“Nobody tells you this but sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound.” – Think Smarter, Twitter
Think Smarter nailed it once again. I remember when I gave birth to my first child. He was nine pounds, which a baby that size was much less common, over twenty years ago. Of course, going into labor and giving birth to my son was quite painful, but no one prepared me for the fact that I would feel like I had been hit by a Mack truck, for a good long while afterwards. Pushing my robust baby out of me, ended up spraining my tail bone and I had to sit on a rubber doughnut for weeks. Of course, my son is worth it. I’m not complaining. He is one of the greatest joys and loves of my life. Still, when I saw the quote mentioned above, this is one of the many instances, in my life, that came to my mind, to validate it. Before my first son was born, I read a million books on childbirth, listened to a litany of frightening childbirth stories, (which any woman who has ever given birth to a baby herself, and notices a young, pregnant woman, feels a compulsion to share every gory detail), and of course, I took the requisite neighborhood Lamaze classes. Everyone focused on giving birth to the baby. All of the advice was geared towards the birth episode, which typically lasts less than one day. Not once, not ever, did I feel warned about how physically terrible I would feel after the birth, and I didn’t even have a cesarean delivery.
We’ve been wounded here with the coronavirus, folks, in a big way. The initial gash of realizing that people were dying at an alarming rate from a disease for which we have no cure for, nor protection from, and then having to quarantine for weeks on end, and all of this happening, in a time span that felt nothing short of sudden, was shocking, alarming and intense, to say the least. The initial wound of realization was overwhelming and numbing. The initial injury hit us like a sledgehammer. It still seems utterly surreal. Still, we are going to heal from this coronavirus situation. We know this. We have already started to slowly open things up, to air the wound out, and we are trying to scab over this horrible situation, a little bit, in any way that we can. We have the smartest people in the world, working 24/7 to find solutions to cure the coronavirus and all of the damaging side effects and complications, that has come with it. We are all in a state of mourning for our losses, with some of us having paid the worst price of all, but still, we shall heal. It’s just that the healing is not going to be quick and easy and painless. No real healing ever is, from any kind of major trauma. The healing from any wound or trauma, is often the hardest part.
Today, I read on the internet, a quote that said, “Enjoy the space between where you are and where you are going.” Life is mostly made of those in-between spaces. And I don’t think that we were meant to waste the in-between spaces, by wishing them away. The vast amount of healing and growth and life, happens in those in-between spaces. We just don’t notice what happens in the in-between spaces, as much, because they are not nearly as jarring and life-stopping, as the unforeseen traumas and dramas, that stop us in our tracks. The in-between spaces are lulling and less interesting than the joyous, raucous conclusions and celebrations. But what do we celebrate on graduations? We celebrate the hard work of years and years of wisdom gathering and knowledge building and a child evolving into an adult. We celebrate the in-between space, starting with the first day of kindergarten, to the last day of high school, for a senior. There’s a lot of life that happened in that in-between space. And also, a lot of experience and growth that occurred in that span of many, many years, in-between. Every birthday is really a celebration of the in-between space between birthdays. Birthdays celebrate the life that happened in the in-between space, in the time period of one year. The in-between spaces are so very important. We need to be patient and grateful for the spaces. Right now we are in an in-between space that started with a horrible virus infiltrating the world and it will end with a calming, healing conclusion. We know this. Right now our job is to live as healthfully and peacefully and patiently as we can, in this in-between space. Little do we realize, that we are currently growing, exponentially, as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations, as the world, so that when we finally get to the healing conclusion, we will have globally transformed into a wiser, stronger, more compassionate, more clear version of what we were before. That’s what healing does. Healing is not easy. But a true healing, while inevitably leaving a scar, brings about such an authentic transformation in us, that sometimes we find ourselves perhaps even a tad grateful for the initial, sharp, deep pain, that brought us around to the in-between space, which helped us to heal into our most whole, our most authentic, our most enlightened versions of ourselves .
