The Taproot
Perhaps being human means that it’s ok that there are some wounds that never fully heal
I don’t talk about my childhood much anymore. I figure that more than a dozen years of various forms of therapy, medicine ceremonies and healing modalities of all kinds seems like plenty of time spent processing any such nightmare. It now mostly lives packed in linen and love within my mind, where my inner child and I visit and I give her what she never got. And anyway, I’ve built a damn good life despite all that.
However, sometimes, even after all the many many forms of healing work I’ve done, despite being a therapist myself, despite an adoring husband and reasonably good health, sometimes the old wounds begin to ache unexpectedly, like a battle scar in bad weather, or maybe like the lightening bolt on Harry Potter’s head. Slowly I’ve been practicing not treating this as a problem or proof of my own shortcomings.
The idea that there is a place called “healed” that we are meant to arrive at strikes me now as possibly a folly or an illusion. Just as there is no once-and-for-all where my house is clean and I should now be forever done tending to it, nor my garden beds forever rid of weeds.
Perhaps there is something sacred in the necessity of continuing to tend to the places we care about; our hearts, our homes, our hobbies.
One of my passions in this life is herbal medicine. And one thing I find really poetic about herbs is that many of the most potent medicinal plants are what some people call “weeds” (I’m looking at you, Dandelion!) These plants that suburban lawn guardians try to eradicate are often in truth potent healers.
So this poem came through as I contemplated the question, what if this ache, this melancholy, this fear I’m trying to get rid of actually has its own medicine that I’m not seeing? What if these cycles of descent into old pain are actually carving out caverns in my heart of great importance?
I hope you like it, dear reader.
The remnants of some childhoods and some wounds work like a weed too stubborn and deep to ever be pulled out by the root. This one sends up an ugly sprout once again into the manicured garden of my life Season after season I have fought it in all the ways I know how each time hoping it is gone for good and each time it rises once more I despair convinced I am failing Who do I think I am supposed to be? Some robot where the hard drive can be wiped clean of what came before? Perhaps being human being alive means that there are some wounds that never fully heal some injuries that will always ache in certain weather patterns some wars a soldier never fully comes home from Can I make our peace with that and hold this pain gently instead of going back to war with myself? Remember child - says that quiet voice inside, every weed contains a medicine if you know how to see it So what if the weed you are trying to pull out eradicate eliminate contains the medicine the world needs? Perhaps the sacred work of the heart is not to simply see the medicine but to become the medicine By loving these broken wounded places in you so fiercely that others catch the scent of that love on the breeze whenever you are near that the seeds of that love hitchhike on the wind to find new homes where such love may continue to grow
If this spoke to you, please feel free to leave a comment below. I love hearing from you.
With love,
Olivia