The Wounded Healer
We kneel before her, because she is kind and terrible.
We raise our arms to her, because she is gentle and fierce.
We call out to her, again and gain: Kali, mother, O goddess,
we know it is you who holds up this world, we know
it is you we see shining forth in every being, we know
it is you who is awareness, you who is hunger, you
who is power and peace and faith and beauty and compassion
and contentment and sleep itself and all life, we know
it is you who is our mother, the mother of all forms, and that
you bring love and joy to all who sing your praises.
--Indian poet Chandi
Suffering connects us not only to each other - for all humans suffer - but also to the goddess in her darkest aspect. Without pain, we would not treasure the marvelous delights of life as deeply.
There is a certain tradition among many 'Native' or indiginous peoples of the Shaman as a kind of 'wounded healer.'
He or she is able to more fully connect between the inner and the outer worlds because of some kind of woundedness - either physical or spiritual. The Shaman does not bemoan his condition, for he realises the gift inherent in the challenge, that what has been 'taken' from him is recompensed in what he has been given in return. This is the nature of duality - this is the duality we see reflected in the blackly mirrored surface of the goddesses eyes when she is in her dark aspect.
We would do well to take a leaf out of our ancient, more 'simply connected' brothers and sisters. To recognise that in all life, there is balance, one way or another. We need to embrace our wounded nature, rather than to reject it, as so many of us do, myself included - for I am no saint after all.
I went through the longest thinking myself to be less of a woman, less of a wiccan, less of a priestess due to one small fact - I have PCOS, and because of that, I am naturally infertile. My body doesn't produce ova right, and the ones it does make are weak, and usually fail. That's as much personal information as I'm giving out about that whole thing right now, because that's as much as I feel comfortable with, but there /is/ more, and maybe some time I will share more, bu tnot now.
I let those thoughts consume me (and perhaps to a degree I still feel them, and this leads me to fail as a woman and wife? - that's a thought that only just occurred to me and I must consider further, but right now I must not digress), until I became bitter with them, instead of seeing the one great gift that came with my deficit. My capacity for love. Love for the children of the world; love for the suffering; love, compassion and empathy for those in the same or similar situations to me...
But along with that love is the glassy mirror-eyed dark goddess inside of me, fiercely protective; of the little ones, of women and their 'rights' to mastery of their own bodies - their own existence - their own being... She is not one to cross in this regard... and while I would never impose some of my own personal beliefs onto other people... neither, my friends, am I.
Yes, I have been given a great gift in the 'wound' that I carry. Now I only need to learn to embrace, and not to reject it.