Many years ago, when I was in the beginning stages of this part of my emotional recovery, a teacher of mine shared a bit of wisdom with me that came in the form of the following aphorism:
“Never trust a healer who doesn’t limp.”
I’ll be quick to point out that he did not say, “Never trust a healer who doesn’t bleed.”
And there’s a big difference.
The healer who limps is carrying the scars of their work. It’s changed them. And now, they can move through the world as an example for others…
We didn’t really get the crippling snow that a lot of people had this year. We had about eight or ten inches, but it had a crust of ice over the top of it, and because of the low temperatures and the high winds, it took quite a while to melt.
During the heart of it, it kept us homebound for a while, giving us time for quiet reflection, some deep spiritual work, and taking care of some things around here.
It’s good when those moments of solitude open up, especially when you make up your mind to use them. Those of us who learn to feel deeply when we grow up really need those times to charge our batteries, to rest up, to take care of ourselves, and to deal with a lot of things we couldn’t deal with when we’re in the midst of everything else that’s going on…
Those of us who’ve come up in households where addiction and emotional instability were the order of the day…we know a little something about grieving. We make a partner of our grief. We carry it with us. Often, we carry it down deep, where it hangs there like a feeling we can’t touch.
But sometimes, when we’re tired – when we’re triggered – it can come rushing to the surface. And when it does, it’s good to simply be in the midst of that…
“Are you as human as the rest of us?”
“Are you doing everything you can to keep your heart open in a world that seems to be going out of its way to shut it down?”
I’ve been praying really hard for clarity lately. I’ve been praying really hard for guidance. And in that, I’m probably not too different from a lot of us.
A good many of us feel this urge to do…something.
But not all of us are going to be called to protest. Not all of us are going to be asked to bleed to death in our cars or in the snow. Not many of us are going to be asked to write anthems; to energize millions of people.
For a lot of us, that calling is something simpler, but just as difficult. We’re going to be asked to go deep inside ourselves. To find our wounds, and to heal them…
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately and talking a lot with others about the idea of being of service. Specifically, how do we assist those who come to us looking for advice or help of some kind, especially within the context of their own emotional recovery or spiritual healing? Where do we draw the line on our own involvement? When does “help” turn into “enabling”? When does our desire to assist turn into our own need to fix, save, or rescue the person that’s come to us?
If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
I was talking with my teacher and his wife a while back, and I said, “Y’know, I feel like a hammer that gets hung up on the wall of the garage. If there’s a nail that needs to get banged down, I get taken off the wall, the nail gets banged down, and then I get put back up on the wall and just hang out and wait.”
My teacher’s wife started laughing, and she said, “Yeah, but a hammer is still a hammer even when it’s hanging on the wall.”
And man, that really, put the hook in me.
These gifts that we have, whatever they might be, they require us to live in a certain way. Those of us who grew up in dysfunctional households, who had to learn the skill of empathy – had to learn how to read the room so that we could anticipate what was going to happen next, we know a lot about how hard it is to live in the type of world that we live in today. This is not a place that takes kindly to those who feel. And sometimes we need to disappear for a little while, lay aside the things that get in the way, and just rest…
If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Grandfather Joseph Rael teaches us that ceremony begins as soon as you say “Yes” to it. And I really become aware of that about a week or so before our gatherings occur, which they do on the first Saturday of every month. I start to slow down. I start to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my environment. I start to take a little more notice of what I eat, what I drink, how I move through my day.
And then, as time draws closer, especially on this last day, it really begins to wind up. And the simple chores that we have to do, like putting an extra leaf in the table or taking out the plates and the silverware, getting the crockpot ready for the potluck after the ceremony, raking out the firepit, making sure that we have enough chairs…all those things that go into it, they tend to become more like prayers…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.
Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.
But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Codependency, counter-dependency, and the inability to receive…
It’s been said that you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s also been said that you can’t receive in a cup that’s filled. For a cup to be of true value, to be truly serviceable, it doesn’t remain full or empty; it transitions between those states as necessary:
I’m thirsty, so I fill a cup. I drink from it. The cup empties.
My friend is thirsty, so I fill a cup. I give it to my friend. They drink from it. The cup empties.
When we’re healthy, we learn to become both the full and empty cup as required. In the sickness of codependency and counter-dependency, however, the truth of the matter is that cup is never empty. It’s always filled with one thing: my own need for safety, for love…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube.
As a kid, you walk into a room and you feel anger there…well, you feel angry, so you must be angry. You feel sad, so you must be sad. We learn to internalize those things, to take them on, and to come at the world from the perspective of those things that we’re feeling – believing that they’re our own.
As we get older and lean a little heavier into our work, hopefully, we begin to sort some of that stuff out. We begin to learn what’s ours and what’s not; what we can let go of – what we can hang onto.
And this can be incredibly difficult when we see people we really love going through a tough time. One trap in particular that it’s easy to fall into as someone who’s empathic, is the fix, save, and rescue trap. We see someone suffering, and we want to fix the situation. We want to save them from it; to rescue them from their peril.
Sometimes our motivations aren’t as unselfish as they seem, whether we’re aware of that or not. Part and parcel of growing up in a house full of emotional instability is often the dance of codependence: “I love you because of how you make me feel.”
In the presence of suffering, especially when it’s the suffering of those we care for, we don’t like the way we feel when we see them suffer, and so we want to rescue them; to stop their pain in order to stop our own.
If you’d like to hear more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube…
Bonja the Bodger 