March 31, 2025 marks the date of the last text message my dad wrote updating me on his health and the different ways he was treating himself to feel better as he tried to recover from the cold symptoms that began on March 20th.
A few days before the spring equinox of 2026, I had been thinking of how to celebrate the first day of the season my dad loved most, to honor him and my grief process.
On March 20th this year, I attended an all-day workshop called Therapy as a Spiritual Practice.
When I signed up, I had no idea what the workshop would be about. My motivation to go was based on getting the opportunity to meet a woman named Bonnie Badenoch who is and has become a big deal in the therapeutic world/profession.
I wondered if Bonnie was going to teach us about spirituality or if we would be learning spiritual practices that might enhance our work as therapists.
Instead, the workshop focused on offering our presence to everyone in attendance by connecting with each other and having a willingness to be open by sharing our thoughts and feelings around topics such as: Why I Am Here? Have I had any experiences in my life that felt spiritual?
Creativity and Rest (otherwise referred to as Integration) also took up a big portion of the day.
During the workshop, Bonnie told us that the words Health, Whole, and Holy all shared the same root. I was struck by this new piece of knowledge and wondered if my dad had heard of this while still alive.
As a passionate doctor/ teacher of health and wellness, there were certain topics my dad seemed to always circle back to - Whole Health and the Holy - which he believed was in the Catholic teachings and in the honoring of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Discovering that these words are all connected has been intriguing for my mind. Questions that have come up are:
If these words all share the same root, is it possible that in order for us to know true Health, we must give our energy to feeling Whole, by first giving our attention to what we experience as Holy?
If Holy means ‘to be dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred’ then do we need to know God in order to feel Health and Whole?
If we figured out what Holy meant for us and then lived in accordance with serving that connection, would we truly feel Health and Whole?
Some things I know to be true for me are:
· Health has been and will continue to be one of my number one values.
· Shortly after I started learning how to focus my energy on spiritual practices that felt holy to me, I began to feel more whole.
· Feeling Whole does not mean that I am always feeling spiritually connected. It just means knowing that no matter what, Spirit is always within me and around me even when I am not giving my attention to it.
My motivation to write this today came from my continued heart desire to remember my dad, to honor him and his teachings, and to feel his presence in the only form I am now able to which is spiritually.
I hope that this sharing of the connection of these words and important states of being, inspires you to dig deeper inside yourself so that you can discover the root of what makes you feel fueled to move towards feeling Health, Whole and Holy in your daily life.
Below is what google says about Health, Whole and Holy:
‘The words health, whole, holy, and heal all share a common Old English and Proto-Germanic root, hāl or hail-, meaning “whole, uninjured, or of good omen”. This linguistic connection highlights a profound, ancient understanding that being healthy requires being whole, and being whole constitutes a state of holiness.’