SO NOW WHAT’S NEXT?

August 30, 2025

So, this is a followup to my last article. The one about how healing from emotional wounds can be similar to healing from physical ones. How, first we bleed profusely, but eventually that needs to stop or we will bleed to death. I went on to talk about scabs and about stopping picking at them and letting them heal over and eventually maybe even ending up with a scar that is a reminder, but that is no longer, if at all, painful. I promised to share how I manage to stop picking at my scabs in my next article, which is this one, but I think perhaps I should clarify some of these points, as I had some very positive responses, and yes, some quite challenging, maybe even negative ones as well.

So lets do clarification first, which may be better done if I give a true-life example. And let me say foremost, that I am not a therapist, and share only from what I have learned in my own very tumultuous life. About my journey and what has worked for me at each given point. My truths, to use the popular saying. It may not be true for you ever, or maybe not now, but someday it might. Just maybe.

My dad was a dynamic personality, well loved by everyone, generous with his time and money, a good provider, an impressively intelligent man, admired by all, a good Catholic. But to me, privately, he was degrading, accusing, and sexual. I spiraled down into drugs and alcohol, and eventually found my place in the world of heroin and all that entails. It is an old and familiar story. I chronicled it in my book, “But I Can Learn”, so I don’t need to say more here.

But after many years, I ended up court-ordered in front of the best therapist I ever had. And I had had many by then and each session always about my dad. All the time.

But this guy, he absolutely would not let me talk about my dad, because he knew that I had been doing that for years and years already. That I was stuck in it. Instead, he kept making me focus on what I wanted now, and how what I was doing would never, ever get me that.  I was angry at him most of the time, but he changed my life. I am eternally grateful that he stood up to me.  I now carry the scars from my dad, but am no longer bleeding to death.

Years later, in my new and wonderful life, my father came to live in the same city I was in, and that brought some new wounds. Little ones to be sure, but bleeding ones nonetheless. This was also the first time someone actually looked me in the eye and told me that it wasn’t my fault. And changed my life again. (it was my pastor)

I’ve had painful woundings since then, and bled far too long before I came back to “what do I really want and how do I get there”. But I’m using the example of my dad here only because its old and the others involved have long passed away.

But to be clear, I do know that when we are wounded we need to talk and talk and talk about it, sometimes for years. We bleed all over our own lives and on other’s.  We can’t help it. It just has to happen before we can heal. I don’t think we can skip it, nor should we.

But for me, and maybe its just me, the talking and venting, after years, turns into whining, or my mind obsessively goes over and over and over it. All the things I would like to say, or that I could have done differently. On and on, I get stuck like a gerbil on his wheel going nowhere, and it overwhelms any joy I could have in my days.

Sometimes we think talking has to happen with the other person, that one who struck the wound. But in my life story, that has had to happen very carefully. Timing means a lot. If the other person is still in the angry-hurt stage, still feeling vengeful, they will only attack and lash out with accusations that will deepen our woundedness. For me, sit-down talks happen best when both of us want to hear the other person out. To have them understand our hurt and we can understand theirs. Some people are not ready to do. They just aren’t at that place yet. Maybe a little casual friendly, normal relationship has to happen first.

That’s when I have to turn to my own healing without depending on anything from them. I need to stop thinking about it 24-7. Apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, stop picking at the scab, let a scar form. Which means the situation may never be ok, but that even then, I will be ok.

In summary, I never meant to say that we should just stop talking. I still talk about my dad sometimes, but he no longer affects my life. I have scars that hamper the way I walk through certain places of life, sure, but I am no longer obsessed or crippled by them.

I have other relationships that I would love to have on a better footing and there are things we both need to say to each other, but not now. Someday when we trust each other, maybe. I don’t know, and I’m ok with that. There is more to life than my wounds, scabs, and scars.

And now, about how I do that, the moving on, the breaking out of the gerbil wheel?  The only key I’ve found so far, and I’m sure there are others, but this works for me: I find the truth and speak that to myself over and over.  Everytime my mind goes to rehearsing the hurtful words of an accusation, I speak the truth to my own self.

Just to name a few: I am not a selfish person!  I am not a stupid girl!  I am not clumsy. (well maybe a little) I wrote each of those things on rocks and put them away in my garden to remind myself that they are out there, put away, no longer in my heart and mind. That those things are not the truth of me.

And then I turn to doing something creative, just for me, not for show. Whether it is drawing or baking or staging a picture for Instagram, I can then only focus on that one thing. It lets my hurt mind rest a bit.

And of course, as a person of faith, knowing I am loved and valued says it all. And I know I will be ok!