You Can't Heal Until You Know What Needs Healing

Photo by Chance Agrella from Freerange Stock

“Awareness is the first step in healing.”
― Dean Ornish

Recently, I’ve been healing from a traumatic injury and its surgical repair. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on how remarkable a process it is. It’s afforded me an opportunity to dive deep and contemplate all sorts of nooks and crannies in my mind and soul and to observe life and myself in ways I hadn’t experienced before now. 

In watching my healing journey unfold over the past couple of months — albeit at a seemingly glacial pace — I can’t help but see how the process is the same as it is for emotional wounds. It’s been an interesting reminder about how we have the ability to go from pain to wellness — although sometimes things have to get a little worse before they get a lot better.

I’m reminded of a biopsy I had several years ago. A little chunk was taken out of my inner ankle, not a nice place for the sting of needles with that nasty burning anaesthetic. But at least it wasn’t quite as horrible as having several of them in the arch of my foot some years earlier, for the removal of a mole that was trying to be melanoma when it grew up. 

Anyway, the doc took out a little chunk of my foot and stitched the hole together. I was told not to remove the dressing for a week. But I’d had a few such procedures in my life, and on the fourth day, I knew this was just not feeling right. It was hurting way too much. It didn’t help that it was in a place that moved with even the slightest movement of my foot so it was constantly being irritated.

I ignored the doc’s advice (haha, wouldn’t be the first time and sure as hell wasn’t the last!) and removed the dressing. I discovered that all the stitches had come out — well, there were two left at one end but they weren’t holding anything together anymore. They’d come apart but were still stuck in my skin, and there was a gaping hole where a little piece of me used to be.

Actually, it looked kinda cool. Sorta like a bullet hole, I’m guessing, remembering my shooting days and what my guns did to the targets, only this was in technicolour. A bullet hole with several stitches still stuck in my skin but none of them being remotely useful. 

The district nurse came round for a visit, took a look, redressed it and said to leave it till I saw the doc a few days later. I questioned her advice and despite hearing that little voice inside screaming at me to ignore her, I didn’t. As I feared would happen, by the time I got to the doctor, the wound had begun to heal with the stitches in it. So it had to be ripped open to get them out.

If I’d thought it had been hurting the previous week, I was wrong. Egads. I had to stay “Stop!” at one point; the pain was so intense, it was making me feel sick. But finally, the last stitches were out.

For the next few days, it was more painful than at any time since having the procedure. The entire area around my ankle and heel was swollen, purple, red, all sorts of pretty agry colours. It caused me a fair bit of grief, even when I wasn’t shuffling through the cottage rather gingerly.

I remember that in the midst of this going on, I was doing some counselling work with a client. During the session, she divulged some extremely painful experiences from her younger years. She dreaded thinking about them, and the idea of speaking about them was even worse.

However, through our session, she could see that she had been dragging these issues around with her since they happened. She could see that they’d been affecting her feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. She saw that they’d affected her relationships and that ignoring those wounds wasn’t the same as healing them.

She and I would have to do a little digging. Her own repair attempts had done as much good as my stitches that had come apart. There had been a gaping wound in her soul, but the emotional damage that was done for years had been there, stuck in the middle of any efforts to heal.

Just as my wound was trying to heal around those stitches, this woman’s wounds would never heal properly under the dressing of her silence. They would continue to fester, cause infection, creating one problem after another in her life. 

I know what this is like. I carried the memories and scars of all kinds of abuse for many years. It’s horrible to live with it; it’s terrifying to look at it. But what sweet relief when you make it past that point and into a place of strength and healing…

When you experience a painful or traumatic emotional event, it changes you. Even if you shove them to the side and try to pretend they don’t exist, they’re just like that hole that was closing up around those useless stitches and hiding under the dressing on my foot. It doesn’t just go away because you don’t talk about it. It doesn’t just go away because it happened a long time ago and you don’t think about it much anymore. 

It’s all still there, just like those damned stitches in my wound as it tried to close around them.

There comes a time when we must be brave and face what hurts us. We must bring it out into the light where we can see it and actively do something about it. This is how we become stronger. We stop letting our pain control our lives because if we don’t, we’re giving our power to the people who caused the damage in the first place, and we’re allowing them to ruin the future.

After several more days, the swelling and discolouration on my foot were still there but there came a point when I noticed an actual decrease in the pain. Although I wasn’t dancing a little jig, I knew I’d turned a corner and that nasty little hole was healing. 

Take heart, if you are suffering. This is just a little reminder that we are capable of great healing — on all levels. The first step is to uncover and address what it is that needs to be healed.

And that step is also the first on your road to peace and happiness.

Read the story of my traumatic injury here.

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