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.