Seven years ago, I was going through a particularly crushing breakup when a friend offered advice that I hadn’t considered before. She told me I needed to work on my self-love.
I didn’t understand what she meant back then, but it opened a door.
We aren’t taught about emotional healing in traditional schools. It’s not something you learn about in most university classes. It’s rarely a topic of casual conversation or a TV show plot, and yet we all have wounds to heal. Once I started meditating, journaling, and reading books about personal development, I realized that I could level up in life. I could let go of limiting beliefs, and I could have the things I wanted, but I had to let go of what weighed me down first.
Healing and self-love sounded woo-woo to me back then, but now I know the truth: It’s selfish not to heal. It’s self-indulgent not to put in the work, rather than the opposite.
These quotes about healing beautifully illustrate that journey. I hope you love these as much as I do:
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi
“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I’ve learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.”
― Osho
“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”
― David Richo
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.”
― Marianne Williamson
“But pain’s like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There’s no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface.”
― Katie Kacvinsky
“Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.”
― Linda Hogan
“It is our wounds that create in us a desire to reach for miracles. The fulfillment of such miracles depends on whether we let our wounds pull us down or lift us up towards our dreams.”
― Jocelyn Soriano, Mend My Broken Heart
“You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we’re not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.”
― Louise L. Hay
“As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.”
― Maya Angelou
“It’s not forgetting that heals. It’s remembering.”
― Amy Greene, Bloodroot
“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
― Louise Hay
“Healing requires from us to stop struggling, but to enjoy life more and endure it less. “
―Darina Stoyanova
“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are.”
―Rachel Naomi Remen
“Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.”
―Sai Baba
“Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”
―Tori Amos
“Healing is embracing what is most feared; healing is opening what has been closed, softening what has hardened into obstruction, healing is learning to trust life.”
―Jeanne Achterberg
“I’m touched by the idea that when we do things that are useful and helpful – collecting these shards of spirituality – that we may be helping to bring about a healing.”
―Leonard Nimoy
“The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it’s been broken into a million pieces.”
―Robert James Waller
“The place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it.”
―Cheryl Strayed
“We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice, or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up. For each pang of grief, depression, doubt, or despair there is an inverse toward renewal coming to you in time. Each tragedy is an announcement that some goodwill indeed come in time. Be patient with yourself.”
―Bryant McGill
“The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore, the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.”
―Paracelsus
“Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
―Gary Zukav
“To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.”
―Stephen Levine
“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.”
―Caroline Myss
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
―Helen Keller
“Any illness is a direct message to you that tells you how you have not been loving who you are, cherishing yourself in order to be who you are. This is the basis of all healing.”
―Barbara Brennan
“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.”
―Harry Crews
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