Healing Begins Where the Wound was Made

Healing Conversations - Reflections series

Greetings Friends. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of shorter reflections, shared between our monthly in-depth Healing Conversations profiles. I’ll also use this space to let you know about any new offerings. On that note, I invite you to check out “Mysticism, Social Action, and the Path of the Soul,” my recent conversation on The Cosmic We podcast, hosted by Dr. Barbara Holmes and Dr. Donny Bryant. Click here to listen.

In the Japanese art form kintsugi, broken pottery is repaired with gold lacquer. The fracture lines are highlighted not hidden, affirming that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. Restoration of wholeness is not a return to the pre-damaged state—that would be impossible—but the vessel is enhanced by honoring what it has been through. It’s the same with us. What would it mean to honor our “broken places” with the tenderness and reverence of the kintsugi artist? To attend to each fracture and lovingly apply the golden balm of healing. To make visible the map of our journey, allowing others to study it as an inspiration for their own.

This is one of the most valuable gifts any of us may offer another, the sharing of our wounds and the learnings we have gleaned from them. In a sense, this is what good eldering offers—the golden traces of wisdom that have emerged through the healing of our wounds, and the ability to see the hidden wholeness in what society says is broken.

The wounded healer archetype, found in many cultures and traditions, is an expression of this. The wounded healer is not a savior, somehow over and above those who are in pain, but one of them, a co-traveler through the territory of suffering—offering accompaniment, insight, and care. Their own encounters with grief, loss, illness, or injury become their initiation as healer, and the ground of empathy and connection with those they serve. Indeed, their own wounding may be the most important resource in developing their capacity to be a healing presence.

As a physician, Rachel Naomi Remen works with people facing terminal and catastrophic illness. Like me, she lives with (and has almost died from) Crohn’s Disease. Remen writes, “Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.”

Alice Walker observes that “healing begins where the wound was made.”^⁠ This is not just a metaphorical and emotional truth, but a physiological one. In one of my past professional lives I practiced medicine as a PA in pediatric oncology, and I got to see first-hand how truly amazing bodies are. They are designed for self-repair. In the body, the margins of a wound are the literal sites of healing. The healing is in the wound; it grows out of the wound itself. This is the place where Life is active. The cells on the raw edges of a wound are generative, they multiply to build new tissue and that is what causes the wound to heal.

It’s not hard to draw parallels to the collective healing process of social justice and transformation. It is from the sites of deepest societal wounding that the growing edges of transformation emerge. It’s through the leadership of those most impacted by social ills that a new vision for collective wholeness take shape.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 sermon “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” speaks to the possibilities that can emerge from the wounds of an unjust society. He said, “These are revolutionary times. All over the globe [people] are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.”

In the midst of overwhelming violence, suffering, and atrocity, may we rise to meet the urgent calling of these times. May we draw strength from past struggles, and find the wisdom in our collective wounds. May we offer whatever our particular gifts may be in service to liberation, and together become the midwives of a new possibility for the world.

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This post is adapted from my forthcoming book, Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness. (Orbis Books, Nov. 2025)

Photo above by Motoki Tonn on UnSplash