Healing Fine

My infant son was scheduled to be circumcised, as was the expectation in those days. I, a young teen mother, stood in line and watched as one mother after another handed their son to the nurse and walked away. Only I went into the room and held my son during the procedure.

They left because they could not bear the sound of their baby suffering. I stayed because I could not bear the thought of my baby suffering alone.

The opportunity to comfort exists only if we dare to hear the pain.

Say these words out loud: “follow your heart.” How do you feel?

This phrase speaks to the love and emotion that makes us each profoundly human, and it alludes to beautiful ideals such as free spirit and free will. If you’re anything like me, joy and peace envelope you when you think about it. Ahhh …

The reality of following your heart, however, isn’t always so pleasant, particularly if your heart is calling you to be part of the solution to some societal issue, problem or injustice. Like war, heart following can, in actuality, be more “gory” than “glory.” And, those of us on the front lines of the helping professions are almost always the first casualties.
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“Like WHAT?”

These two words have been etched indelibly in my heart since I heard them four months ago. My neighbor, a troubled foster youth waiting to be adopted, said them to me when I told him “you can do better things with your life.”

This teenage boy had been moved around, had issues with violence and other behavior problems, and had stolen some things from my car just before this conversation of ours. He was also intelligent, funny, irresistibly charming, and very, very hurt. I told him about what I’ve seen happen to people who continue down the path he was on and told him I wanted better for him. He could do better things.

I’ll never forget the way he said “Like what?” He said it like some sort of challenge, like he wanted to hear me say something he hadn’t heard a thousand times before, like he was dying to hear something that would actually resonate for him. Sadly, I don’t think I succeeded in being more than trite, in saying anything more than the typical which he has likely dismissed over and over a hundred times before.
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Healing is something each one of us needs our own special variety of. We all have our wounds, our pains, our personal life “hits”. With our own individual makeup of strengths and deficits, we must find a way to get to them, get through them, and get beyond them—but we all inevitably have them.

Given the universal nature of the topic, I was surprised to find myself struggling to begin the site. I have endless commentary on our wounds, our process, our healing; but as soon as I tried to write, I began to question if there is a mold I need to fit, a formula I am supposed to follow. I started wondering if I should narrow the scope to something more specific, like domestic abuse; if the pieces I write should always maintain a tone: informational pieces on psychology, inspirational how-to’s, personal reflections? These questions of theme and tone, consistency and formula, only ultimately end up getting in the way of writing and sharing. The truth is that what I do best comes not from the mind, but rather from the heart. It’s fitting, then, to allow the heart lead and ask the blog to follow.

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