The Paradox of Empowerment: How Unhealable Wounds Shape Our Humanity

“Chiron is the potent image of the healer who has acquired wisdom through personal pain. This version of Chiron has learned how to heal others because he has been wounded, and he reflects the process by which life’s damage can enhance consciousness and put us on a path connecting us with deeper or higher realities. The fact that Chiron can’t heal himself is a necessary part of the story. If we could fully heal our own wounds, we might well lose our compassion for others who are suffering. It’s only the ongoing recognition of our frailty and damage that allows the continuance of empathy. There is a profound truth in this interpretation. The only problem is that the idea of healing gifts emerging as a product of wounding is not what the myth of Chiron as it has come down to us from antiquity actually tells us.” --Liz Greene, Chiron in Love: The Astrology of Envy, Rage, Compassion, and Wisdom

Some wounds don’t heal. That is a reality of human existence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that no wound, once inflicted, ever actually heals. That is, once flesh has been cut into, or the psyche has been penetrated, or our boundaries violated, those openings can never be fully closed again.

To see what I mean, take a look at your own skin. How many places, whether large or small, subtle or overt, can you see where the skin—long ago burned by a hot stove or otherwise injured by some sharp or blunt implement—still shows an irregularity or a discontinuity in the otherwise “perfect” matrix of skin cells that flow smoothly and continuously into and against one another in a predictable epidermal pattern?

The body heals, but never perfectly. Once cut into, it never returns, precisely, to the way it once was. Depending on how active you were as a child, or how many risks you took as a teen, or perhaps how careless you are as an adult, your scars mark the events of your life. They remind you of those times when something unwanted, uninvited, and perhaps even dangerous broke through your protective barrier and found its way in, however shallowly or deeply it managed to go. Whether it was a pairing knife, a craggy rock, the corner of a coffee table, or a cat’s claw…whether the memory of its occurrence is benign, amusing, or painfully tragic…sometimes things break through the surface. And we mustn’t kid ourselves; the surface, and what’s beneath it, never really heals.

In Greek myth, the story of Chiron helps to illustrate what happens when one of our wounds just won’t heal. Chiron was a centaur—he was, in fact, the king of the centaurs. One day, while he was relaxing in his cave, he heard outside a ruckus. When he went to investigate the commotion in his kingdom, he discovered a bunch of drunken centaurs, shooting arrows at each other in a rampage. By no fault of his own—he only wanted to help—Chiron was caught in the crossfire and was badly wounded by a poisoned arrow. Although he was a skilled archer and an empathic healer, having been fostered by the medically-inclined Apollo and his badass-archer twin sister Artemis, the wound was such that he could not heal it. His suffering was so great that he wished for death. And so, rather than remain immortal (a privilege that was afforded to him through his ancestral lineage), he begged to be made mortal, in order to end his suffering.

Chiron is for many a symbol of the Wounded Healer Archetype—a potent image of an individual who overcomes his or her wounds and then passes his or her wisdom on to others in order to help them heal. But, as Liz Greene so aptly brings to light, the wounding that occurred in the original story of this archetype didn’t heal. Not ever. Furthermore, it was not the event that made Chiron become a healer. Chiron was already a healer. His wound, in fact, thwarted his abilities as a healer. It shortened his tenure on earth, limited the number of individuals he could ultimately help, and restricted his power and efficacy in what was presumably is ordained path in life.

Depressing; isn’t it?

Actually, no. It isn’t. Or, it doesn't have to be. Because Chiron’s wound—the wound that won’t heal—archetypally speaking, is the instigator of empathy. It breeds humility. And it prompts us to cultivate compassion. Furthermore, it reminds us, constantly, of our own mortality. We are not gods. We are fragile, imperfect, and fallible beings. Each one of us is just doing the best we can, with the cards we’ve been dealt and the information we’ve been given. Each one of us fails. Some of us fail quite a lot.

Those of us who carry with us one or more deeply unhealable wounds, we seem to have a strange and sometimes difficult paradox to sort out: if I was born to fulfill a purpose, but somewhere along the way, through no fault of my own, I was dealt a blow that significantly impacts my ability to easily fulfill this purpose, then why am I here?

Ah. Now that is the destiny of the Wounded Healer.

When I work with opera singers who have experienced vocal injuries, I am, in a sense, partnering with them in what often ends up being a long process during which they must continually confront this painful paradox. If the gods gave them this tremendous talent to bring beauty into the world and to offer art and healing to the masses, then why has this ability—which once felt like their joy and their pleasure, their purpose and their birthright—been so abruptly taken from them?

Why, indeed. This is a question worth investigating.

Opera singers who have had their dreams or their livelihoods or identities disrupted by the seemingly cruel fate of a random poisoned arrow must contend with this unsolicited interruption to what they once anticipated might be a blissfully linear, contiguous path to personal and professional fulfillment.

Once injured, no matter how much healing occurs, no matter how much better they might sing after going through a process of rehabilitation and a re-structuring of their vocal technique…no matter how many times they are hired to sing on stage or how many accolades they receive…some wounds don’t heal. Not completely.

As much as I desire to take away this wounding from every singer I have ever worked with—as much as I yearn to help them to rehabilitate their voices and return to pursue their dreams…ultimately, I can’t. Not completely. If I could, I’d be doing them a disservice. Because being wounded, and carrying that wound, right back onto the stage where we are most naked and vulnerable, most desirous of appearing “perfect” and most prone to experiencing unexpected moments of humiliating imperfection, is meaningful. It humbles us. It enlivens us. It brings that elevated art form off its pedestal for a period of time so we are forced to face the reality that we are, in the end, nothing more than flesh. Even this glorious art form is nothing more than breath, moving through skin and bones—the parts of us that are most vulnerable to damage and decay.

Isn’t it strange, though, how that flesh—and everything that we have the opportunity to experience within and through it—is actually everything? That breath, that muscle, that movement…that song that comes out of our wounding. In the end, it sings us into life. It provokes us into living. And that is why we are here.

#HealingJourney #EmpathyInPractice #ProfessionalDevelopment #LeadershipThroughAdversity #PersonalGrowth #EmbracingVulnerability #CareerReflection #LifeLessons

Further reading:

The Wounded Healer as Cultural Archetype

By Galia Benziman, Ruth Kannai, and Ayesha Ahmad

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