Redefining Our Identity Through Illness: I Am Light (Free Printable Coloring Page)

Healing requires a constant peeling back of layers of ourselves. As we shed these identities, beliefs, and conditionings, we're left reflecting on who and what we truly are: LIGHT.

One of the most difficult aspects of chronic illness — or any deep healing journey, physical or beyond — is the grief. Overwhelming grief that comes in waves and breaks us open inside.

We grieve life as we knew it. The loss of physical abilities, the absence of pain, our jobs, our relationships, our hobbies. Underlying all of those things is a loss of our sense of identity. In a society where we're defined by what we do, losing our ability to do is losing ourselves.

Before I got sick, I was a fearless world traveler, a hiker, a writer, an artist, a teacher, a yogi, a cook. When Epstein-Barr Virus took hold, I was confined to my bed. Unable to create, to read, to communicate, to walk, or to work.

It was uncomfortable and terrifying for so many obvious reasons. But one of the most uncomfortable things I sat with (or lay in bed with, more accurately) was this deep existential question of who or what I was in the absence of my previous passions and abilities.

I spent day after day, night after night, isolated and immobile in my bed. Mentally unable to read, focus, write, or create. Physically unable to sit up, walk, or exercise in any way. I was alone, with only my (mostly dark at the time) thoughts and soul-shattering grief.

Today, I am much more mobile and able to participate in life. My creativity has returned. I can read, work, and exercise with caution. I experience more moments or joy, laughter, and hope. And I'm eternally grateful to feel the light returning to me.

Despite this, I still sit with the uncomfortable loss of past identities. It feels as though illness is a sacred destroyer of those false identities. It's almost the point of it. The peeling of that onion would not have occurred without an initiation.

I've written about these death-before-dying experiences in some of my other posts, like Sacred Waiting. It's still true for me—the Christines that I knew before are gone. Yes, I write and draw, I enjoy hiking when possible, I am energized by travel and new impressions.

But I am keenly aware that none of this is my identity. Who I am does not come from the material plane. I am not this body, the moods that come over me, my hobbies, my job, or my situation in life.

I am a divine being of light, experiencing a human lifetime.

This light, this higher aspect of everyone and everything in existence, is the only thing that's real. That's always with us, no matter how our manifested reality has shifted. It is our greatest tool (perhaps the only real tool) for healing, transformation, service, creation, love, and joy.

This is not a truth that can be easily understood and embodied. Like healing, it comes in layers. It often requires a shock to the system—a death of our lower identities—to even begin to see it. For me, that shock was physical illness that set me on the path to healing.

This new free printable coloring page—I Am Light—offers a moment of meditation on our higher aspect. Our light body. Our connection to divinity. Our role and responsibility as the creators of our reality.

The mudras in this drawing are real-life tools to redirect and control the energy that we are for mental and physical healing.

The hummingbirds represent joy, resilience, adaptability, and love—all available to us when we sense and open up to our higher energy.

The four elements are all represented here as a reminder of the various aspects of our existence—Earth representing the physical plane and body; Water representing our emotional world; Air representing the mind and intellect; and Fire representing our passion, light, and transformation.

The light body surrounding the physical is symbolic of the Spirit that gives it all life.

Coloring this one brought me such a sense of serenity, peace, and hope. It reminded me that I am so much more than my external circumstances or inner emotions, and helped me to process both.

Head to the Coloring Pages tab to download your copy.

A sincere thanks for being here,

Christine