We are all wounded and our process of healing is aided by telling our stories. Every wound is an opportunity for the psyche to open, for new questions about who we are in out depths.

Published in Atlanta's Oracle 20/20 Nov. 2003

Each of us has a deep intricate story. When we share our life stories, fears, victories, dreams, and even the painful pieces of our lives, we usually discover that we are much more like others than we ever imagined. We find out that we are not as alone as we thought, and that, without much effort, we belong. This yearning to share ourselves and to hear from others has evolved over a million years of facing each other around fires, in tribal councils, in extended families, in churches, or wherever people have gathered in a caring atmosphere.

The values and myths of a community, family and the accumulated wisdom of each culture is held and passed on through stories. We are born into the ongoing stories of our community. A family's story emerges with individual stories. A family that does not respect the individual stories cannot undergo the necessary revisions and change.

The use of metaphor in a story speaks to the unconscious and speeds up understanding. Noirin Foley in an article titled "The Pearl in the Crab" used the crab’s need to shed its shell as a metaphor to help her to deal with change, self-compassion, faith and trust.

A crab can experience great distress during a storm if it is disposing the shell it has outgrown. The crab's boneless, shapeless, body is vulnerable to elements and toxins before its body hardens and returns to its full strength in a couple of hours. Foley wrote, "Many times I too have felt the need to shed my shell. To shed the outgrown beliefs and ways of knowing that have served me well in the past…I have learned with difficulty to trust that the molting and vulnerability is a valuable part of change. Over time the hardening of my shell does occur and a return to harmony."

Clarissa Estes in her book "Woman Who Run With the Wolves" says, "We know when someone has grown a story and when the story has grown them. One is enabled in the story, in the medicine, by the amount of self that one is willing to sacrifice and put into it.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you burst into bloom. Then you will see what medicine they make, and where and when to apply them. That is the work. The only work." We are all wounded and our process of healing is aided by telling our stories. Every wound is an opportunity for the psyche to open, for new questions about who we are in out depths. Being wounded is an opportunity to move from our own personal story to a Larger Collective Story. A wound becomes sacred when we are willing to release our old stories and become vehicles through which the new story may emerge into time. Failure to release our old story is to repeat the same story.

The wounding Pathos (the power to excite tender emotions) of our personal story can carry the seeds of healing and transformation. It helps us move in new dimensions and to face what is hidden to consciousness. Pathos gives us eyes to see and hear what our normal eyes and ears cannot.

Of all the wounding suffered by the soul, betrayal can be the greatest agent of the sacred for it marks the end of primal unconscious trust. A betrayal forces us to take new steps, to allow for the coming in of reflection and therefore consciousness, it is the human gate to higher religious experience. The betrayer is recognized as the instrument of the Larger Story. Betrayer and betrayed are classically bound together in a mutual story of unfolding. Each has served as a mediator of divinity for the other. The key to redeeming our betrayal is forgiveness. The greater the betrayal the greater the potency of the forgiveness. The way to forgive truly is through love.

Estes says stories can help us explore the boundaries of rage and forgiveness. Ongoing rage should not be mistaken for a substitute for a passionate life. The fieriness of rage pollutes our ideas and blinds us of other ways of seeing. The telling of the injury helps us safely work through the trauma. Story, as "medicine" is the cleansing that helps us come back to life. To return to a normal state of peace all injury has to be forgiven and allowed to heal over. Although deep purging of rage is possible, anger remains and rises up on a cyclical basis. Like regular housecleaning residual anger should become a periodic ritual.

According to Estes forgiveness too has many layers and seasons. It is not a singular act. The finishing of it all is a life work. Forgiveness is a decision not to harbor resentment. You know you have forgiven someone when you tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage. You find you have nothing left to say. You are free to move on. It may not have turned out to be a happy ever after, but it becomes a fresh Once upon a time waiting for you from this day forward.