The work we do toward healing our wounds does as much (or more) for everyone around us as it does for ourselves. We have the choice to continue to transmit our suffering or to do the hard work of transforming that suffering so we can transmit healing and compassion.
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We all have parts of ourselves that we believe to be unlovable, and our responses to this belief cause so much brokenness and heartache. The path to wholeness is through re-integrating those parts of ourselves we thought were unlovable and learning to love ourselves just as we are. Here’s what this path has looked like for me.
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Last week’s post generated a number of questions from readers about what I meant by dancing with my thoughts, so this week I explore a bit further what I mean by seeing my mind as a dance floor and how that helps me deal more productively with unwanted thoughts and memories. What does the image of your mind as a dance floor mean to you?
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When I get quiet, my brain loves to generate an unending parade of memories of my failures, embarrassments, and mistakes to accuse me of my unworthiness. It’s easy to get hooked into believing its judgments of me, but this prolonged season of quiet is teaching a new way to dance with these shoulda-coulda-wouldas.
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Last week’s post about touching our wounds with love seems to have hit a chord with many of my readers, and I’ve heard from some of you that this is something you’d like to learn to do better, but you’re not sure how to go about it on a practical level. This week, I share my exercise for doing this that I’ve found to be particularly healing. My hope is that it can be a starting place for you to find your own way to touch your wounds with love.
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An unexpected (but very minor) surgery last weekend helped me notice the different way I touch my wounds. One of these ways of touching my wounds inevitably caused more pain, and that’s the kind of touch I employ all too often (physically and emotionally). But there’s another kind of touch that is much more healing and comforting. It comes naturally to me with physical wounds, but it is an even more powerful healing touch when facing emotional wounds. How do you touch your wounds?
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Telling our story of brokenness can help initially as we process what’s happened to us, but it eventually just keeps us stuck. One of the most powerful gifts of kintsugi gold is learning to let go of the old story and our reasons for telling to focus instead on a new story of how we’ve healed and grown in the aftermath. That new story offers tremendous space for continued growth!
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Greater compassion for others who are hurting is a natural outcome of having been hurt deeply ourselves, but that kind of compassion is easy. There’s a much harder kind of compassion that is developed only through times of great brokenness as we face the monsters in our own shadows that drive us in our deepest grief and fear. Learning this hardest kind of compassion offers so much healing for ourselves and helps diminish injury in the future as we shift our perception of others.
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An unexpected outcome of paying more attention to how I talk about others has been a much greater awareness of how I talk to myself, especially about the broken places in my life. What began as an attempt to be more of a healing presence in the world around me has taught me a lot about supporting my own healing. Have you ever paid attention to how you treat your broken places?
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A recent morning commute through thick fog reminded me of how similar that is to the experience of grief after a loss. It makes the regular, everyday routine that much more challenging to deal with. Navigating through this fog of grief has much in common with that recent drive to work, and today’s post highlights some of those similarities and the lessons it can teach us.
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