The light that entered. because of my wounds -

And the light that emanates from the healed scars

Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

I’ve read it before, but today I again came across the Rumi quote, “Your wound is the place where the light enters you.”

I think about that a lot.

I think about my own wounds - losing two family members to suicide, mental illness that clenched my mother until she became someone unrecognizable to me, narcissistic abuse, and my own self-inflicted wound of alcoholism/abusing alcohol to medicate and to escape.

But I can honestly say -

I am proud of myself that through all this suffering -

I took lessons from it.

And I’ve become a better person.

And I am grateful. Humbled.

I believe those experiences have helped to push me to heal, and ultimately, through a lot of pain, they have shaped me into a better person.

Suffering is an interesting part of bringing us closer to God.

It’s also important for humbling us.

My wounds have made be a better listener.

They have made me more sympathetic when someone clearly has a dysregulated nervous system.

They have helped me to pause, rethinking about the ones who have hurt me, but who I now also recognize as being ‘spiritually sick’.

I go slower now.

I have noticed lately how so, so many people are in such a constant flurry of busyness and hurrying here and there.

Not work-related even.

Just…Some have very little patience to talk to and listen to and be with other people.

I have noticed how so many people listen to respond, to provide their own relevance to whatever it is that you say—oh this is how that affects me, this is my similar experience, etc.

I have noticed that if I keep asking people questions, they rarely notice that they do all the talking about themselves and they don’t reciprocate, to ask about me.

That’s fine. But I also recognize that we are much more hungry to be listened to than we are ready and willing to listen to others, to be curious about others.

We’re pretty self-focused.

One of my students said to me the other day, when I mentioned my hoped for career shift, that, “Well, you do listen well.”

I don’t know if I do, if I listen well. I could do much better, often. My mind wanders or I think about my own thoughts in response to what they are saying. I just don’t say it. I show them that I am listening, nodding, making eye contact, not interrupting, etc.

I just think that so many people don’t listen because they are distracted, they’re only thinking about or focusing on themselves, etc.

In my twelve step program, they often say, “Go slow.”

I am thankful to be going slower.

I am also thankful to be able to go slower these days.

Because I am not as anxious, as dysregulated, experiencing hang[over] anxiety, not so fearful.

I don’t have as much that sense of impending doom as I used to have.

Sure, it’s still there, at times. But it’s so much less. My anxiety, fear, existential angst is so so better than it used to be.

Getting sober was the missing piece that allowed me to put all the other pieces together - that I had worked at for years, since mom and Jeremie’s deaths.

I benefitted from the work that I did before, but of course, it needed to be there.

I am a better human being now, kinder both to myself, to community - friends and family and loved ones. I am also kinder to strangers.

Because I can make more time for them. Be present with them.

:)

And it’s all because I tended to my wounds, so now it’s where the light has entered me.

And I’m grateful.

<3