Our Deepest Wounds

“Our deepest wounds are the lens through which we see the world.”

I wrote that in my journal on June 5^th 1994. I was working through yet another layer of healing. Recovery has been layer after layer. There have been many AHa! moments, and

also many sad but happy days of realizing that as wounds are revealed so are layers of distorted thinking.

My wounds were old and deep, and as my friend Susan tells me, “You came by these honestly.” But for a long time I had no idea how much those wounds were running my life, and how thoroughly—almost elegantly, they distorted what I saw and heard and believed. And yes, even now too.

We can’t get there any faster than we get there.

Last year, when I was writing, “Never Leave Your Dead” my book about military trauma, I had the chance to spend time with—and learn from—William P. Nash, MD, who is the Director of Psychological Health for the United States Marine Corps. One of the things that Bill told me is this:

“One of the most ancient principles of medicine is this: ‘Where the tenderness is the greatest is also where the injury is worst.”

It is true of our emotions and our soul as well. Our wounds shape us, and our pain helps to diagnose our injuries, and to prescribe the healing experiences that we need.

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More on trauma and injury in my new book: "Never Leave Your Dead" published by Central Recovery Press.

Recovery As a Rule of Life

Long ago, back in the 5^th century, monks began to live and worship together in communities. They were called Monastic Orders and they followed various schools of thought on how to live a spiritual life. They called their plans, or sets of instructions, a “Rule of Life”.

A monastery’s “rule” organized the monk’s daily life and it dictated times for prayer, for meditation, for gathering together as a community, for meals and for how to behave during meals etc. The monastic rule of each Order also dictated how the monks should behave with each other. 

Some of those early rules have come down to us in church and spiritual practices. For

example we know the Benedictine Rule—from Saint Benedict—and the Ignation Rule from Saint Ignatius. Some of the spiritual practices that recovering people use today are taught to us on retreats or by a spiritual director and they come from these ancient rules of life.

Recently I have been reading Margaret Guenther’s book, “A Home in the World” which is about how to make spirituality a part of daily life and I now see that recovery—via Twelve-step programs—is itself one of the finest rules for life. Our steps and our traditions offer guidance on prayer, meditation, community life and a tradition of sponsorship and teaching. We jokingly say these are “suggestions” and they are, in the same way that the early monks received suggestions to pray five times each day. 

Over time in recovery we incorporate these practices into our recovering lives. We also follow the suggestions to improve our relationship with God or a Higher Power. The reminder that this program of ours is ultimately about a spiritual way is noted in our Twelfth Step, which reminds us that the previous eleven steps are intended to result in a “spiritual awakening”. The steps are not to get us abstinent or sober but rather to get us to God. But sometimes we miss that point.

It makes sense that we have ancient roots. Our 12 steps come from the six steps of the Oxford Group—the spiritual tradition that enabled Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob to get sober.  We sometimes forget that Bill and Bob got sober through the Oxford Group—not in AA. There was no AA when they first got sober. It was after their recovery began that they adapted those six Oxford steps to be more inclusive—and more palatable—to men and women of wider faith. 

There is something lovely in realizing that we in Twelve Step recovery share a tradition that monks lived by ages ago. It is a rule of life costing not less than everything.