Welcome to What Healing Knows

A Beginning Rooted in Wonder

Before I became a doctor, I was a child who loved frogs.

Growing up in Ethiopia, I was drawn to the quiet miracles of the natural world. Around the age of ten, my best friend Hiruth and I turned a small room, more like a shack, outside our home into a makeshift laboratory. It was no larger than a closet, yet to us, it felt infinite. We filled jars with insects, sketched what we observed, and experimented with a blend of wonder, care, and curiosity.

My older sister Meski handed us a pair of scissors, a needle, and thread. With those simple tools, we tended to the lifeless frogs we found near the garden, cutting to look inside, stitching them gently, and laying them to rest with reverence.

That laboratory was my sanctuary, a place where discovery and imagination grew without boundaries. I had no instructions, no tutorials, no smartphones, and no adult supervision. I simply followed instinct.

My father, my steady supporter, would peek in from time to time, smiling through a look of mild disgust as I showed him my growing collection of frogs and insects. My mother wanted nothing to do with slimy creatures, yet she never discouraged me. Instead, she taught me how to use needles and thread. She even crafted nets out of see-through cotton cloth and metal wire so I could catch insects and butterflies. She rarely stepped foot inside the laboratory except to burn incense to soften the smell, but she loved listening to my stories of discovery.

Meski stopped by to admire whatever new specimen I had collected, and beyond her, only Hiruth entered that sacred room. The two of us spent hours there, breathing life into our imaginations, stitching together the beginnings of who I would one day become.

A Journey Toward Medicine

That childhood wonder grew into a calling that guided me toward the study of internal medicine. For more than twenty years, I listened to heartbeats, held space for pain, and stood beside people in their most vulnerable moments. I entered the profession to be of service, and in doing so, I tried to honor the quiet wisdom I had sensed in the body since I was a child, peering into the small mysteries of life with a curious heart.

But Something Was Missing

The spaces I worked in became louder. 

The systems grew more rigid. 

Time to listen grew scarce. 

What once felt sacred began to feel rushed. 

Slowly, a question rose in me: Is this what healing is meant to be?

The longer I stayed, the more I saw how many people were disconnected from themselves. They had handed their healing over to the doctor, trusting the system more than their own inner voice. I noticed myself giving instructions rather than facilitating connection with the mind and body. The kind of medicine that helps people return to themselves was not taught in medical school, and it was rarely practiced in clinics or hospitals.

As a child, curiosity and instinct guided me as I tried to revive lifeless frogs. Now I am a physician, tending to human bodies with their own histories and hopes. This is no longer an experiment or a game. It is real. Lives, fears, stories, and bodies rest in my hands. And still, I began to see that something essential was missing: the thread that helps a person hear the quiet voice within, the one that knows what the body needs.

So the question returned, louder each time: Is this what healing is meant to be?

When I Became the Patient

My answer did not come from a textbook. It came from a turning point in my own life, a severe knee injury from a fall that fractured my bones.

My medical care was efficient, yet something felt missing. I needed to be witnessed. I needed time. I needed someone to hold space for the fear and uncertainty I carried as an injured mother.

Sitting on the exam table, I noticed the room in a way I never had. The walls felt stark, the metal and plastic equipment invasive. Unsure of what my future would look like, I hoped for a healer who could guide me toward recovery with steadiness.

Instead, I received quick instructions, a stiff brace, and a referral. The doctor’s hurried movements were familiar. I had once moved the same way, carrying the weight of the next waiting patient. One more question from me might slow his entire schedule. Still, I needed more than fixing. I needed encouragement and partnership. I felt distanced from my injured knee, as if it now belonged to the Orthopedics department rather than to me. Something for them to fix like a broken car. 

No one asked about my baseline activity or the kind of movement that shaped my daily life. Their focus was narrow: repair the knee. As an assistant tightened my brace, he said, “We are trying to fix your knee to help you walk.” I knew walking would return. What I wanted was to run.

“I am very active,” I said. “Will I be able to return to my exercises?”

“The way it looks, recovery will be very slow, and anyone who tells you otherwise is fooling you,” he replied before leaving the room.

I did not want to bring my broken knee home. It felt separate from me, as if I should leave it behind to be repaired and collected like a car at a garage. The care was transactional, the expectations low, and the path unclear. I felt like an interruption in a system that had no room for my hopes. The message was plain: I would improve only to a point, and I should accept a future with less strength and less mobility.

At that moment, I thought of my own patients sitting on the same exam table. I imagined the elders with fractures and arthritis, remembered their stories, and felt their fear. They deserved time. They deserved attention. They deserved care that met the person, not only the injury.

And so did I.

That experience led me back to the stillness of my childhood laboratory. I sat in my living room chair with my leg propped up, reread old diaries and books, wrote stories, and spent long stretches simply sitting. In that quiet, I listened to my body the way I once listened to frogs and insects. I paid attention to breath, sensation, and emotion. Something deeper began to unfold. A clearer understanding of healing took shape, and I started to discover what healing itself knows.

The Origin of What Healing Knows

What Healing Knows is the understanding that healing carries its own wisdom. It reflects the truth that the body, when given attention and stillness, remembers how to mend and how to guide us back toward balance. Healing is not created only through medicine or effort. It rises from the quiet intelligence within us, an intelligence that has always known how to repair.

This insight was forming long before my own injury. It showed up in the everyday realities of medical practice, moments I often recorded in my diaries: when I rushed out of an exam room before a patient finished speaking; when someone could not recall the medications they took; when they pointed to scars without knowing what had been done; when a person in pain sat before me and I felt I had nothing left to offer but another instruction or referral. These moments revealed a deeper pattern. People were drifting away from their own inner knowing, and the system offered little room to help them find their way back.

My injury brought these observations into sharper focus. Forced to slow down in a way I had never allowed myself to before, I sat to heal and began to notice my body with the same curiosity I once brought to my childhood laboratory. It recalibrated in its own rhythm. It asked for what it needed through subtle signals that grew clearer when I made space to hear them. Healing moved forward not because I pushed, but because I listened.

I came to see that healing is not a destination or a reaction to illness. It is a living rhythm that is always adjusting, restoring, and releasing. It does not need to be chased. It needs to be returned to.

This truth reshaped how I understood my work. Medicine can guide, relieve, and support, but the deeper movement of healing begins inside the person.

What Healing Knows was born from that stillness to help people reconnect with this internal intelligence. It honors the wisdom that appears when we slow down. It is not a replacement for medicine. It is a companion that brings compassion, presence, and coherence to the healing journey, a bridge between science and self.

That is the heart of What Healing Knows. It reminds us that true healing awakens from within.

My Mission

My mission is to help people reconnect with the wisdom already living in their bodies. I want individuals to understand that healing works best when medicine and inner awareness meet. The science of medicine helps us diagnose, treat, and relieve suffering. Our presence, attention, and ability to listen to the body help us heal from the inside out.

What Healing Knows exists to bring these two worlds together. Through storytelling, mindfulness, workshops, and restorative practices, I guide people to slow down, tune in, and trust the signals their bodies offer every day. The platform provides tools such as guided meditations, journaling prompts, mantras, and community experiences that support people in returning to themselves.

My purpose is simple and clear: to stand beside modern medicine, not in conflict with it, and to remind people that healing deepens when we honor both the science that treats us and the inner wisdom that knows the way home.

My Vision and Values

I envision a world where every person learns to trust the wisdom of their own body and recognizes it as the foundation of healing.

This vision is lived through five guiding values:

Respect honors each person’s unique story and the path that brought them here.

Integrity keeps my words and actions aligned with truth.

Inclusivity ensures that every voice belongs and every experience is welcomed.

Service offers support that uplifts, empowers, and restores.

Stillness creates the space where the body’s quiet truths can be heard.

Within this space, you will find reflections, practices, and daily rituals that nurture balance and belonging. My hope is to listen with care, hold space for your questions, and remind you that healing is not only about repairing what feels broken. It is about remembering, honoring, and returning to the life that has always been within you.

Why This Blog Exists

This blog is an expression of my work, a place where healing through storytelling comes to life. It is a companion for your journey, a space for reflection, renewal, and quiet return. Here, I share writings that tend to the parts of you that may feel unseen or unheard, and that help you reconnect with the messages your body offers each day.

Listening to the body sounds simple, but it rarely is. Many of us overlook the clues it gives us or ignore the directions it offers for our healing. The stories I write grow from years in medicine, from lived experience, and from a deep belief in the quiet intelligence of the human body and its ability to communicate.

There are no quick fixes here. Only presence. You will not be encouraged to push harder or strive to be better. Instead, you will be invited to soften, to listen, and to meet yourself with honesty and care. Most importantly, you will be asked to keep an open mind, because it is difficult to step away from what we already know, even in illness. We tend to hold on to the familiar. Yet healing often begins with the simple willingness to say, maybe there is more to this. Maybe I can pay attention in a new way.

My promise is to walk beside you as you awaken your own healing power. I will work with you to weave the science of medicine with the wisdom already living within you, because true healing begins where knowledge meets stillness and where care turns inward.

This space is meant for conversation, connection, and transformation. Together, we practice healing not as a destination but as a lifelong journey that unfolds with every breath.

What to Expect

The What Healing Knows Blog is an eight-part journey, with seven episodes in each segment. Over fifty-five days, we practice our way into deeper awareness. Then we meet a fifty-sixth day of stillness, not as an ending, but as a sacred pause to let what we learned land.

Every practice is here for one reason: to bring you into ritual, that steady inner space where you can be with yourself on purpose. Stillness is not emptiness. It is a doorway. When we slow down, the outside world loses its grip, and what is true gets louder. The body starts to speak in ways we can finally hear. This blog holds that same rhythm.

A gentle return.

A listening.

A remembering of the wisdom that has been in you all along.

You can begin anywhere or move through the full cycle.

Every other Tuesday, you will receive a new post: a reflection, a gentle practice, or a guiding question designed to help you pause, reconnect, and remember the healing wisdom already within you. Each story is also recorded in my voice so you may listen in moments of rest or movement. Alongside the reflections, you will find Tinfash 4C—breath-centered meditations inspired by the Amharic word for “breath”—simple practices to help you reset, ground, and return to yourself.

I also recommend keeping a journal, especially one where you record positive experiences each day. Noticing what nourishes you helps retrain the mind toward gratitude, resilience, and inner balance. Writing by hand slows you down in a way that typing cannot. It gives your thoughts room to form, settle, and take shape. It engages the body, focuses the mind, and strengthens the connection between what you feel and what you express. Handwriting turns reflection into a lived, physical act, allowing insights to move from the mind onto the page with intention.

In the same way, using beads to count your breath helps anchor you to the moment. Each bead becomes a point of focus, a gentle reminder to return to your inhale and exhale. It transforms breathing into a steady ritual of presence.

Let Us Walk This Path Together

Spread the healing.

I welcome your reflections, your questions, and your stories. This space is not only my offering; it is our shared journey. I read each message with care and respond with intention. Healing deepens when it is shared, so I encourage you to share this healing space with others who may need a gentle place to return to themselves.

If you share your story on social media, tag me on Instagram @drkidi.healing — I love seeing how these reflections weave into your life. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel @drkidi for guided meditations and healing conversations. You can also read my short stories on Substuck @drkdi.

Together, we will return to wholeness.

With love,

Dr. Kidi