Dressing our wounds as though they're nothing.

Notes from the wild on being tender with our wounds...

It’s been a little while since I’ve written for the Wild Times.

Thanks for your patience. It feels good to be back! I’m grateful to have a little more time & motivation in this season of life to pick up writing again and would be thrilled for you to join me on the way.

Ireland’s late, great Sinead O’Connor wrote a song called “Something Beautiful” from her album Theology released in 2007.

The song is beautiful and as my Dad always told us as kids…“listen to the words!” That’s the beauty of music or any kind of creativity really - poetry, song, art, it has a way of speaking to us so individually.

There’s a few lines in this song which say, “they dressed the wounds of my poor people as though they’re nothing. Saying peace, peace when there is no peace.” It’s a passage in scripture in Jeremiah 6:14 in the Old Testament and it speaks to me today with such relevance for us living in a fragile world.

Tending to our wounds

I’d love to give you a step by step, how to model in tending to our wounds but in my humble opinion and in my own experience, healing, growth or transformation, unfortunately, is not a linear process. It would be so much easier if it was. If there was only a check list of things we could do to make it better. But healing to me, feels more like one step forward, two steps back. Three steps forward, one step back.

Like a dance and I’m not talking about Strictly here - think more like the stumbling, fumbling, un-coordinated type of dance.

First though, I would say that we must become aware of the places within us that carry wounds. We must pay attention to our wounds. I’m not sure what yours are but I’m quite sure you carry some. It could be childhood trauma, bullying at school or at work, complex trauma, abuse of any kind, whether that’s emotional, physical or sexual.

These are the places that we find so difficult to go to. Rightly so because it’s painful and uncomfortable and it’s so much easier to distract with busyness, projects or to squash it all back down & pretend it’s not an issue.

In the moment, I’m not sure that anybody likes to feel pain, weep or rage and so we avoid it like the plague.

We’re fine.

Yes all fine!

Meanwhile we can be combusting on the inside.

Tending to our wounds is not ignoring them.

It’s holding them, giving space to them, nurturing the parts in us that are in desperate need of tenderness and care. There’s something here about seeing our wounded parts. Seeing them and listening to what they may be trying to tell us.

I’ll give an example. The sense of being controlled for me is triggering. By triggering, I mean every time I catch a glimpse of this I have a heightened awareness of it and often-times it creates an intense emotional reaction in me.

I realised through years of personal therapy that I lived in a highly controlled environment growing up and so this part of me screams every time I catch even a whiff of it in an interaction with someone.

This makes life tricky at times and so it’s been important for me to recognise the trigger and to see it for what it is. In these moments, I often need to take a breath, to step back from the situation for a time and to tend to this core wound. And I have to do this over and over and over again. It’s not a one time fixes all thing.

It’s very easy to go into a place of shame in these moments too but I’m learning that I can speak tenderly to those places within me. I can be gentle with myself through it. I can tell myself, it’s ok, this is tricky for you and I’m here with you.

Through therapy, I’ve done some inner child work and this is a way of re-parenting the parts of me that are calling out to be seen, understood and nurtured. I could become the critic and say to myself just get over this or it’s not a big deal but actually what the child in me needs is a gentle witness. For those wounds to be witnessed by me and then for me to provide what she needed in those spaces back then.

Tending to our wounds is not easy but it does develop in us self compassion and as we learn to grow in compassion towards ourselves we can also extend that to others.

It’s holy work and it’s hard. We can’t shy away from the pain of it all but maybe after all this is life in all it’s fullness - the joy and the pain.

I think we’re a culture that’s become obsessed with happiness over wholeness. I don’t think it’s natural to be happy all the time. I actually think it’s very unnatural and I shy away from overly happy folk 100% percent of the time.

It’s natural to have good days and hard days, good weeks and hard weeks and to learn to navigate all of it as best we can.

Isn’t that what being a human is all about?

I hope this speaks gently to you on your way…

Things that are sparking light…

Field Notes for the Wilderness - a new book by Sarah Bessey which speaks about her Evolving Faith and wilderness experiences in faith and life.

BBC’s Pilgrimage series - a documentary following a number of celebrities on pilgrimage on “The Road Through North Wales”.