The journey of the wounded healer

Many of us interested in spirituality and healing have been wounded in our lives – physically, emotionally, or at a soul level. Whether this wounding takes form by way of relational or attachment trauma, or through personal and archetypal betrayal, it has a way of coloring our perception and affecting our capacity to feel safe.

Our increasingly speedy and fragmented culture has come to pathologize valid human experience such as grief, melancholy, anger, and uncertainty, giving rise to a psychiatric and self-help community determined to “cure” or “transcend” dimensions of the psyche that contain important (and even holy) data for our unique paths of individuation, creativity, and meaning.

For some, initiation occurs only by way of transition, dissolution, and loss, through an embodied confrontation with the unconscious and the unlived life. These experiences are not signs of error or mistake, but calls to depth and evidence of how our wounding can serve an initiatory function.

At times, deeper healing will require that the wound disclose itself in more subtle ways within the psyche and the body, where it can seem like things are getting worse. Tending to this organic unfolding of the healing process requires newfound levels of courage, patience, and trust.

It is not an easy life, that of the wounded healer – one that we do not choose consciously – but is the honorable and noble inheritance of many who are called to the path.

It requires that we walk in this world against the grain and remain open to further wounding and revelation of shadow, and to dare to consider that radical possibility that the ally will appear in infinite ways. Not to harm, but to reveal.

Even though it may seem as if we are alone – and in part we must walk this path by ourselves – we are never truly alone, as unseen helpers, friends, and companions are always nearby. But at times will take forms that are not always immediately recognizable.

Art by Enrique Lopez Garre

My new book - A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times 

My previous book - The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You

My online course - The Path of the Wounded Healer

The portal to new life

We’ve been through so much over the last year, full-spectrum reorganization and the loss of our familiar reference points. A wearing away of the axis around which we’ve been spinning and orienting - personally, culturally, and collectively.

Not only external, but internal quarantine, where so much of what we thought we knew about ourselves, who we are and what matters most to us, what we’re doing here, and where we’re headed… has been called into question, dismantled, and fallen apart.

Who I am and the way things were supposed to unfold: the person who was supposed to be by my side, the work I was supposed to do, the body that was supposed to be healthy, a psyche where there was never going to be any restlessness, depression, loneliness, or anxiety.

It’s important to slow down, fall to the earth and the mud and the womb, to hold the broken pieces near, and to grieve. To mourn not only the loss of health and life, but also the dream of the way we thought it was all going to turn out.

The rebirth part of the death-rebirth cycle is embodied by way of our willingness and capacity to grieve. The portal to new life opens through conscious, embodied lamentation, to gather the shards of the heart and collect them in a holy vase.

And open to the possibility that this process of “falling apart” is not some great cosmic error or mistake we need to correct or repair, but an emissary of the archetype of wholeness, as we open to rebirth and what it is that will emerge from the ashes of dissolution.

It is love, of course, that will guide the reorganization and its unfolding. But it is love, too, that is the substance of the ashes, and also of the tears, the tears of grief and the tears of joy… the tears of the earth herself.

Photo of Yosemite Tunnel, Tuolumne Meadows by James Donovan

My new book - A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times 

My previous book - The Path is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You

My online course - The Path of the Wounded Healer

Free video from Matt Licata - Spiritual Bypassing, Shadow, and the Figures of Light

Dear friend, 

I’m writing to share with you a recent free video I recorded entitled, "Spiritual Bypassing, Shadow, and the Figures of Light,” which you can sign up to view at no cost. 

In this short webinar, I explore the phenomenon of spiritual bypassing and how through greater awareness, understanding, and kindness, we can engage our spiritual lives in a deeper, more heartfelt, and more embodied way.

We are wired as relational beings to attach and connect with others, and as little ones with open and sensitive hearts, brains, and nervous systems, we'll do whatever it takes to feel safe, seen, held, and included.

In order to be received and to feel that we truly belong, we inevitably disconnect from parts of ourselves, aspects of our personalities, and vulnerable pieces of our souls. These split off dimensions of what we are end up being "relocated" in what is referred to as "the shadow," where they remain, awaiting a time when it is safe to return.

"Spiritual bypassing" is one of many protective and avoidant strategies that we employ to keep us out of too much pain, fear, panic, overwhelm, and shame, from a direct confrontation with our own shadow, trauma and attachment wounding, and from the terror of rejection, blame, and abandonment.

By bringing curiosity and discernment to how this phenomenon may be expressing itself in our lives, we can discover the light and the gold that have been sent into the shadow, and what it would mean to allow and help it to return home, back into embodied, conscious awareness.

Also, there is now a self-guided, home study version of my online course, Embracing the Shadow and the Path of Light. This course was originally presented live online between December 2020 and February 2021. It is a 9-session course that you can take at your own pace and which explores an embodied, contemporary, trauma-sensitive approach to shadow work and healing. 

Please take care of yourself and I hope you enjoy the free video!