Nothing has hurt me more than healing what hurt me. I have been taken aback at how hard it is to heal wounds you did not inflict upon yourself and its even harder to heal the ones you did inflict upon yourself because of decisions made out of trauma responses, our desperation to be loved, and the will to survive. It has been the most shocking journey of all for me. It has been painful, it has pruned me, it has grown and changed me and it has set me free.
I remember when I was around Twelve years old staying with my cousins and I had a pretty bad bike wreck after traveling down a steep hill as fast as my adolescent legs could pedal me. I scraped up almost every inch of my body that day and hobbled home with so many cuts and scrapes and tears streaming down my face.
But what stands out the most to me about that incident is the cleaning of the wounds, and bandaging, and healing. It was more painful, I felt, than actually being cut open from head to toe. I hated it. I then had to find a new way to sleep that didn’t hurt and protect the wounds so they wouldn’t reopen and could heal.
I have found my healing journey in adulthood to be so similar to that bike accident. Once it happened, I had to acknowledge it. I had to face it and feel it and hobble my way to healing. I had to clean it and bandage it. I had to protect myself from further wounding, infection, or injury. I had to live with it's pain and patiently wait for it's healing as I did my best to be gentle with myself in recovery.
But, it's easy to see physical wounds, cuts, scrapes, scabs and broken bones. It’s obvious. We can’t deny it. It's the emotional ones that keep us living buried in shame, denial, and angst. We can pretend they don’t exist…and the more we try to deny and not face the pain of healing, the further and further we lose ourselves to our wounds and it’s pain. The more and more we people please, the more and more we drink, the more and more we need to fill our lives with busy work and attention and recognition to dull the ache. The more and more we need to buy more things, make more money, or have another lover… its all to fill the gaping wounds that we refuse to tend to so they can heal.
Because healing hurts.
And it hurts badly.
When we think on our wounds- whether it be from childhood, adult relationships, unfortunate circumstances such as illness, or watching those we love suffer- It is, most often very painful, and to venture on the journey of uncovering some truths behind these wounds can be, and for me, has been the most painful of all.
To admit that my parents could have and should have done better but they chose not to is a gut-wrenching admission one that took me years and lots of healing to say out loud . Albeit, their own childhood wounding bled straight down upon the backs of me and my sister, it was a choice they made not to heal and to choose themselves nonetheless.
It is not easy to uncover the wounds we bury so deep. But until we bring them to light and give them the voice of truth, they will continue to scream at us the biggest, ugliest lies that we will forever strive to silence.
When we conceal instead of heal, we start to believe all the things trauma tells us like: we are insignificant and can never measure up, that we are unlovable because those who should have loved us, didn’t, we are worthless and and will never be enough.
But when we put in the work to uncover the wounds, name them out loud, process the pain and grief, we give a voice to truth. The truth which reminds us how loved we are, how valuable we are, how we deserved more and better and what was done to us was not because of us, but because of the poor choices of others who did not heal themselves. These truths help us to do better. They ignite in us a fire so bright it heals not only ourselves but those around us: our friends, family, children and ultimately future generations. Healing is painful but it is unbelievably powerful.
It has taken me a while to get to a place of healing and understanding of what it actually looks like. We have been conditioned to think it means long baths and milk chocolate. But it’s so much more. It is saying no to that which drains you because you are no longer yearning for love and afraid of everyones disappointment. It means setting boundaries with those you love. It is making life decisions that help feed the truth that you are loved and valuable instead of ones that further infect the wounds and its lies that we are not. This can look like less people in our lives. Healing often looks like quality over quantity. It is no longer looking for love in all the wrong places and it is starting to believe we don't need anything external to make us feel loved and valued because we are loved and valued and made by and in the image of a perfect God. Healing is being okay if things are not okay and letting people, places, and things go when they are not giving us life but robbing us of it. Healing is hoping for our future, being curious and empathetic towards our past, and being so gracious and compassionate with ourselves in the present.
It took me so long to get to this place, one: because it’s painful to heal and two: because, for me, it seemed selfish. I have been taught and counseled over and over to take my eyes off myself and my own pain and to focus on others. But I (and many others), would argue acknowledging and healing our wounds is the most selfless act there is. Some wounds are so painful, so deep and so bloody, that anytime that you spend focusing elsewhere is time spent mostly for yourself, your own validation, and to fill a void in you the deep pain has left. There is no focus on anything else anyway. Unhealed wounds are always there as the background noise in the soundtracks of our lives.
Have you ever tried to do something else with a throbbing toothache or migraine? With that kind of excruciating pain, we are not our best self. Anything we do, we are doing to either alleviate the pain or distract from it. Trauma wounds are exactly the same. Without hobbling bloody, beaten, bruised towards healing cleaning the wounds, protecting ourselves from further wounding, and being gentle with ourselves in the process, most if not all of our time and efforts are spent trying to alleviate pain, numb it, or distract us from its ache.
Healing is hard.
It is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
But nothing has given me more life. Just like my bike accident that day, I will forever have the scars. But now instead of hiding my wounds and pretending they don’t exist, I wear the scars like a badge of honor that reminds me how badly life can hurt, and how much we can heal.
