into the field of possibility.  They encourage our mind to search for that which we haven’t yet experienced at the level of our body but know and long for in our heart.

‘Who Is’ is a question for dreaming anew and imagining a life into existence.  It’s a question that puts the strength of the mind to work for us, rather than being dominated by its detriments.

May this find you with the courage — the spaciousness of heart — to imagine your self and your life anew.  To live the questions that heal you, now and in every moment.