I recently gouged out a piece of the skin on my knuckle on a cheese grater. For the first couple days I covered it with a band-aid, but what really speeds healing is exposing the wound to air. We actually have to see it, and let others see it. My cut kept getting hit every time I reached for something and then it would bleed again. I’d scrunch up my face in pain. I had to learn how to do more things with my other hand. It was annoying and ugly.
This cut on my finger was a good metaphor for any kind of wound, physical or emotional. Why do we stay wounded? Why do we let our failures, missteps, and disappointments get the best of us? Why do we hold ourselves back from healing? Because healing and transcending anything that hurts is an uncomfortable process in the short-term. It’s painful, itchy, and ugly. It’s not linear. We take some steps back before we can step forward.
However, in time, we do heal. 3 weeks into this process and my finger is nearly back to normal. The cut doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s not as ugly as it was and I learned that my other hand is good for a lot more things than I gave it credit for. In the long-run, healing is a gift because we learn so much along the way that we wouldn’t learn if the hurt never happened at all.
Christa Avampato 