Don’t Bury Your wounds

“When there’s a fresh wound in your heart, keep it open until it heals. Air it out. Understand it. Dive into it. Be fierce enough to become it. If you ignore it, it won’t be able to breath. If you ignore it, it will merely deepen, spread, and resurface later, wanting to release. And when later happens, it will hurt even more; because when later happens, you won’t know what you’re bleeding for … Remain open to feel free.”

Victoria Erickson 

This is such wise advice. Society trains us to bury our wounds. To pretend that we don’t hurt. To pretends that we’re OK. Both to ourselves, and in front of the world.

But we’re not OK. We can’t possibly be OK. Deep wounds cause a lot of damage. Damage that’s too deep to judge at first.to the world that it didn’t affect us, and we’re just the same as we always were. That we can still cope with life, that we can still make plans, and do all the things we always did before.

And maybe we can fake it for a while. Maybe we can gather up all our resources and act a part in front of the world. We can push down our feelings and make ourselves be strong.

But we’re not really loving ourselves if we do that. We’re treating ourselves harshly and abandoning ourselves.

And why on earth would you choose to do that.

This is the very time when you need to be there for yourself. When you deserve to be there for yourself. When your heart is crying our for understanding and compassion, for self-kindness and self-love.

So be there for you. Don’t ignore what you’ve been through. Take the time out to face the enormity of what you have experienced. To allow the all the shock and the horror to register. Allow yourself to feel the feelings. Allow yourself to be distressed and dismayed. To be reeling from the pain. To be inconsolable. For the tears will cleanse the wounds so they don’t become infected, and you give yourself respect when you scream of the injustice.

And this will be the start of the healing process.  The bleeding will ease off, and a scar will start to form.