The Magic of Wounds...

I know, where the hell am I gonna go with this?

I am sure there is absolutely nothing about your wounds that feel magical...but I promise you, if you are working on healing, there is magic in the process and the result is, well, life altering.

I will use myself as an example...( I could use anyone really because I believe the process is the same for us all, but I feel like not using myself as an example is kind of chicken shit...)

Like everyone, I had some shit go down in my life. In the beginning, I had really nothing to do with it.  I was just the hapless victim of someone with grave illness and a sick mind.  And then that kind of set me up for a lifetime of signing up for similar treatment.  Only I didn’t know that for a very long time.  I made a fundamental error in judgment attempting to make sense of my life and all that went down.  I believed (as most children do) that the way I was treated was somehow my fault.  That I was somehow to blame for the way another person(s) acted and treated me.  And I became this flawed person in response.  Always feeling like I was not good enough, that I deserved shitty treatment from others and so I kind of sought it out.

Then the pain of it all turned me towards booze as a check out mechanism because I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.  I needed to disappear while still being present and alcohol was the perfect way to deal with the crippling anxiety I woke up with every day. In truth, alcohol allowed me to function and develop this personality that was far more capable than I actually was.  And I hid out there, in my boozy sanctuary, until the sanctuary turned prison like and I had to make a decision to stay there forever or jailbreak my way into a sober life.

I chose the later and it has made all the difference.

Now I would love to tell you right here that getting sober was enough to change my habit of picking people who did not value me, love me or support me.  No, instead, it made me pick them more.  Now sober and without anesthetic, I think I became more desperate to find acceptance and grace from the people I pulled into my orbit. Never realizing that my criteria for friendship or partnership was inherently flawed.  Not realizing that I was the one who was picking rotting, low hanging fruit.

I honestly didn’t know how to do it better.  So I just kept making the same mistake over and over again.  And while I was busy selecting relationships that were not so good for me, I was working on me the whole time.  And while this one area of my life remained kind of mired in a hidden self destruction, I couldn’t really see it.

But I worked on other areas of my life, earlier traumas that were persistent and life lasting.  And I stayed sober.  And I grew and deepened a faith in something bigger than me.  And I spent a lot of time outside, hiking, walking long sandy beaches, spending time alone, camping, living.

I didn’t know it at the time but what I was doing was what was causing my wounds to turn magical.  Transforming them from things that almost took me out, to things that were catalysts for change and then evidence of growth.  And somehow in that whole process that which was born of pain and loss and heartbreak was recalibrated into something that felt like magic.  All the things that almost killed me, healed me.  I simply had to be brave enough to face the blackest parts of my own soul, and somehow in turning towards instead of away, magic occurred.

(Side note - my default setting is to turn away.  And, for very often in my life, the lesson has been to lean into, turn towards: the pain, the loss, the heartbreak, others.  I always want to find the solace and peace I crave by withdrawing from life, and the answer is always  a resounding no.  It is in turning towards that the magic happens).

So I have learned to turn towards myself, to God, to others, to faith and trust and joy and all those other life affirming gestures that make your life feel worthwhile. And as this process unfolded, I began to see that one of the main reasons I was so stuck in this repetitive pattern was because of the company I kept.  I was literally surrounded by people who sucked me dry, chewed me up and spit me out.  I was appreciated but never valued, and it was a hard day when I had to see that I was, once again, at the very epicenter of my own misery...

2022 was a year of a lot of turning away, at least that is how it seemed at first...but looking back, I wasn’t turning away so much as I was turning towards, me.  I did walk out and away from a great number of foundational relationships in my life. However, those relationships were not supportive of the growth I needed to do, so they had to go.  I couldn’t remain in them and do the work I needed to do.  So I turned away from them and towards myself and God and everything changed.

I began to be more careful about who I let in and who got my time.  I spent a lot of time alone.  I spent a lot of time sitting with a great deal of loneliness and loss.  But I just allowed it to be there and trusted that my experience was that when I turned and faced what I was most afraid of, I was somehow, magically healed in the process.

It took one more completely diabolical and fucked up relationship to seal the fate of my participation with people who were sick and pretty committed to practicing their illness ad nauseaum.  But I hit a bottom in that relationship that changed it all for me.  It brought me to a depth where I finally learned that the way other people treat me is the result of two reasons:

1. It is about them. Not me. I always thought I got the treatment from other because that is what I deserved.  Never realizing that the way other’s treat you is really about them and not you at all.

2. And because I let them.  Oh, I had a myriad of reasons as to why I let them in and then gave them all I had.  But the real reason, which was devastating in its acknowledgment, was that I really didn’t believe I deserved any better.  So I kept getting what I got because I refused to heal the parts of me that allowed the shit to perpetuate.

And it was the moment I saw both things as true, that the hurt turned towards healing.  And the alchemy of that particular combustion was nothing sort of fucking magic.

Today I am more cautious about who I allow to get close to me, who I spend my time with and how close I move toward others.  Today, there is a proving ground, not to put people through the paces, but so that I can slow down long enough to more accurately assess whether or not this person, who is wanting access to my life, is worthy to be there at all.

I used to take the low hanging fruit because it was abundant and required so little effort from me.  The magic of this whole awakening process is that I got the energy to climb higher and sit on a branch and wait for better goods to ripen.  

And I will tell you the vista from up there is quite lovely.  So much better than being mired in the stench of all that rotting fruit.  I can see the horizon from where I sit now.  And when I am hungry, have much better choices of “fruit” to bite into. To sink into their lives and allow them to permeate mine.

I was unaware of how much “house cleaning” my life needed right up until the moment where I couldn’t see anything else.  It took a very long time for me to realize that the fruits of my healing are not to be offered up to passersby or random strangers who promise the sun, moon and the stars but then deliver nothing of the sort.

I will be the first to say this process isn’t that much fun, but the magic that happens is worth the effort expended.

Again...still.

Always.