Stitching Souls
do some wounds never heal?
โSuch wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.โ โ Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
These are the words that have been slowly floating around my brainspace lately (like the DVD symbol on those old screensavers)โฆ
And it's prompted a really interesting Svฤdhyฤya (self-inquiry, curiosity, shadow work) practice for me that I want to share in case it's helpful for you too.
This quote unsettled me, at first. What do you mean some wounds never heal?
But instead of getting hooked on that piece โ that scary notion that some things will always be painful โ I instead dove into questioning, what does it actually mean to heal?
And with the utmost respect for the author, here's what I've concluded:
Some things โnever heal" IF you believe that to heal is to face + forget. Look at + move past.
Right? Dissect, straighten out, come to terms with, and then not have to deal with again over time.
But here's what I think healing actually is:
The ongoing practice of stitching all parts of you back together again, when they've been living somewhere else.
Young you who deserved better.
Teen you who you wish knew better.
The you that needed stronger boundaries.
The you that maybe wasn't as kind as they could have been.
The you who was struggling.
The you who IS struggling.
Wounds keep some portion of our [insert your favorite word here โ headspace, soul, consciousness] beyond the present. And to heal is to coax or accept them back into the present. Integrate with the us that is now.
(This is why so much of healing is a practice of self-worth โ yes I DO forgive myself for that, yes I DO value my joy enough now to work on this. I coax scared me back to oneness. I accept selfish me back to oneness.)
Because it's PRESENT us that has the ability to relive those wounds in a new, healing (productive?) way:
breathe through unease
sweat out tension
journal to slow down the thought tornado
create rituals that help us find purpose and connect to other energies (nature or spirit, for instance)
Wounds arise (get โtriggeredโ) when we have a newfound ability to face them.
Wounds arise when we have the strength, ability, newfound space, or mindset to face themโฆ To bring them into the present where they will no longer have such a painful effect on us. Where we no longer internalize what wasn't meant to be internalized.
(When we took an occurrence or something outside our control to mean something about usโฆ For example, if someone did something to us, and we took it to mean we weren't good enough. Or something happened, and we took it to mean we are never truly safe or right or allowed or worthy.)
So, no, I suppose, some wounds never โhealโ if it means we get to forget them. There are some traumas that may always be a part of us โ something that can get poked like a sleeping bear.
But if we believe โhealingโ to mean โreturning to presentโ and stitching all versions of ourselves back into one, now, then indeed all wounds can heal.
We can turn the sleeping bear into a sleeping cub, a sleeping cat, a sleeping mouse. Smaller and smaller, less and less earth-shattering. Until, eventually, we have healed and continue to heal in a way that means, when a wound resurfaces, we begin to regard it less as a reminder of pain, and instead a reminder of our own strength and story.
Maybe some wounds never go away. But they can and do heal. So long as you have the desire to practice re-stitching back to oneness, everything can be healed.
The bear won't always be a bear.
Suffering won't always be so strong, so prolonged. Maybe it never gets completely patched over. But you stitch yourself back together in the present moment, you practice returning to oneness, and you'll no longer need to face+forget. You'll simply know that that was then, and this is now, and now is all there is.
This is what I mean when I say yogic and metaphysical practices give us the power to create our own joy. It's like a door within us that we just need to practice opening.
There's actually nothing, no wounds, standing between you and more regular presence and joy. There's only finding out which practices are most helpful and sustainable for you.
I hope the ones I share over time help add to your collection of practices. I hope everyone here knows that, if we want to be, we are all walking each other home, back to ourselves, back to oneness.
As a close, here's the imagery that kept coming to me as I was writing this:
A lotus blooms in the mud. It does not transcend the mud.
Which is why I made a quick video teaching you how to practice Padma Mudra โ the hand gesture that helps us embody or align with the energy of the lotus:
May you gain greater ease in accessing light in darkness, healing in unexpected places, and divine connection.
Yours,
Hannah