How to be a wounded healer

Photo credit: Ali Momen

Let me preface with both an admission and a spoiler: I am probably the least qualified person to explain this paradox, but I promise to try.

Practically speaking, I can easily offer my personal, definitely not medically verified experience on healing gut issues from a years-long gluten intolerance. I’m also really good at sharing pain management tips for menstrual cramps. Anecdotal wisdom is key (so is aspirin).

However, finding a way to properly articulate how to receive and transmit God’s grace through pain is a task for which I feel totally unprepared. This is not, however, due to a lack of suffering on my part. On that matter, I am somewhat of an expert. It’s just that for the longest time I saw no use for my wounds and did my best to cover them up.

When I lost my father to cancer at 22, I was already a staunch little atheist. I believed that my dad believed he was going home, and his peace was enough for me. I spent the next seven years pouring myself into anything that attempted to make sense of – and make up for – the cruel bargain of loving someone so much in exchange for too little time with them. Mostly, I turned to books, bouncing between intellectual experts on melancholy, loss and self-healing to rationalize my pain and tell me when exactly it would relent.

I went out of my way to avoid the God of my Catholic upbringing, who I turned away from in my teens – the same loving Father my dad looked forward to meeting with a big smile on his face. I now believe it was my father’s prayers that kept me from wandering too far in the darkness in those years after his death.

It’s not lost of me that it was ultimately a wise and scholarly priest, Father Dominic, who gently led me back to the church through my familiar friends reason and intellect. Father Dominic was my parents’ spiritual director, and always gives the best counsel. It was just before my thirtieth birthday and I was exhausted from searching when my mom suggested we pay him a visit one Sunday. I told myself I was only going back for the coffee and good conversation after mass.

That was almost six years ago.

Sharing our wounds

Looking back, I can see how everything in my life led me to participating in my first-ever Catholic retreat with Women of the Word - Toronto, the Wounded Healer Part 2, last month.

Mary Filangi is the aunt of my best friend Rachele’s husband. Over the last few years, I started attending WOW-T conferences with Rachele, together with our moms. I call it the WOW era of our friendship.

Through testimonies and tears surrounded by the most inspiring women, I came to see that while grief touches all our lives in infinitely heartbreaking ways, we share a universal understanding that solace and healing from our pain can only be found in Christ. Some of us just took a little longer to get here.

At the retreat, Deacon Michael Carrera spoke of the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who introduced the concept of the wounded healer, and Father Henri Nouwen, from whom we get our Christian understanding. Deacon Chris Elliott recounted the trials of St. Francis of Assisi in a way that reminded me of my own wayward years with fondness and compassion. I dug up my copy of G.K. Chesterton’s Saint Francis of Assisi and plan to finally read it this summer.

We walked along the tranquil grounds of the St. Francis Centre, sat in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and celebrated mass. It was a beautiful day of reflection, hope and more tears (mostly mine). I can’t wait for the next one.

So, back to my original promise: what is a wounded healer and how do you become one? As I understand it, a wounded healer is someone whose suffering equips them to help others bear their own suffering. To me, it’s the Christian response to the adage, “hurt people hurt people.” Like Christ’s wounds on the cross, our scars can become a sign of hope for others.

In that case, we’re all more than qualified.

As for how you become one, I’ll let Father Dominic’s wise words help lead the way: “Courage, dear lady.”

I would love to know what wounded healing means to you! Please share your thoughts in the comments below.