Your Healing is Your Power

Living with Crohn’s disease reshaped my life, and ultimately revealed the strength, clarity, and inner healing I did not know was possible.

It took me more than two decades and a wealth of health issues to really understand that healing is possible. 

In my younger years, my body performed with lightness, strength, and flexibility. It functioned perfectly at the time of my birth in Kerala, India. Between my birth and the manifestation of these imbalances in my body, I had clearly been knocked off track. I knew that if great health was once possible for me, I could, with persistence, get back there. It was this ambition that gave me the strength to attempt the miracles that would lead to my inevitable healing.

I still remember being 20 years old, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for my colonoscopy results, silently praying, “please be anything but Crohn’s.” When the Crohn’s disease diagnosis arrived, it felt like the beginning of a life sentence. The years that followed were some of the hardest of my life. But every experience, even the unbearable ones, can be reclaimed for learning and growth. 

A photo of me at 21, admitted to the hospital during a Crohn’s disease flare-up. I was severely dehydrated and had acute kidney failure. In this moment, I was waiting for the fifth attempt to draw blood.

Those years gifted me a profound compassion for the human condition. I came to understand why people stay in abusive relationships, why they numb, why they lash out, why they make choices that don’t seem to make sense from the outside. I realise that there is no right or wrong, no fault or blame - only capacity, and the willingness to, or not to, increase it.

When you are sick, the decisions about your body can start to feel like they’re no longer yours. Pain, discomfort and pressure from others can feel consuming. For a long time, I believed that not taking medication or not pursuing conventional treatments simply wasn’t an option for me. But today, with a deep sense of self, and an integrated philosophy guiding my life, those choices are clear. 

I know that energy is real, that disease arises from energetic imbalance, and that the body is its own healer. For me, conventional disease management with steroid and autoimmune medication is not what is needed. What is needed, is to come balance at every level. I know that my body knows exactly what to do; I just have to step out of the way.

At 22, I packed my life into these two bags and left home with the intention of healing. This photo was taken right before my flight, just weeks before I stopped my medications for the first time.

Looking back, I can see how I desperately needed someone with greater capacity during those years. Someone who could empower, encourage and guide me. But somehow, even without that, I managed to start scaffolding myself back into power. All it took was one friend recommending one book. That book opened understanding. Understanding opened intuition. Intuition opened deep knowing. And deep knowing opened courage. Courage to act, to own my choices and take responsibility for my healing.

One line from that book has never left me: “Responsibility is your greatest power. It is your ability to respond. Why would you ever give that away?”

I have cried many tears thinking about how it took an autoimmune diagnosis to finally listen to my body and start returning to myself. I think of all the subtler signs I must have missed - the messages I didn’t hear and the ways I rejected myself, and the life in me. It is heartbreaking. I wish I had known better, but I accept that I didn’t. 

Many people go an entire lifetime without receiving a single message from life, not even in the face of a terminal illness. I thank myself every day for having what it took to come back to truth, to choose myself, and to heal. 

Claire, my mentor and friend, was the turning point in my healing. She carried strength and clarity for me on days that I didn't have it. This is us pictured in our home - I am 26 and very full of life here.

Now, my healing is my priority. Nothing is more important. I have cleared my calendar and dedicated my life to supporting my mind, body and spirit in coming back into balance. For me, this looks like sleeping a lot, prioritising my own personal care over making money, feeling my feelings, crying when I need to, and moving through days of pain, confusion and disorientation. It also looks like release - like letting go, growing in confidence, loving myself more each day, experiencing profound peace, and deepening into wisdom.

We live in a world that teaches us to give our power away, especially when it comes to healing. It is easier to follow what is familiar rather than dive into the unknown of your own body. It takes courage, but healing asks you to go inward, to explore the complexities of your symptoms, and to learn the truth that lies beneath each of them.

I have lived the truth that healing is possible. And it will look different for you than it did for me, because life expresses itself uniquely through each of us. Work with your body. Ask to be shown. Allow yourself to come into balance. 

Your healing is yours.

It is your greatest power. 

Don’t give it away.