Finding healing in the wound  

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem” 

In the last two pieces I wrote for closler, “Wounded healer” and “Wounded health systems,” the wound is prominent as an insult or injury to the individual and the institution. As technicians we strive to fix things that are broken, but what if people aren’t broken “things” but beings who grow through joy and sorrow? As healthcare professionals, we try to heal the wound, to prevent the wound, but what if, as Leonard Cohen sings, the wound is somehow a gift where the light gets in? After all, everyone gets wounded in life, gets sick, and will one day die—what if there’s some wisdom in the wound that we could access? Maybe part of our jobs as healers isn’t just to make the wound go away, but to support a process of personal growth, making sure we don’t lose the opportunity for letting light in with every wound. Then we could say the role of the healer isn’t just to cure illness, but to find wisdom in dark times, to see how the crack can actually let the light in.  

Maybe in this way, healing is a function of seeing the wound as the crack in everything that shakes up the status quo and invites in mystery and paradox. This paradox of the wound and the light calls for us to pay attention, not to get too caught up in our protocols of solely trying to “fix things,” because we may miss the soul of the patient—and we can only miss the soul of another by losing touch with our own soul.  

Wounds call for compassionate care and tending, but part of this tending is to support patients in seeing how they may grow from wounds. It’s true that not everything can be fixed, but it’s also true that everything can be learned from and woven into the tapestries of our lives.Light could be the light of awareness, the opportunity for growth, and the possibility of wisdom. If the wound is the crack in our egos, our lives, and our identities, what is the light?

Light could be the light of awareness, the opportunity for growth, and the possibility of wisdom.

 

Similar to Cohen, the poet Rumi also teaches about the light entering through the wound. He even compares the flies that are drawn to the wound as our defensive self-protectiveness that might actually keep us in the dark.  

Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours. Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound. Don’t turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place. That’s where
the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi

Here are a few pearls: 

1. Remember that your role as a healer (looking for the light in the wound) complements your role as a technician striving to cure and fix the wound.

2. Be like Rumi’s teacher, clearing away the flies of ego that resist change and growth, bandaging the wound while also inviting looking at the light that can enter in the bandaged place.

3. Remember what Cohen says, that the wisdom of the wound teaches us that all is not lost in the darkness, there are cracks in everything and that is how the light gets in. Things aren’t always as they once were, but still there are bells that still can ring.

4. Listening to music and reading poetry can help us find light within the darkness and help us find wisdom within the wound.

This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.