Dear Reader,

As a writer, one of the things I often think about is the power of language, which has the capacity to shape not only our vision of the world but also, as a result, the world we live in. The stories we tell shape our actions, and our actions in turn shape not just our society but also the very surface of the earth.

We're living in a time of great change and challenge, but also of possibility.

If you have spent time around me or on my email list/ in my community, you know that I believe in using our voices to speak out about the things that matter--to encourage equality and to protect our democracy and the health of all living beings and our waters, soil, air.

(By the way, if you would like to get postcards mailed to you to help get out the vote in November, hit reply to this email and I'll send you information...)

Often, when people speak out about what matters to them, they talk primarily about the problems, of which, it's true, there are many.

But I also believe we need to articulate and speak to our strengths and give language to what we want to see grow. We need to do this politically, socially, and also personally.

So today, I want to share some healing affirmations with you below--as well as an invitation to create your own affirmations.

Healing Affirmations : How to Use Them and Why They Work

Healing affirmations are assertions about the reality and possibility of healing, strength, growth, and well-being. (Note: they need to be assertions of truth—affirmations about non-truth won't work.) Affirmations have been shown in scientific studies to be effective and to have positive impacts on health, emotions, and levels of success and fulfillment.

They can be used any time you want to balance and replace negative thinking with positive thinking so that you can be more prone to encourage, nourish, and experience the results you want. They can help enforce and speed healing on all levels— physical, emotional, creative, social, or even political.

We act according to our beliefs. If someone tells us there is gold treasure buried under a tree, we might get out our shovel and dig, but otherwise, because we have no reason to think there is gold there, we won’t dig.

Too often, we limit our own potential for healing and growth; we don’t really believe that a greater level of wellbeing is possible. Negative beliefs cause stress, which actively impedes our immune system, depletes our energy, and prevents us from acting in ways that will help us.

By contrast, when we nourish our capacity for healing, we improve our immune system and encourage healing and growth.

Some would also say that the thoughts we think and the words we use affect our very energy fields.

There’s a famous story about two wolves: A Cherokee grandfather tells his grandson that inside each person there are two wolves: one, a wolf of anger, rage, jealousy and the other, a wolf of peace, love and kindness, and the two wolves are fighting. When the grandson asks which will win, the grandfather responds, the one you feed.

To offer healing affirmations is to help feed the wolf of healing.

Healing Affirmations and the Role of the Creative Imagination:

The work of listening to and transforming our stories is also deeply connected to our work as creative beings.

As creative people, and especially for artists and writers, it’s our job to look at the stories of the past, examine them, see which ones we want to keep, and which ones we want to replace. Then it’s up to us to tell new stories.

Our stories, our habits of mind, and the language we use are all a part of our power.

What this does not mean is that if we tell positive stories, only positive things will happen to us. Similarly, acknowledging the power of our stories also does not mean that if we say positive things, we can deny or bypass pain and difficulties. Our strength and growth must be rooted in truth and in the full range of our experiences and narrative. It's dangerous when people seem to suggest that good things happen to good people, that people’s thinking is responsible for their suffering, illness, poverty, etc, or that we can whitewash the pain and injustice of the past.

But how we respond to what happens to us is part of our potential, and how we respond to our story, and what we include in that story, also shapes the outcome.

What truths do we tell? Can we be brave enough to tell the truth of suffering and injustice and also of growth and possibility?

I'm going to put the affirmations below.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

with love,
Nadia

PS: I'm excited to say that I'm in the process of putting together a brand new poetry class I'm going to offer this fall. Stay tuned for more information coming soon....

Healing Affirmations:

You can read through these affirmations and repeat them to yourself or choose a few that resonate with you and repeat them to yourself--or even write them down!

At first, you might have a hard time with some of these affirmations. If you find yourself questioning them, ask yourself: is any part of this true, and if it is, can you help bring it about more fully?

Practice with these affirmations. And create some of your own.

Healing Affirmations for Physical Health

• My body is a miracle.
• My body is part of the natural world and a unique and beautiful sacred creation to cherish.
• My body and my soul inter-are.
• I thank my body for breathing.
• I thank my eyes for seeing and my ears for hearing, my nose for smelling, and my tongue for tasting, my body for feeling and my mind for thinking.
• If any of my senses don’t work, I thank my other senses for doing all the amazing work they do to help me be a person in the world.
• I thank my heart for beating.
• I thank all of my organs, in whatever state they are in, for keeping my whole system going without my needing to think about it.
• I thank my immune system for working to protect me.
• My body loves me and wants to keep me alive and healthy.
• My body is always doing the very best it can.
• My body is deserving of love, comfort, protection, and rest.
• My body is vital and able to heal itself.
• My body knows how to rest and renew.
• My body is strong and wise.
• I love my body and I know that my body is made of love.
• I love my sexuality and my sense of touch and excitement.
• I love being a person in the world.
• I am beautiful on the outside and on the inside.
• I am worthy of full appreciation and care.

Healing Affirmations for Emotional and Spiritual Health

• I am enough as I am
• I am deeply and inextricably connected to the good in the universe.
• I am always growing and learning.
• I don’t need to compare myself.
• I am made of love.
• I embrace my full emotional range, all of my feelings and give them time and space to exist freely within me, without needing to judge them or act on them.
• I am big enough to feel my full range of emotional experience without being ruled by my emotions.
• I am full of light and space.
• I am able to create new possibilities and change.
• I am not defined by my past or the past of my ancestors or teachers.
• I am able to shape the direction I want to go in.
• I love myself.
• I am worthy of love and am loved.
• I am able to give profound love and am a creature of endless abundance.

Healing Affirmations for Creative Health

• Creativity is meaningful, important, and valued.
• Everyone is a creative being.
• I am a creative being.
• There is unlimited creative energy.
• I tap into that well of unlimited creative potential.
• I can create, make change, and express what I want to express.
• I am able to make beautiful, powerful works of art.
• I appreciate my own creative life and production and others appreciate it, too.
• I appreciate others' creative work.
• I honor the creative life as sacred and worthy of attention and support.
• I trust in my creative life to work through me and to keep shining.
• I love what I create.
• My creative life and achievements are part of a wide community and tradition of creative production.

Healing Affirmations for Social Health

• People care for and support one another.
• Our social fabric values all people.
• Our world values peace.
• Government is made to help people.
• Our world runs on trust.
• Care and connection are the engines of our systems.
• We have systems that keep us safe.
• We work together for the good.
• Our own health depends on the health of others and of the world and ecology around us.
• We inter-are.
• We improve and become more just, equitable, and healthy.

Healing Affirmations for Ecological Health

• Our environment is precious.
• Our environment is strong and resilient.
• We are working towards healing and health.
• Each species in our environment is vital.
• Each part of the natural world works with every other.
• Humans are part of the natural world and are inextricable from it.
• We can use our wisdom to work together with the environment around us.
• There is an abundance of health and healing and enough for everyone.
• Our health and the world's health inter-are.
• We are part of a vibrant, miraculous world that supports wellbeing and vitality.

Create Your Own Healing Affirmations:

Create your own healing affirmations that resonate with you. Create new individual affirmations for the above categories and create new categories.

Guidelines to Follow for Creating Healing Affirmations:

• Keep the statements simple
• Use the present tense
• Only say things that you believe are at least partly true; we want to build authenticity and trust through these affirmations
• Write them down.
• Repeat them
• Share them with friends

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and as always, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what experiences you've had with healing affirmations and if you have thoughts about any relationship between affirmations and your creative work.