Keeping Our Center ~ Day 107

If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine… your scars, I mean. Our scars tell stories about us… the times I crashed my bike, the time I weeded the poison ivy patch in my swim suit, the time I burned myself on the stove, the time I got the chicken pox. Then there is the weird cut I have right now on my shoulder, that Julie keeps warning me will scab if I don’t keep putting something on it. I have no clue where it came from. Besides, I told her, my scars just give me more character and I’ve already got her, who else do I need to impress with my sexy shoulder?

We carry scars on the inside as well. They tell deeper stories about us… the time the kids on the bus called me four-eyes, grabbed my glasses and threw them around the bus, my dad’s critical eye of that always found something I could have done better, my mom dying before I could really show her my love and connect with her, the friends who turned their backs on me for reasons I have yet to figure out. And there is more, of course. As there surely is with each of us.

Actually, scars aren’t as bad as interior wounds that have scabbed over but haven’t healed. Those scabs are liable to get scratched off or torn off without warning if we don’t tend to them. Our spiritual journey to authenticity and wholeness requires that we try to maintain an awareness of what is going on in our hearts, souls and minds. It requires that we claim them and own wounds before we can heal from them. Without healing we’re liable to simply act out in ways that are unhealthy and hurtful to ourselves or others. Still, we sometimes think it is easier to bury those things… deep… and bury the shovel. But is it?

Dr. Rachel Remen writes, “Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives. Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometimes for many years, gathering the courage to experience them. Without reclaiming that which we have denied, we cannot know our wholeness or have our healing.”

We need to do this incredibly hard work of healing ourselves, sometimes over and over again, to find peace and to live authentically with compassion and light.

Love & Light,

Kaye