It seems to me that the balance point on this healing path is in the holding of what happened, what the abuser did, how you've been wronged, grieving, feeling, weeping on the sofa with tissues and yet not staying there in the land of Narc Victim-hood--not allowing your new sepulcher to seal you in as victim, forever.
This lesson seems to return again and again on my journey. Allow but don't over-indulge. Give space to feelings but don't allow feelings to banish thought. As I've crawled out of the web, through the fog, I've had some difficult situations, where the dark emotions and the feeling wronged bit seemed so intense as if in boa-constrictor mode, I wondered if they'd ever let up. The temptation has been to perpetually indulge in my own victim-hood. To be swept away into the current of self pity, woe-is-me and all sorts of rivers that lead me to plant myself and grow roots in Victim Land. And as important as it is for healing to visit Victim land, one has to be careful not to buy a house there.
And so, the work of integration means marrying the poles in myself. Truly feeling. Truly experiencing and acknowledging what I've been through. And yet also allowing myself to emerge from the cocoon as butterfly when the time is right. In looking back on the past 5 years, my perpetual work seems to be finding the voices whom can lend new perspectives on my landscapes of experience. Reframing destructive situations not to let someone off the hook or minimize their destructive actions, but rather for my own healing, so that I can move beyond the land of victim hood and back toward my own becoming and purpose, so that I can do at last what I came here for. It's been especially difficult to reframe said situations when I have felt wronged by others. The following words are helping me to continue to let go and get traction in this dark healing work.
For Someone Who Did You Wrong
Though its way is to strike
in a dumb rhythm,
stroke upon stroke,
as though the heart
were an anvil,
the hurt you sent
had a mind of its own.
Something in you knew
exactly how to shape it,
to hit the target,
slipping into the heart
through some wound-window
left open since childhood.
While it struck outside,
it burrowed inside,
made tunnels through
every ground of confidence.
For days, it would lie still
until a thought would start it.
Meanwhile, you forgot,
went on with things
and never even knew
how that perfect
shape of hurt
still continued to work.
Now a new kindness
seems to have entered time
and I can see how that hurt
has schooled my heart
in a compassion I would
otherwise have never learned.
Somehow now
I have begun to glimpse
the unexpected fruit
your dark gift had planted
and I thank you
for your unknown work.
-John O'Donohue
