What Does Healing Actually Look Like?

How would you even know?

Most people don’t truly know what healing looks like and many would be surprised if they did.

I’ve had people tell me, with absolute confidence, “I don’t need to change my diet or lifestyle. The doctor says I’m fit as a mallee bull.”

Yet with a little more digging, that same person is taking medication for blood pressure, gout, reflux, and regularly stopping mid-conversation to brace their aching back or knees.

That isn’t healing, but managed decline. We have been duped to believe covering symptoms is healing.

I’ve spoken to post-operative patients, still dependent on strong analgesia, drainage tubes in place, who proudly say they’re relieved to be “cured.” How would they know? Or the cancer patient left with a colostomy bag, missing organs, exhausted and hollowed out, yet enthusiastically promoting the next fundraiser because they were told they were “saved.”

We need to be honest about our language.

Pain relief is not a cure, though it can be a welcome reprieve.
Symptom suppression is not healing; especially when one medication simply replaces one symptom with another. These are chemical effects that only persist while the substance remains in the body.

True healing is slower and quieter. It works in reverse.

Even when a remedy brings swift relief; say, the sudden easing of hay fever - that alone is not a cure. For healing to be real, the body must continue to unwind the disease process, layer by layer, until symptoms no longer return. Few people ever experience this in their lifetime.

And yet, we all know someone who seems to defy the odds.

Why is it that one person, after changing their diet, reducing chemical exposure, and supporting their body with the right nutrients, herbs, and remedies, appears to age without the steady accumulation of aches, pains, and diagnoses? Why, in a group of peers all born around the same time, does one person sit quietly, free of the complaints everyone else assumes are “normal for their age”? Why are they the odd one out rather than the norm? And why are they usually seen as the weirdo because they are obstinate in their resolve?

They aren’t immune to illness.

I am grateful (mostly) for emergency medicine, first responders, surgeons, and on occasion, even hospitals. They save lives, stabilise and patch us up when things go wrong.

But these are not cure units. They are life-saving units. But saving a life is not a cure! It is a stop gap measure that usually takes you back to ground zero so you can start again on the road to decline.

The cure, when it is possible, must come after. And it rarely does, because healing requires something modern medicine cannot prescribe: participation, effort & responsibility. Not dependence.

Healing is not something done to you, but what your body does when given the chance.

When people hear that healing requires effort, they often imagine deprivation, restriction, or punishment. “Too hard”. In truth, healing effort is not about removing everything but supplying what has been missing. Let that sink in.

It is not simply avoiding foods that cause discomfort, but learning to nourish the body with real food that carries minerals, enzymes, and life. It is understanding that plants exist on this earth not just for flavour, but for healing, and that herbal and plant medicines have supported human health far longer than synthetic chemicals ever have.

It is recognising water as the body’s true hydration model, not flavoured, sweetened, or chemically treated substitutes. And moving the body in ways it was designed to move, rather than only when pain or stiffness forces attention.

Healing effort also means choosing modalities that do not cause permanent harm.

When patients came to my clinic, I could not in good conscience allow them to leave without already being placed on a healing path. That might have meant acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, acupressure, or a few carefully chosen doses of the right homœopathic remedy while we talked. Healing should begin immediately, not after another referral, prescription, or waiting list.

And yet, where are these supports in our so-called healing institutions?

Where is colour therapy? Sunlight?
Where are healing frequencies?
Where is clean, filtered air and living water?
Where is touch, warmth, nourishment, and calm?

These are not luxuries, but foundational for health itself.

The Earth Wisdom series, available through my apothecary, exists to help people relearn how to recognise healing; to understand the signals of the body and respond appropriately rather than suppress them. The home medicine kits are there to prepare you for what may arise, or to support you gently through what you are facing now.

But none of this works unless you choose it.

Healing cannot be outsourced or delegated.
And it cannot be done to you.

The tools can be offered and the path can be shown.

But walking it — that part is up to you.