The Wounded Healer

I want it. I want the love, the growth, the collaboration, the wisdom, the pleasure. Isn’t that what life’s all about? Isn’t that what leading a good life, being a good person, making a big difference means? Imagine if we could dwell always in golden fields where love, growth, collaboration, pleasure and wisdom could be plucked effortlessly and gracefully from the experience of life. Imagine if we could all be perfect, infallible, flawless people all the time. Only that isn’t life. When we love we open ourselves to loss. When we grow we also grieve for what is left behind. When we collaborate there will always be conflict (come on, be honest, it’s inevitable). Life cannot offer us pleasure without offering us pain. The path to wisdom is the path of wounding.

 

So I’m guessing you’ve heard of the wounded healer before? The person who takes their own healing journey and discovers through that journey that they posses healing abilities that help not just themselves, but others? Inspirational people who took a bad hand and turn it into a good one. So here’s the thing. Every wounded healer needed a villain. Something or someone that creates the loss, the grief, the conflict, the wounding, the pain that is the crucible of the wounded healer’s initiation. And here’s the other thing. None of us want to be the villain of the piece. Yet we all are, at some point. There’s even a philosophy of soul contracts to help us deal with the ‘why’ behind why anyone would ever say anything hurtful, do anything mean or become a person capable of wounding others.

 

The journey of the wounded healer is a tough one. But the journey of realising sometimes you were the villain – even if unintentionally, is harder still. The journey of recognising you may cause grief, may require conflict, may instigate loss, may wound or even cause pain (even if it was in the name of something you believed in), is harder still. What if you are eternally misunderstood? Never seen for your intentions, only for the ripple effects of 1,000 interactions you only had partial control of anyway?

 

So here is a step you can take to help being the wounding healer get just that little bit easier. Picture a person or experience that has wounded you (it doesn’t have to be a big wound, you can start small) and simply say ‘I allow you to be my healer’. You can say just those words, but here’s a little more of what they mean: ‘I allow the wound I experienced through you to be the last of its type I receive. I allow your example to be the one I remember and do not repeat. I allow our interaction to take on a meaning I choose in this moment. I allow you to be my healer.’

 

We are all capable of wounding – but if we knew the person we had wounded was able to turn that experience into a healing one – wouldn’t that be a healing experience for us too?