The Perfect Healer
I wish it weren’t so! As I look back over my life, I see a landscape cluttered with the shards and fragments of hurt…pain, sadness, sorrow, disappointment, struggle, confusion, tears, despair, rage, loneliness…litter created in the living. Like a shell-shocked soldier I struggle now to make sense of it all. I’ve loved and lost and loved and lost again. Who hasn’t? I’ve hoped and been deeply disappointed. Again and again. Each time I’ve managed to pull myself up and try again. Many times I have been certain I could not do it.
Why do we keep trying when history has shown us that the odds are against us? What is our hope? What is the driving force that will not let us give up or give in?
I can only say, that for me, it is to love again. To find the courage to risk again and in fear and trembling to lay bare my heart, and risk the pain that may come with connecting deeply to another person. Even though they may disappoint or hurt me, It is what I must do. Even as I ask myself “how many times can I do this?” I know the answer….until I am no more.
What is the value of life, of my life, if it is not in the giving of love? And the receiving of love. It is the only legacy worth leaving. Really. Once I knew this in my mind and in my hopes. Now, I know it in every fiber of my being. In a visceral, real and tangible way because I have had many, many, many lessons in love. I have been taught by an expert teacher and that teacher is pain. Our wounds are our education. Our wounding whittles away at all those things that do not really matter, that come between us and love. I have become a winnowed woman and I am sure that my lessons are not over.
The pain of living strips us of all but that which is most important and makes room for the perfect healer and that is love. It is the balm of our souls, the ointment that soothes and the powerful source of life itself. Pure love heals all wounds and makes us whole again.
Pain is the perfect teacher, love the perfect healer.
Aging Abundantly | Women Over Fifty | Empty Nesters | Caregivers | Aging Gracefully 
“Pain is the perfect teacher, love the perfect healer.”
How profound are these words you’ve written today, Dorothy? Very! Pain is like a cloudy dark miserable day and love is like the sun ~ warm, inviting, invigorating, healing. I always tell everyone that “I run on solar” because I really need to see/feel the sun as much as possible. On the other hand, I don’t do so well on cloudy gray days, especially if they are long-lived. My eyes tire from trying to find that glimmer of light. You’d think that after 59 years of life on this earth that I would’ve learned to become more patient with the dark days but I’m afraid I am still very short-tempered with them. Yet, I truly believe what you have written and that is that our growth definitely comes through hard knocks. The important thing is that we are motivated to get back up when we are trampled down, dust ourselves off, learn whatever lesson we can from the situation, and still remain hopeful that the sun is just around the next bend in the road. Keep looking up! ^_^
Diane, I “run on solar” too! Love the metaphor as well, in spite of SAD. I follow the sun around the house and in my imagination move to a place where the sun is always shinning. I’m not sure we will ever be patient with the gray days, if we were we might not be motivated to seek their end. I find I’m less resilient in some ways and more in others. I think I can’t tolerate the level of pain I once could, but more likely I refuse to tolerate it, less willing or interested in wallowing. Keep looking up indeed! 🙂
Dorthy, each time that I read one of your blogs, it is if I know you like a sister. Yes, pain is an excellent teacher. After going through loss in divorces and relationships there was pain but I learned something in each one of them. I also learned that if I had not felt the pain, walked through it, that I may have never been able to really take a deep look at myself. Thanks for sharing.
We are soul sisters Ann! We’re of the same “tribe”. I’ve spent too much of my life thinking there was something wrong with me for feeling the way I do about life. I just hadn’t met people like you to make me realize I wasn’t crazy after all! Just different! I always appreciate your words and the time you take to share your thoughts here. Have a nice weekend!
Dorothy, your words are so simple to understand, literally speaking, but how many of us spend a lifetime trying to figure out the very thing you have described in your latest blog entry. Pain IS the great teacher in life. We moved, one year ago, away from an area where both physical pain (climactic features) and emotional pain (physical and emotional abuse as a child, then within my first marriage) were no longer going to rule our lives. Healing through love, has occurred for me in my 2nd marriage, as we prepare to celebrate 36 yrs. on Valentine’s Day! Choosing friends carefully, living a life reaching out to others in love, has also been healing. The common denominator in all things that have been healing in my life, is love. Finally saying “goodbye” to those folks who always hurt you, are so fractured that they are unable to give or receive love, who always tear you down and make you feel less than you should be, is a way to eliminate, once and for all, the human factors that serve to keep you stuck and feeling undeserving of love. . . . even unloveable. Thank you for your well chosen words, albeit simple and needing no clarification, serving to remind each of us that we are loveable and that – in love – we can continue to heal past the hurts and those that created the pain in our lives. Let us go forward, in love, and being the healing balm to others in need. Because we have been there, we know instinctively what that looks like. . . how it is manifested in others that cross our paths in this life. May you continue to be blessed and loved in this life and for all time.
Your words brought tears to my eyes Carolyn. Though you provided few details, there were enough to resonate with my experience as well. Life is hard. Breaking free is harder still. But there is love. There is always love. Thanks so much for sharing yours here. Dorothy