Wounded Healers
Listen: "What was I made for? by Billie Eilish
Hurt people hurt people. It’s true. If you have lived long enough, you have been hurt by wounded people and you have wounded others yourself. However, the reverse is true as well. Healed people heal people. In fact, the best healers are people who have suffered, gone through a healing process, and learned to transform their wounds into sacred wounds.
How do wounds become sacred wounds? I remember reading a book by Henri Nouwen when I was in college entitled The Wounded Healer. The title alone grabbed my attention, but the content struck a deep resonance in my spirit. Nouwen believed that our common wounds and sufferings could be the starting point for our service to one another. Through openness, honesty, humility, and vulnerability, we can help each other heal from our wounds.
As a teenager, I had a transformative spiritual experience and became a follower of Jesus. At the age of sixteen, I felt called by God to devout my life to serving in Christian ministry. Prior to that sense of calling, I was participating in the recreational drug culture of the 70’s. I really wasn’t into formal religion or church, so I was wondering why God would call a teenager with a spotted past into ministry. Nouwen’s book gave me hope. Jesus was a wounded healer. Maybe I could be a minister of the “wounded healer” ilk. I felt a deeper sense of my calling: to be a wounded healer.
From that point on, I never tried to hide my past from anyone. Throughout my forty-year ministry career, I would occasionally mention my past in a sermon or in a counseling session. Every time I did that, I would have teenagers or adults who were struggling with drugs, addiction, or other life issues, and they would seek me out to talk about their struggles. It was like a superpower in ministry. My vulnerability about my past would give people the courage to open up about their own struggles.
I never imagined I would go through a three-quarter life crisis due to insomnia. In my late fifties after forty years of successful ministry, I wound up in rehab for a two and a half year Xanax and alcohol problem. I made some poor decisions under the influence of those drugs, and I hurt myself and others. I was humiliated and ashamed. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I thought my life and ministry were done.
On September 10, 2019, after a public fall from grace, a loss of my career, and the end of a thirty-seven-year marriage, I decided to give the recovery community a chance. I ended up finding a sponsor and took a year to work through the twelve steps while also working with two therapists.
When I got to the twelfth step, I was reminded of the concept of “The Wounded Healer.” The big book of AA didn’t use that phrase, but the concept was crystal clear: “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other alcoholics” (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 89). Alcoholics helping alcoholics. Wounded healers. It’s one of the brilliant cornerstones of the twelve-step program, and the principle applies to all our wounds and sufferings (divorce, cancer, grief, death, crisis, etc.). We don’t heal in isolation and secrecy, but we do have the potential to heal together as wounded healers.
Richard Rohr is one of my favorite authors who has written on this topic so beautifully in so many of his books. Rohr says:
If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of many of the greatest novels, myths, and stories of every culture. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children (Richard Rohr, “Transforming Pain,” cac.org, October 17, 2018).
So, I decided once again to be honest, open, and vulnerable with my wounds and my fresh past, instead of isolating and hiding. And much to my surprise, it’s true again. My sacred wounds are helping others heal. Spirituality Adventures and my new work with Living Water Christian Church—it's all about how God calls all of us to be Wounded Healers.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2023
