In this solo talk on The V Spot, Andrea Mancuso challenges common misconceptions about healing and reframes it as a human, intentional, and ongoing practice rather than a sign of being damaged or something that simply improves with time. She argues that healing is a mindset—a lifestyle of conscious, consistent, and purposeful actions—allowing people to engage with all emotions, not just pain, and to give themselves permission to feel fully. Mancuso expands the definition of healing beyond trauma, illustrating that it can be fun, creative, outrageous, or even sexy through activities like music, dancing, skydiving, pole‑dancing, and a boudoir photo shoot that helped her reconcile body image. She warns against the cultural pressure to stay only happy and against using vices (drugs, food, sex, gambling) to escape uncomfortable feelings, urging instead a wise selection of supportive people and environments. The talk connects healing to coaching, explaining that coaching surfaces hidden subconscious beliefs that block goals, and that disempowering those beliefs is itself a healing process. Throughout, she promotes her organization Intentional Healing and Wellness, offers a “Healing is Sexy” t‑shirt, and issues a call to action for listeners to adopt intentional healing as a lifelong, unapologetic lifestyle.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the V Spot. Let's talk about healing today. I believe that healing gets a bad reputation, and so I wanted to shine the light on it and talk about some misconceptions that often come up in the conversation of healing. So first and foremost, I've heard it said that healing is often associated with people being damaged or broken in some way, and I don't believe that that's the case at all. I actually think that healing indicates that you are human, right? And so how old are you, right? I'm 43, which means that I have 43 years of life experience behind me, and you have however many years behind you. And so healing is about recognizing that at some point in time in that journey throughout your life, you have experiences and, um, different life mishaps, so to say, that warrant healing, right? So it actually makes you human. It doesn't have you damaged or broken in any way. Um, you know, if you are someone who has gotten to this moment in time, if you're here listening and you got to this moment in time without about any experiences that hurt you, caused you pain, were traumatic, um, heartbreak, anything like that, you are one of the rare blessed individuals, and this segment is actually not for you. But for everyone else, let's talk about healing. So first and foremost, I, I want to shine the light on the fact that aside from there being this conversation of being damaged or broken, I I've also heard, and I'm sure you have heard, the saying time heals all wounds, right? Time heals all wounds. And I don't believe that to be true, right? Some of the things that still cause me heartache at times are from a very long time ago, right? And I'm wondering if you feel the same way. So I don't believe that healing, um, that time heals all wounds. I actually believe that it's conscious, consistent, and intentional acts that has healing occur, right? So it's really, um, today is really about holding healing as a mindset, you know, as an attitude, a lifestyle. And it's really about giving yourself permission to navigate your life and your experiences, your feelings, your emotions um, with an awareness and with grace and compassion, you know, given what it is that you are going through. Uh, you know, there's also this other aspect that has come up many times in the conversations about healing where it's associated with pain and trauma, you know, and grief and sadness only, you know. And while it can be all of those things and it often is some of those things, it doesn't only have to be that, right? So healing really does get to look a lot of different ways, and I'm going to give some examples today. You know, healing can be fun. It can actually be fun. So how, right? So healing can occur through music, through dancing, singing, creating art, you know, laughter, right? Whatever fun is to you, healing can occur in those ways. It doesn't only have to be associated with all of the difficult, you know, uh, hurtful experiences. Now I want to actually, you know, talk about that piece too. I feel that there is a dangerous, um, narrative in a sense that's promoted in the con— in the context of healing, where a lot of people talk about, you know, feel better, be happy. It's always supposed to be good, right? And I think that that's really dangerous because it doesn't give room for the rest of the human experience. So the human experience is vast, and there's lots of different feelings, emotions, um, moods, right, that we can experience. And when we only seek to be happy and joyful, we're really leaving out the rest and putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. So, um, listen, not everybody's comfortable with some of the feelings and emotions and, and tough experiences, right? They don't always feel good, but not everybody's comfortable with, uh, being with them. So this is really about you giving yourself the grace and the space to feel all of your feelings and allow for people who are uncomfortable with, with it to, to deal with that discomfort, right? But you get to have your human experience and, uh, and feel all the feels. You know, one of the things that I've talked about is this idea of, in an attempt to escape our feelings, right, the stuff that doesn't feel good, we sometimes turn to different things, different, uh, vices, right? So I want to highlight the fact that we cannot, um, drink, eat, sex, exercise, use, gamble our feelings away. Right? In an attempt sometimes to not feel our feelings and experience our experiences, we will turn to things, for lack of better words, that— that's— it's an illusion, right? Because momentarily we may not be experiencing the feelings and the thoughts around it, but then when you come out the other side, you have two things to deal with. You have to deal with the original source of potential pain or your emotions and moods, And then you have to deal with all of the ramifications of turning to whatever the vice was that you decided to lean on. So, you know, today's really an invitation to choose your pain wisely, right? And that's part of the healing experience, uh, giving yourself the grace and the space to feel all of it and to recognize that with careful selection, you can choose people and supports to be in place to journey alongside you during this crazy thing we call life, right? And, and that is part of being human, right? So in an attempt to sometimes avoid it, we make things complicated for ourselves. So healing is not about being damaged and broken, right? We have established that healing is not all about time healing the wounds. It's about us being purposeful, intentional, and taking action to have healing occur. And listen, in this moment, I want to shine the light on something really important too. There are some experiences that regardless of the action that you take, um, you will still feel some pain, and that's okay, right? This isn't a call to action to forget. This isn't a call to action to have your life experiences disappear, right? It's about interacting with your life in a conscious way where you get to express your feelings, um, you know, honor your, your experiences, and oftentimes choose perspectives that can serve you in and support you in navigating life with all of who you are, right? Um, and so it's not about time healing all the wounds. It's about you taking the action. It's about me taking the action. And it doesn't always have to be associated with trauma and pain. So we, we talked about like, can it be fun? Sure, it can be fun. Can healing be outrageous? Absolutely. How? It— that gets to look different depending upon what your version of outrageous is. For me, this is outrageous, right? And this is a healing experience that, um, I have stepped into for myself and to hold space for you all. So this is, this is how healing is outrageous. Healing may be a, difficult hike, right, that really allows for you to use your body in a way that you haven't used it. It may be, um, uh, what's that called when you jump out of the airplane, right? That may be the experience to overcome fear, right? Skydiving got away from me. Healing may look like skydiving, to really encounter your fear in a different way, right? And that's a very extreme example, but it is an example of how healing can be outrageous, right? Maybe it's— I don't know, what's another— maybe it's pole dancing classes. I don't know, whatever it is for you, you get to define how healing can be outrageous, right? And then there's sexy. And so healing gets to be sexy too. Um, and how, right? So I have— I'm going to tell you a quick story. In June of 2021, I decided to do a boudoir photo shoot, which was terrifying, you know, an absolute radical act of healing. And it was my way of experiencing myself in a new way, to really make a peace with my body image and my sense of self, you know, my confidence, because that was something that I always struggled with. So healing is sexy in that I have approximately 50 photographs from my shoot. That's evidence, right? So when I forget, I really get to look at the proof of how healing is sexy. And again, what is sexy to you, right? So, um, define that, be with that, right? And recognize that it gets to— healing gets to look a lot of different ways, and sexy is actually Here it is. Sexy is one of them. And if you want your Healing is Sexy t-shirt, intentionalhealingandwellness.com. Get yours and rock it loud, rock it proud, right? This is an absolute lifestyle, and we get to really make it cool. We get to, uh, swag it out, right? Instead of trying to silence it and pretend that it doesn't exist. Because 2022, I think we can all agree that there's a tremendous need and want for individual and collective healing. And so you really have to be under a rock to not know that there is layers and layers of healing that awaits us, right, as a people. And I want to make it cool. I want to actually shine the light on it and have it be, you know, smooth and charismatic and really glorify the process. Because it's what it means to be alive today, right? And so we can go about it and really accessorize it and turn it up, or we can do it in silence and really suffer in silence. And I don't believe that that is an effective way of doing it. I firsthand, for different points of my life, have done it that way, and I wouldn't want it for you. I certainly don't want it for me, and I really don't want it for all of us. So the call to action is really to give yourself permission to interact with your life and your emotions and your moods and your life experiences, um, with a consciousness, you know, with intention, with compassion, you know, with empathy, and navigate what it means to be alive today in from that standpoint, right? Like through the healing lens. And so the invitation is really to be with healing as a lifestyle and recognize that there's no destination. There's no— this is a spoiler alert, and you know, let me share with you that there's no destination. As long as we are alive, we have experiences to heal through. And so, um, you know, I get this question a lot, and I think there's value in talking about it right before, you know, we close out today. This, this idea of healing and coaching, right? What is the connection? There's been a lot of confusion that has come up, and it often— when I do different talks, people will ask me, intentional healing and wellness, what's the connection to coaching? And so I want to just go through that with you now. So I'm going to ask you a question before I jump into answer, which is, have you ever tried to, to go after a goal, right, to accomplish a certain result, and struggle to reach that result? Have you ever set a goal for yourself and struggled to accomplish the result, right? And so I certainly have. And it's not that you didn't want the result, right? It's not that you did not want to accomplish your goal. There was something hidden, a belief in your process that interfered with your results. It's something that if you were to say you were in a car, it would be in your blind spot, right? And so the coaching process is really designed to have those beliefs come to the surface and then take your power, like disempower the belief. And so by nature, the coaching process is healing. Right? Because there are parts of our subconscious thinking and beliefs that emerge, and when it does, there's a healing that occurs, you know. And so, uh, that is the association between coaching and healing, you know. And I'm super proud and grateful to be the founder and CEO of Intentional Healing and Wellness, you know, an organization that is really built upon honoring the process as well as celebrating the results. And if you are already doing this work, healing work, and being with your journey in a conscious, intentional, and consistent way, I want to shout you out and say keep going. It looks great on you. And if you are yet to begin this type of work, consider this an official call to action to get your healing on. Right, and remember, it's absolutely sexy. So thank you for being with me, uh, for this episode of The V Spot. To be continued.
