It takes strength to be weak
Transforming abuse to strength
In the past few days I have read stories written by women in which they have described physical abuse as children and as adult partners. One of the stories is by someone who has become part of my ‘heart circle’. I was aware that there had been difficulties though nothing to the extent I read. Words only do so much and I could only leave a comment to let her know I had read her story and I was ‘absorbing it’.
The other day another Medium writer shared in her quest to find love that her father after beating her would say, “You do know Daddy loves you.”
It is ‘half-term’ here and while I off I am trying to get through books and then move them on. I have been re-reading The Invitation and today it was challenging me ‘to sit with my own pain’.
Oriah describes her own pain to help us identify our pain which we may have hidden so deep within us we don’t know it is there. She writes,
“When I touch my sorrow I hear, from the inside, the sound of hair being ripped from my scalp.”
As I read that line I could almost hear it too.
She goes on to describe the violence she experienced from the hands of a partner. But then she writes how she transformed that abuse into something positive.
She touches that sorrow when a young woman comes to her who has been beaten by her partner. She does not offer any words she touches her own sorrow in order to feel what the young woman is feeling. Tears fall from her eyes. Can the young woman see that the tears result from the connection of pain? Those tears are for her.
If we are strong enough to be weak, we are given a wound that never heals. It is the gift that keeps the heart open. OMD
Now those are powerful words, transformative. Taking us from victim to survivor to healer. Someone coined the phrase, ‘Wounded Healer’.
I know, who wants to go through pain inflicted by another? But it seems it is an unfortunate part of how we treat each other. But… having been treated abusively what do you do with it?
My friend has transformed it into better and Oriah shows us how to feel our own pain in order that we can sit with others’ pain.
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I seem to be dealing with my own pain by hymn — singing. Singing gets to every emotional place. I encourage you, sing a song and I would love to see it. Katherine Jenkins gives you the professional version below mine.
