Many of us interested in spirituality and healing
have been wounded in our lives – physically, emotionally, or at a soul level.
Whether this wounding takes form by way of relational or attachment trauma, or
through personal and archetypal betrayal, it has a way of coloring our
perception and affecting our capacity to feel safe.
Our increasingly speedy and fragmented culture has come to pathologize valid
human experience such as grief, melancholy, anger, and uncertainty, giving rise
to a psychiatric and self-help community determined to “cure” or “transcend”
dimensions of the psyche that contain important (and even holy) data for our
unique paths of individuation, creativity, and meaning.
For some, initiation occurs only by way of transition, dissolution, and loss,
through an embodied confrontation with the unconscious and the unlived life.
These experiences are not signs of error or mistake, but calls to depth and
evidence of how our wounding can serve an initiatory function.
At times, deeper healing will require that the wound disclose itself in more
subtle ways within the psyche and the body, where it can seem like things are
getting worse. Tending to this organic unfolding of the healing process
requires newfound levels of courage, patience, and trust.
It is not an easy life, that of the wounded healer – one that we do not choose
consciously – but is the honorable and noble inheritance of many who are called
to the path.
It requires that we walk in this world against the grain and remain open to
further wounding and revelation of shadow, and to dare to consider that radical
possibility that the ally will appear in infinite ways. Not to harm, but to
reveal.
Even though it may seem as if we are alone – and in part we must walk this path
by ourselves – we are never truly alone, as unseen helpers, friends, and
companions are always nearby. But at times will take forms that are not always
immediately recognizable.
