Wounded Healers Unite
How Healing Our Wounds May Help Heal Others
I read a story from the Washington Post about a seventh-grader named Brody Ridder. Having transferred to a school in Westminster, Colorado two years prior, the young man has had difficulty fitting in and finding friends. To make it worse, he has been the target of significant bullying.
More recently, as the students received their yearbooks and ceremoniously signed each other's pages, Brody's remained largely untouched. Despite asking classmates to sign his yearbook, they refused. While everyone else had hundreds of notes from their friends, the seventh-grader had three notes, including one written to himself.
"Hope you make some more friends- Brody Ridder"
Frustrated at her son's bullying, Cassandra Ridder posted a picture of her son's heartbreaking note in a private group for parents of the school. She hoped her post would increase awareness of bullying and cause parents to talk to their kids. She could not have imagined what would transpire.
Over the next few days, word spread about Brody. Upperclassmen from the school began to pour into his classroom and sign his yearbook with hundreds of encouraging notes. Their example was profound and infectious. It was not long before Brody's classmates began to stand up and sign his yearbook too.
One eighth-grader reflected on why she encouraged her friends to join her in signing Brody's yearbook. "No one helped me when I was [bullied]," she said, "so I wanted to be there for him."
To me, this story is not only a lesson in how easily we wound one another but a lesson in what we ultimately do with our wounds. We can allow our pain to become toxic and spread through our words and actions. Or, like the eighth-grader, we can use our wounds to benefit others.
Richard Rohr writes:
It's all about what each of us does with the wound. If we have never walked through some kind of suffering, whether betrayal, abandonment, rejection, divorce, loss of job, struggles with sexuality, we probably will give people “head” answers. We don’t touch or heal their hearts because our own have not been transformed.
To be clear. This transformation is not an exercise in erasing our wounds, as if they never existed. We will always carry them to one degree or another. The point is, however, to invite forgiveness and love into that painful place for our own healing and then for the benefit of others.
Question
How might inviting forgiveness and love into your wound help the healing process? How might this gradual healing change how you relate to other wounded people?
Peace,
Brandon
