To Be Well in Our Wounds

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

“If I call, I’ll sob,” the text read. She preferred to text, and I was asking to call because walking my dog who yanks me around and texting produces messages that look like a toddler got hold of my phone, and voice to text is its own tangle of typos. I knew what she meant, though, and respected it. There are some people with whom we cannot keep up walls or wear masks; we hear their voice and our body feels safe to let go. To hear my voice would invoke tears, and she just couldn’t go there, not then.

Once this beloved and I found ourselves at a bar after the show I produced and hosted. It was an extraordinary show, the kind where the storytellers cracked themselves open on stage and the audience held them in rapt attention. I had been in what I refer to as femme drag: hair coifed, face painted, heels clicking, skirt short and tight. I am forever and always a femme, but I only pulled out this full lewk that requires a team (hair, nails) once a month for this show. As the host and producer of this show, I held the container of the space. I shepherded people through the night, kept the energy moving, and set the tone for vulnerability to be shared among the storytellers and audience. It’s a particular kind of performance, part stage presence, part emotional labor, part ritual keeper.

The comedowns are hard after a night like that. After communing in the ritual of storytelling and confessions, after being “on” for hours, I need to decompress. To shed the drag of it all.

“I don’t want to go home,” I said, staring into my drink that I’d barely had, the tears percolating.

“I can’t go home,” I stated more emphatically.

She looked at me with concern.

And then I said the thing that made me sob: “He won’t be there.”

I didn’t want to, or felt like I couldn’t, go home because my beloved dog had passed, and this would be the first show I wouldn’t come home to him. He was who I would come home to, not my partner or my kids who were all tucked into their beds. Benny, my beloved cocker spaniel, would greet me at the door, lead me to the couch, and then snuggle with me. He accepted me in any form: pets are the best at unconditional love.

Benny knew this once-a-month glammed-up performer needed extra gentle holding. It’s the shoes that are the first tell. “It’s the night you wear the spiky shoes,” my kids were known to say. But beyond the attire, Benny was attuned to my energy shifts. In his own way, he would ask me about my night and I would tell him. It was our quiet late-night time together, the ritual that helped me shed the femme fatale and return to everyday femme mom still in a mini skirt but with sneakers. He helped me downregulate from a night of “being on,” literally and figuratively, in the spotlight. He was my soft place to land after holding space for everyone else.

“How can I just go home to a quiet house? How can I open the door and not have him greet me? I can’t. I won’t. It’s too painful.” I was in that panting-crying state where you just can’t get the words out and breathe and cry at the same time.

She pulled me towards her, my head nestled in her neck. “I got you. Let go. Let it out,” she instructed.

So there, in the booth of a dive bar at peak revelry, I let go. I sobbed and wailed, and my beloved held me tight. She kissed me and stroked my hair, kept it from sticking to my face. The kisses became more engulfing, more passionate, the crying more guttural. We were a tangle of limbs and tears, snot and spit. She kept telling me to let it out.

I was no longer a projection, a marvel on stage, the one holding the container for others. I was a puffy-faced mess; eye makeup strewn down my face, my drag dissolving. Once the pretense of maintaining some cuteness, or fuck, any decorum, while crying, especially crying in public, is removed, you can really go places.

Have you ever sobbed into someone’s mouth? It’s deeply cathartic. It’s like your grief is being swallowed, shared, ingested, held, and tended to. Another way of experiencing the “let me help you with that” assist we do with friends and strangers, be it opening a door or helping unload bags from the car. A “let me help you with that” that extends beyond using their shirt to soak up the tears and snot. You’re wet not just on their shirt, in their collarbone and hair. You’re wet inside of them. In their mouth, swallowed. The mess is no longer exterior; it’s interior. A shared sadness. A shared letting go. You’re both opened and surrendered.

My beloved likened herself to a sponge, soaking up all my sadness. Like the grief that was too much for me to hold was now being held by another. My tears are now in her.

What Does It Mean to Live Well in Our Wounds?

We live in a culture obsessed with overcoming. “Healing journey” implies a destination. “Moving on” suggests leaving something behind. “Getting over it” promises that one day, the wound will no longer matter. But trauma doesn’t work that way. The body remembers. The nervous system carries the imprint. The wound becomes part of the architecture of who we are.

The experience of having my tears metabolized by another taught me something essential: we cannot do this alone. At that point in my life, I was not a good cryer. Crying is something that I would want to do, feel like I needed to do, but couldn’t. I mean, tears had emerged about Benny’s death, but I hadn’t fully tapped into the extent of my grief. That I would never come home to him again. The firsts of things without can be an intense marker of our wound.

Being with my beloved the night of my first homecoming without Benny was transformative. She didn’t try to fix my grief or minimize it or rush me through it. She didn’t offer platitudes or remind me that “time heals all wounds” or suggest I should be grateful for the years I had with Benny. She just held me. She let me be a mess. She swallowed my tears. She made herself a vessel for my grief.

Keeners. This is what the Irish refer to as professional mourners often hired to attend funerals and cry and lament loudly. Keeners are skilled at tapping into their own sorrow and collective grief. Their role is to help catalyze grief in others, to give permission for the full expression of sorrow. They understand that grief needs to be expressed and witnessed, and that sometimes we need someone else to go first, to show us it’s safe to fall apart. In other words, keeners get that funeral lit. Not by performance but presence.

My beloved was my keener though she herself didn’t cry. She was presence. She was the permission I needed. The vessel I needed. A vessel of grief and eroticism. Of seeing all fluids as sacred, even snot. She showed me that being well in our wounds can be about finding people who will hold our wounds with us.

The wound doesn’t disappear. Benny’s absence is absolute. But something shifts when we’re held in our grief, when we are held in our wound, when we hold ourselves in our wounds.

I will always miss Benny and can weep for him, but I don’t feel broken by his absence anymore. That night the wound spoke loudly: I can’t go home. Six years later the wound says: I love you. Thank you for our time together.

Grief wounds, especially regarding a beloved pet, offer us a particular kind of clarity. We know the devastation we will experience upon their loss and yet that doesn’t stop us from loving them fully. I can already pre-grief my current dog. The wound is predictable, inevitable, and I choose it anyway. This makes pet loss a useful lens for understanding how we carry all kinds of wounds that won’t vanish.

Because if we can learn to be well in the wound of grief, something so absolute, so unchangeable, then perhaps we can learn to be well in the wounds that are murkier, more complicated, harder to name. The wound of betrayal. The wound of childhood neglect. The wound of shame. The wound of abandonment. These wounds don’t always have the same clarity as death, but they’re just as permanent in their imprint.

As a surrogate partner therapist, I work with all kinds of wounds. Trauma from childhood. Multiple divorce damage. Betrayal that rewired an ability to trust. Shame that’s been inscribed on a body since adolescence. Clients come to me often believing that intimacy requires them to be healed first, to have their shit together, to present themselves as whole and unmarred. They believe their wounds make them unlovable, unwelcome in spaces of connection.

But here’s what I’ve learned, both in that dive bar, in many relationships, and in countless sessions with clients: our wounds don’t disqualify us from intimacy. In fact, when we learn to be well in them, to acknowledge them, to allow others to witness our tender, broken places, we access a depth of connection and wholeness.

Speaking From vs Speaking For the Wound

Our wounds aren’t deficits. They’re sources of wisdom, sensitivity, and strength. But we can’t feel the strength of them until we know how to work with them. The work is knowing when we are speaking from the hurt versus speaking for it, when the wound is in the driver’s, passenger seat, or that annoying back seat driver.

When we speak from the wound, we are the wound. It’s our entire identity, our only lens, our inevitable destiny. When we speak for the wound, we acknowledge its presence and its impact while maintaining our agency, our complexity, our capacity for growth.

Speaking from the wound sounds like: “I’m four times divorced. I can’t get it right. I’m a failure.” Or “My Dad cheated on my Mom. I can’t trust anyone.” Or “My body is disgusting. No one could want me.” Or “I’m too much.”

Speaking for the wound sounds like: “The wound says I’m a failure. I’m not. I’m a romantic who is working to take things more slowly.” Or “My childhood taught my nervous system that people aren’t truthful. I’m learning to update that information with new experiences.” Or “I carry shame about my body, and I’m working on separating what was done to me from who I am.” Or “I’ve been hurt, and that makes vulnerability scary. I’m looking for someone who can move at my pace.”

The difference is nuanced and takes practice to see, especially when identifying our own wounds and how to speak about them. Speaking for the wound creates space between you and your trauma. It allows for the wound to be real, to have impact, to matter, while also allowing for you to be more than it. It’s the difference between “I am broken” and “I carry something broken.”

To be clear, this isn’t just positive thinking or bypassing pain. It’s about refusing to let the wound write the entire story. Driver’s seat versus passenger seat.

The wound often has important information. When we speak for it rather than from it, we can actually hear what it’s trying to tell us. The wound that says, “everyone leaves” might be trying to tell you: “I need someone who shows up consistently.” The wound that says, “I’m unlovable” might be trying to tell you: “I need to feel chosen, not tolerated.” The wound that says, “sex is dangerous” might be trying to tell you: “I need lots of communication and the ability to say no at any point.”

When we’re speaking from the wound, we can’t hear these messages. We’re too fused with the pain. But when we speak for it, we can extract its wisdom while not being controlled by its fear.

Practices for Being Well in Our Wounds

So how do we do this? How do we learn to speak for rather than from our wounds?

The practices are simple but not easy. We learn to catch ourselves when we’re speaking from the wound and gently rephrase: “The wound says...” or “Part of me believes...” This small shift creates breathing room. It reminds us that we contain the wound; the wound doesn’t contain us.

We locate where the hurt lives in our bodies and bring our own compassionate presence to it. Where do you feel abandonment? Betrayal? Shame? Place your hand there. Speak to it like you would a frightened child: “I know you’re scared. I’m here. You’re safe now.” This isn’t about making it go away. It’s about bringing presence to it.

We create rituals that honor the wounds. The ritual may just be setting aside time to feel what needs to be felt so the wound doesn’t become an intruder on our psyche. For my client going through his fourth divorce, a ritual might be lighting a candle on the anniversary of his last divorce and making space for what arises: the grief, the pride in his ability to keep trying, the gratitude for what he carries with him from each of these relationships. Writing a letter to your younger self, taking a solo trip to mark the anniversary of leaving something harmful behind, or scheduling an erotic journey with your current lover are all ways of marking time, the where we have been and where we are going. Rituals create a place to say: “I see you. I remember. I’m with you. I’m here.”

To be well in our wounds, we practice distinguishing between past and present. When triggered, our nervous system believes the original threat is happening now. We gently remind ourselves: “That was then. This is now. I’m safe in this moment.” Sometimes we have to say it multiple times before our bodies believe it.

To be well in our wounds means learning the language our bodies speak when they’re trying to protect us. It means recognizing that our wounds have shaped us, made us more tender, more aware, more alive to both suffering and joy.

To be well in our wounds means we practice transparency in our relationships. It means creating relationships where we can say, “I’m triggered right now,” and be met with curiosity rather than judgment. Where we can say, “This is my history, mine to hold and yours to know. Can we slow down?” Or “The wound is telling me you’re going to leave. Can you help me reality-check that?” This kind of honesty creates intimacy and prevents the wound from running the show.

To be well in our wounds, means we find our keeners. The people with whom we can fall apart. The ones who won’t try to fix us or rush us through our pain. The ones who will hold us and let us be a mess.

To be well in our wounds means understanding that we are not broken things waiting to be fixed. We are whole people who carry wounds. And those wounds, when we learn to be well in them, can become the very places where we connect most deeply with ourselves, with each other, with the full catastrophe of being human.

We can heal in the being. In the holding of ourselves and each other.

My beloved swallowed my tears that night at the bar. She made space for my grief in her body. She was my keener, modeling for me what it looks like to be fully present with pain, to not turn away from it or try to solve it, but simply to hold it. And in doing so, she showed me that love doesn’t require us to be healed. It requires us to be honest about where we hurt and brave enough to let someone hold us there.

This is the work. This is the invitation. Not to transcend our wounds, but to learn to live and love well within them. To speak for them rather than from them. To let them teach us without letting them limit us. To find our keeners and to be keeners for others.

The wound remains. But so does the love. So does the wisdom. So does the capacity for connection. We learn to hold it all.

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How to be well in our wounds.

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