The wounded healer

Finding the medicine hidden within

I’m coming to appreciate how the fun of being human is playing scientist and trying to wrap our small minds around the nature of Life. To the mind, everything seems to exist in polarities. Over here it’s this, over there it’s that.

But perhaps it’s less polarity, more paradox. A singular nature rather than dual. What is relies on what isn’t, and vice versa.

To know joy, we must befriend sorrow. To know love, our hearts must grow distant. To find meaning, we must lose it.

To heal, we must be wounded. 

//

When I first began to heal, it was powerful to distance myself from my unconscious behaviors and patterns. I was starting to realize the narrative “This is how I am” wasn’t really true. I wasn’t born innately insecure or anxious. I wasn’t born believing “I’m unworthy.”

It was more like handing a costume to a toddler. They put on some bunny ears and draw some whiskers, chew a carrot, and poof, they think they’re Bugs Bunny. The show ends, they take a bow, but never take off the costume.

Seeing the costume for what it was, there was finally some clarity. Relief. 

“Everyone! Have you heard the good news? It’s not my fault I am the way I am!”

“No way, me too!”

We burst out in cheer. Bust out the good ale. Golden Years by David Bowie starts playing. Hop on tables, lock arms, and dance our fanciest jig as we swing the responsibility over to parents, siblings, lovers, teachers, society—Life itself—for why we’re supposedly broken and fucked up.

Things are finally starting to “make sense” to the mind. Now that you’ve got a fall guy for the crime, order is restored! 

But you’re not healed. 

You’ve only dipped your toes into the water on the kiddie side of the healing pool — where most people stay. Over here, it’s comfortable. Safe. Lighter. There’s ground beneath you to keep you from flailing. 

But nothing changes.

You’re still pointing a finger at someone else, just as you have subconsciously all your life. And in having one arm up gesturing at the lineup, you can’t embrace yourself with loving arms. 

You’re still holding onto and perpetuating the same narrative passed down from generation to generation.

I’m broken as I am.

I’m unworthy as I am.

It’s human to rage at no one and everyone, asking “Why did this happen to me?” In some cruel twist of fate, it feels like the Universe conspired to give you a broken home and even more broken heart.

But if you continue to identify with the wound, you never fully heal. You continue to wear “wounded” or “victim” as a costume. You embody the powerless quality needed to play the part. It’s easier this way, to have an explanation for whenever something goes “wrong” — not how you wanted it to unfold.

“It’s because of my trauma.”

“Blame my parents!” 

“This is how I am.”

Defending yourself from naysayers and haters, friends and family—everyone—while you splash in the kiddie side of the pool.

From what?

Venturing over to the deep end of healing, losing the firm ground of your narrative, and being swallowed into the darkness of your wound. Ironically, only then, does the pain start to subside, and the healing progress.

Healing isn’t when the scab gives way to a scar, but when the scar no longer carries the pain of the past. 

When you don’t merely acknowledge the wound exists, rather, embrace that it makes you who you are. 

Not “why I’m not.”

“Why I am.”

//

By John Singer Sargent - [1], Public Domain

Chiron is known as “the wounded healer.” While he was already quite skilled, it was only after he received his own deep wound, did he awaken to his true potential.

Because if you’re never wounded, would you ever feel the need, the call, to heal? Would you have experienced the pain that births the empathy needed to be a healing presence for others?

Since I was young, I’ve had a deep love for people. One you could say deepened as I grew up and received my own wounds. 

I spent my college years showing up for others. Always providing encouragement and empowerment. Always looking out for their needs, even when it cost me my own. Always trying to solve their problems.

I thought I was healing them, but really, I was trying to fix them.

As if they were broken.

Just as much as I am.

I thought in some way if I could fix them, then perhaps I’d finally mend the cracks in my own brokenness.

I’d prove “I am enough.”

I was no Chiron. I wasn’t able to heal others. But like him, I was unable to heal myself. 

For all those years spent showing up to play the “savior”, I neglected the one person who needed healing the most.

Me.

Only when pain and grief dragged me under into the depths of my wound, did I realize the narrative I’d been living by. The costume I’d been wearing.

And I let it go.

I emerged from the shadowy water, and found the scars no longer burned. Awakening my capacity as a healer. Finding the hidden medicine.

Love.

All along.

Only the deepest Love, a Love that exists without polarities, a Love that is, can heal a wound — becoming sacred.

“The wounding becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and to become the vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time.”
—Jean Houston

It sounds woo-woo or New Age, but I don’t care. As much as you received the DNA or whatever to grow this tall or have this color hair, your wound was infused into you.

Your soul. 

Life knows what it’s doing. Knows what you’re capable of and what you’re meant for, and likewise, what you’re not. Unfolding the platter of experiences and difficulties to unfold for you to awaken into your extraordinary potential.

I was born deeply sensitive so I could be wounded in the way I was. So I could go through my life bitter and believing the narrative I was unworthy of love. A narrative that would lead me to search far and wide for love, but never quite find it. A search that would unfold into the moment Life would stab that final dagger into the messy depths of my already gaping wound. But unlike previous times, like Arthur pulling out Excalibur, I found an otherworldly strength within I was unaware of to pull it out. With it, the secret medicine.

Love.

//

Your wounds aren’t why you’re not, they’re why you are. They’re why you want to give your kids a stable home. They’re why you want to show up for others even if it means martyring yourself. That’s beautiful. Noble. To a certain point. By the grace of Life, you’ll realize if you truly want to give others what you didn’t receive, you must start with yourself first.

Heal yourself first. 

Love yourself first.

Realize the Love you are. 

I don’t believe healing can progress without the intervention of “something” else. That which crafted you the way you are. That which gave you your wound. A wound that pressed you into a journey to realize that Love is the essence of everything and has always been.

Nothing is missing. No one is broken. There’s a narrative covering our eyes and our hearts, convincing us there are cracks to be fixed. To fumble around on stage, searching in others what we have within ourselves.

Your wound holds the key to your purpose, to the gift you are and have been brought here to deliver.

This isn't a call to drop your pain. Instead, a call to feel it, sink into it, wither in it. Be bitter. Resentful. Hate your parents. Hate the world. Because when you finally tire out and surrender to the rage and angst, the pain and grief, you’ll slip under into the black waters of healing. Venturing where you thought Love couldn’t survive, only to discover it was there, waiting for you all along.

Venture into the black water

Bust out the good ale

I’m not into astrology but wow (I have an Aries costume):

“Chiron in Aries is about a wound to our sense of self, our individuality and self-expression. Those of us born with Chiron in Aries may be quite good at inspiring and empowering others to express themselves freely but may not be/feel able to do so ourselves. We may have a pioneering spirit that we squash with self-doubt. Yet we act as cheerleaders for others who do what we secretly dream to be doing. This can lead to some serious resentment.”