Woundedness – womanspiritspeaks

Being Present to Our Woundedness

If we pretend that everything is all right, we will never do anything to correct what is, in truth, killing us. We must be present to our own hurt and anguish, our own wounds in order to heal.

Goddess Inspired

April 16, 2023

Tagged compassion, empathy, Ripple Effect, Suffering, Woundedness

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My husband and I were privileged to attend an opening for the latest restaurant in our city, where we were seated with a lovely young woman who worked for the company which was launching the restaurant. She was probably in her mid to late thirties. (It is hard for me to tell because everyone who is not obviously elderly looks young to me.) We had a pleasant dinner conversation, but it was apparent that her generation has some real fear about the state of the world. There is an underlying angst within her about climate, the treatment of women and minorities, the possibility of war, inequality, injustice, et al.

I believe that many of us feel this uncurrent of uncertainty and fear, but we don’t often allow ourselves to fully feel it, much less share it. I know that my circle of friends tends to try to keep things light. We don’t want to step on toes by venturing into the political realms, so it becomes easier to push those feelings down and pretend as if they didn’t exist. It is easier to wear a cheerful mask and talk about the latest football scores than to confront the existential angst of living in the modern world.

The truth is that I feel deep anguish about the state of the world. I see the brokenness and woundedness that surrounds us. Just last night there was another mass shooting where teenagers were killed. I see racial injustice, poverty, denial of health care to women and the poor, climate disasters, and war. As an empath, I deeply feel the pain of the world.

This morning I was re-reading a book called Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself, by Judith Duerk. Written in 1989, this book was one of the first books that led me on my journey to the concept of the Divine Feminine. One of the things Duerk talks about is acknowledging our woundedness. “Only by being present to the woundedness in ourselves can we be present to the woundedness of others…The woundedness in each of us must be fully owned and fully suffered for it to received succor and be comforted.” P. 104

I believe that it is imperative that we acknowledge the wounds that we carry as individuals and collectively as a nation. If we don’t acknowledge the wounds, if we don’t treat them, they will begin to fester and putrefy, infecting us with poison and killing us from within. If we pretend that everything is all right, we will never do anything to correct what is, in truth, killing us. We must be present to our own hurt and anguish, our own wounds in order to heal. We must acknowledge the past in order to heal the present as well as the future.

We have been conditioned to ignore our pain, to work through it. If we ignore it, it will go away. If we pretend like we are perfect, then we are. If we admit there is a problem, then we are weak. However, if we can’t see or acknowledge our own wounds, we can’t see or acknowledge the wounds of others. We are left with pain, frustration, even anger. We either project our wounds onto others or deny the validity of their pain. We are unable to feel empathy or compassion. In the absence of compassion, we substitute rules and laws and never address the root cause of our pain – which is not being present to our own woundedness.

The journey to wholeness is a deeply feminine, inward journey into the darkness and the depths. It is a journey to acknowledge and accept my own wounds, which is the path to healing. It is only when I acknowledge my own wounds that I can be present to the wounds of others and the wounds of the world. When I heal myself, then the ripples go out to heal the world.

Barbara Garland
April, 2023

When Does the Spiritual Become Political?

The Gift of My Woundedness

What is the gift of your woundedness? It may require going into dark places to find that gift.

Goddess Inspired

October 9, 2020

Tagged darkness, gift, goddess, Sacredness, Woundedness

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The Gift of My Woundedness

What is the gift of my woundedness? It has required going into dark places to find that gift.

It is hard to think of myself as wounded. Sure, life happens. Losses mount up. But is there really a wound, or am I just weak and not strong enough to deal with life? I think my deepest wounds are not caused by the obvious. I think the deepest wounds may stem from things that happened when I was very young. My deepest wounds were mostly caused by careless words and attitudes, not overt actions.

For example, when I was three, I talked constantly. I was fascinated by the sound of my own voice. One night, my parents told me to be quiet. I understood it to mean that I shouldn’t talk, and I have been a quiet person ever since.

My maiden name was Barbara Byler, initials being B.B. When I was a teen my dad and brother jokingly said those initials stood for Broad Bottom. I was secretly devastated and my confidence and self-esteem plummeted to rock bottom. Not only was I quiet and shy, in the eyes of the people I loved the most, I was also fat and ugly.

Growing up in my household, children were to be seen, not heard. If we questioned anything, especially my dad, it was considered “sassing.” If we were angry, we couldn’t express it out loud. We had to go to our rooms until we cooled off.

These things added up. I desperately wanted the approval of my father and the male authority figures in my life. I learned to be quiet, polite, and compliant. I learned to never express my true thoughts, although they would pop out when I couldn’t hold them in – mostly at the most inopportune times. I looked for approval and validation from people who would never give those things to me.

So the dark times in my life were the times that made me realize the extent of those old wounds. Going through an ugly divorce helped me to see that I looked for validation from the men in my life, and that those men were incapable of giving that validation to me. Bottling up anger led to shows of temper and ugly words that couldn’t be called back. Lack of self-esteem led me to wrong choices in men and other authority figures. But through those dark times, I was learning.

In the dark, I began to see that I was a strong and capable woman, that I don’t need validation by men. In the dark, I began to see that expressing my anger constructively was better than exploding. In the dark, I began a journey of transformation that continuously leads me to becoming my true Self. In the dark, I discovered the Goddess of Life and Death, the deep feminine, sacred ground of being. Without that woundedness that drew me into the dark, I could never have imagined that life could be different, that I could grow into the manifestation of the Goddess that is my birthright and my greatest gift.

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