The last few days, Facebook has been full of health disasters, deflating art projects, and drama-packed emotional posts. People asking for healing prayers, for support, for an end to their suffering. I’m not sure if it’s a moon phase or a perspective.
From AuntieMoon.com
In coaching school, when everyone’s path seemed to be that of a healer, I knew mine was not. “Healer” felt too imbued with magic, with an uneven balance between coach and client, in which the coach, with healing power, changed the past of the client to create a new identity. In my development, I cannot heal. I’m a mender. The past is real and what shaped us. Maybe wounded us. But the turn can come right now, here in the present. That’s what the client can re-shape and step into with a different attitude. Developing the present can change the future.
So for all these disasters, all the suffering I’m seeing on Facebook, I see them as problems to be solved, work to be done, rips and frays to be mended. I’ve never been one to feel helpless, to wait for the magician to appear and wave a wand to solve my problems, then whisk me away on the white stallion.
From Blog52
Even when I was younger, and pretended the prince came to save me, I always wound up with the reins, riding the horse at breakneck speed, the prince hanging on behind.
Life can be about self-sabotage, the damage you create, the bad luck you stew in, the uncontrollable part of life that gets dumped on you. Or the bad stuff can be looked at as a problem to be solved with creativity and your own power. How you show yourself to people is how they perceive you. Today’s world is tricky and not everyone will be your healer, your mentor or your supporter. Being able to count on yourself, to mend as you go along, is a great skill to have.
—Quinn McDonald is selecting needle and thread for some mending.
QuinnCreative 
“The past is real and what shaped us.” Yes, and mending is far more likely to be achieved than healing. In the same was that an accident can left us mended but with a physical reminder, in a wheelchair, a pronounced limp, extensive scarring, so to can some experiences leave us with a lsting legacy. There comes a point however, in either case, when you realise that the past does not define your future . . . I speak from experience.
And I hear you!
And I love you for listening.
Love the image of you at breakneck speed, with the prince hanging on for dear life… I said my knight in shining armor rusted and fell off of his mighty steed!
Once again Quinn, you have managed to sum it all up. I never considered there could be something other than a healer. I like the idea of a mender. It puts the responsibility back where it belongs. Taking responsibility for what has happened and “fixing” it ourselves makes us more conscience of our actions in the future, more accountable for ourselves, and others. And we certainly need more of that in this world. I’m a mender too. I just never put a name to it.
I love the pictures your blog created in my head today. Your story about you as the princess on the horse with the prince hanging on for dear life made me chuckle out loud. That was me as a child as well but I was Robin Hood standing on a tree branch brandishing my sword whilst Maid Marian
hid behind me.
Thanks for a great blog today.
Mending implies active work–assessing what is torn, how best to hold it together, the type of mending (patches? Darning? Re-styling?) that will work best–and healing implies a powerful, more-than-you force “fixing” you. Nothing against healers, mind you. Sometimes we can’t set our own bones or take out our own appendix (figuratively speaking). But looking at a rip in your pants and thinking you need a healer takes away some decision making and skill you have.
Oh, and when I was a very little girl, I made myself a crown. My father was helping me spray it gold, and asked how come I wanted to wear it so low and snug. “So it won’t come off when I’m climbing trees.” That about sums it up.
We must be kindred spirits.
Yep!
The change of seasons brings that. Most of us take stock of our lives. Some are happy and some are not. And from those, you have the hopeful ones that see a fresh start full of promise and others that see a deadline impossible to meet to end what is not going right.
Mom is a healer, dad was a mender. I´m a bit of both and change groups all the time. 😉
That’s a really good perspective. And for some reason, I love the phrase, “Mom is a healer, Dad was a mender.” It cheers me that you can see the difference and identify with both. There ARE healers, and I have to stop feeling guilty that I’m not one of them.
I owe you that phrase! It was the perfect summary of something I´ve always known in a loooooong version. Dad was fabulous at knowing what people would do, their motivations and the action chains that were about to happen. He saw people as puzzles and helped others for fun. Mom is intuitive, she somehow “knows” people´s chore personalities and essence, sees people as humans and helps them out of compassion.
Mankind and his circumstances was the main subject three meals a day. I learnt a lot from both. 🙂
I’m with you all the way on this one, Quinn. The past makes us who we are, things that happen to us today make us stronger and more resilient. We need to find the lessons along the way…from relationships that didn’t work out, to losing a job or being burned by friends. Holding onto bitterness and resentment only makes us bitter and resentful. We need to be in control of our own power and our own attitudes and not wait for the “magician” to appear and fix everything.
Great post!
Thanks, Traci. Life is complicated and beautiful and tough and wonderful, all in turn. Waiting for magic instead of making our own is a terrible loss to our own power.
I like the idea of mending and fixing, rather than erasing the bad like it never happened.
I have a studio apron that is fixed and mended and re-made. I love it more than the others.