Maybe Chicken Soup Is the Point of Healing

Monicartist

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about a meditation app I’ve been using.

I told her, “You should try it. Maybe even let your sons try it.”

She immediately said, “Oh no, no. My sons hate things like that.”

Apparently, they call these kinds of things “chicken soup.”

Her explanation made me laugh, but it also stayed with me.

When you have a cold, you might have a bowl of chicken soup. It’s warm. It’s comforting. It makes you feel better for a while. But it doesn’t cure the cold.

And that’s how they see things like meditation. Maybe it makes you feel good, but it doesn’t fix you. So what’s the point?

I kept thinking about that afterwards.

Because maybe we have completely misunderstood healing.

Maybe healing was never about fixing.

We seem to have this idea that when something hurts inside us, there must be a solution somewhere. The right therapy. The right medication. The right meditation. The right relationship. The right holiday. The right morning routine.

We try something and then ask: Did it work?

And by “work,” we often mean: Did it make the problem disappear?

If the answer is no, we can be quick to dismiss it.

But I’m starting to think healing doesn’t work like that at all.

Healing, for me, has been much less dramatic.

It’s an accumulation.

It’s doing one thing that makes my nervous system feel a little calmer. Then another thing that makes me feel connected. Something else that gets me out of my head and back into my body. A conversation that makes me feel understood. Going outside. Moving my body. Making something. Laughing. Resting. Meditation. Being with someone I love. Doing something that gives me a sense of purpose.

None of those things, individually, “fix” a human being.

But perhaps that’s the wrong test.

A walk doesn’t fix your life.

A meditation doesn’t erase everything that has happened to you.

A good meal doesn’t resolve grief.

A cuddle doesn’t cure anxiety.

A night of good sleep doesn’t undo years of stress.

And yes, chicken soup doesn’t cure a cold.

But why have we decided that something only has value if it cures us?

Maybe feeling better matters.

Maybe giving your body an hour in which it feels safe matters.

Maybe having ten quiet minutes in a mind that has been noisy all day matters.

Maybe laughing when you’ve had a terrible week matters.

Maybe doing something kind for yourself, even though it doesn’t solve anything, matters enormously.

I think I used to imagine healing as a destination. There would be some future version of me who had finally worked everything out. She would be healed. Finished. Fixed.

I don’t really believe in her anymore.

I think healing looks much more ordinary than that.

It’s a commitment to your own wellbeing.

Not a commitment to feeling good all the time. That would be impossible. Life will still hurt. People will disappoint us. Our bodies will have difficult days. We will lose things. We will get overwhelmed. We will sometimes fall back into patterns we thought we had left behind.

Healing doesn’t protect us from being human.

It’s the commitment to keep returning to the things that help us.

Again and again.

And perhaps this is why small things matter more than we give them credit for.

One meditation might not change your life.

But what happens when you give yourself ten minutes of quiet regularly?

One walk through the trees might not heal anything.

But what happens when nature becomes somewhere you return to whenever life becomes too loud?

One meaningful conversation doesn’t resolve loneliness forever.

But what happens when you keep choosing relationships where you can be known?

One creative afternoon doesn't give you a new life.

But what happens when you repeatedly make room for the parts of yourself that feel most alive?

These things accumulate.

Not perfectly. Not in a straight line. And not in a way that can always be measured.

But they become a way of living.

That conversation with my friend made me realise something else: perhaps we are too obsessed with asking whether something will fix us before we allow ourselves to receive what it can actually give us.

Maybe the meditation app is chicken soup.

Fine.

I like chicken soup.

If something gives me ten minutes of peace, I don’t need it to promise me a new personality.

If something helps me sleep, breathe, laugh, connect, create, move or simply feel a little more okay inside myself, that is already something.

And when I put enough of those “somethings” together, day after day, they become much bigger than they looked individually.

They become a life in which I am actively caring for myself.

Maybe that is healing.

Not waking up one morning and discovering that nothing hurts anymore.

Not finally becoming the perfectly regulated, completely resolved version of yourself.

Not being fixed.

Just continuing to choose what nourishes you.

A little movement.

A little rest.

A little connection.

A little meaning.

A little joy.

A little chicken soup.

And then doing it again tomorrow.