How do you treat your wounds?
The physical ones on the surface of your skin, the internal ones that may be chronic or rise up from time to time, the energetic, psychological, and spiritual wounds, that may seem invisible and yet…
Do some become ignored? A part of you? Hold power over your thoughts and actions? Do some fester, or get scratched over and over, oozing out a plethora of goo? Are some left alone to heal themselves? Or worked with to get at the root and build new flesh, new energy, new patterns, or ways of being?
This describes at least some of they combinations of what I have done with my wounds. Somehow in that mix, I found that once I understood my wounds and incorporated them into my being, or simply trusted that they’d heal, I found comfort and… confidence.
I’ve been feeling into this in different ways for the last few weeks as, one day, out of the blue, I had an old, traumatic, wound re-triggered and rise to the surface, my heart splitting open. A wound that I knew wasn’t completely healed over and yet, has come so far and has changed so much.
The difference this time?
Instead of having a secondary or tertiary response of anger at the wound for surfacing, being there at all, trying to analyze it yet again, or engage in old patterns of self-retribution to try to force it to go away (which…. never worked and only picked at it, making everything so much worse) I simply said hello.
Hello, old wound. I see you. I feel you. I recognize you. We can co-exist for the time being. I thought, maybe, you were gone. You feel different this time and the same, too. It’s okay. You’re okay. We are okay.
For the next few days, my heart healed back over, expanded out again in pain, then contracted again in healing. It only took a few days and then, it was as if nothing happened. Yet everything was different. Something more from that old energy surfaced, released, became exposed, and transformed, leaving me with a new, recapitulated, heart space that felt fresh and rejuvenated.
From this newly exposed and loved heart, I now feel an even deeper sense of understanding and recognizing the wounds those I meet each day carry, and try my best (though not always successfully) to be present as they tend to their wounds as well.
This, turning wounds into medicine for oneself and for others, this is the work of the wounded healer.
It is also the way of the wise ones–the witches and healers throughout all time. One of many ways of learning how to cycle with what is–the cycles too, of life and death.
As I was witnessing this experience, I was also finishing up the last sections of Dreaming with Heather. Each one of the plants I write with takes me on a deep immersion into their medicine. A journey in every possible way and dimension to communicate what they want to have come through.
With connection to the primordial Celtic hag goddess, Cailleach, Heather embodies the ancient archetypal energies of the wild woman, the wise woman, and the crone, and within these, the spirit of living authentically, embracing the sacred feminine, and understanding the cycles of life and death (with a particular connection to the spirit world or otherworld).
When you ingest Heather as a tea or tincture she, along with many other healing abilities, helps break up and clear out old, stagnant energy. This, sometimes, is the old wound that wants to come out of you. Part of my learning has been to let it go–to not identify with the wound or even the archetype of being, “the wounded one,” or “wounded healer,” as romantic as they sound, but to discern how to be with the sometimes excruciating pain of letting that old information and those sensations go.
In my experience and now, with the help of Heather to support this process, once the debris of an old wound is gone, everything changes, and so many more possibilities for how to use the newly created energy (that takes the place of the old) come through. Whatever they may be for you.
There’s SO much more Heather has to share. I hope you’ll check out her book now available as an eBook and paperback.
For more information, visit the book’s page.
eBook available for Amazon Kindle (device, app or laptop):
US, CA, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, JP, BR, MX, AU, IN
Paperback book available:
US, CA, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, JP, AU
*The information shared in this post is not intended as medical advice or diagnosis. This post was originally published as a newsletter in August 2021.
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