Time Heals All Wounds?

My dictionary defines a “wound” as: “an injury to living tissue caused by a cut, blow, or other impact, typically one in which the skin is cut or broken.”

We’ve all had our share of wounds.

Almost 60 years ago, I had a terrible bike wreck. Of course, a terrible bike wreck, by my definition, involved more than a bruise, more than a scratch and it must involve a scrape or wound and blood. There was no thought of taking me to the doctor for that wound. My granny spit snuff juice on it, wrapped it in a coal oil rag and I was good as new! But it was still a hurtful wound, left a scar that eventually faded, and it slowed me down a bit on my bike riding. Even today.

Emotional impact comes in bruises, scratches, and wounds! Emotional scars may be evident for many years and some may never go away. In the case of my bike wreck, time and a little folk remedy took care of it. Other wounds have gone into that invisible sack I carry on my back where all my life experiences have gone. Sometimes old wounds are pulled from the sack and inserted into modern-day situations. How about you?

When one is in the grieving process, often well-meaning people say about your loss: “Just give it time!” But, Carol Crandall said, “You don’t heal from the loss of a loved one because time passes; you heal because of what you do with the time.”

Listen to Carol Staudacher in A TIME TO GRIEVE:      “Time can do its work only if we help it. Just waiting for the passage of time after the death of a loved one is not enough. For example, a survivor could choose to begin drinking or to remain bound up in work to the extent that every emotion he or she had was being suppressed.

And we don’t heal ourselves by … sleeping away our lives, by dating twenty or thirty people, or by parking ourselves in front of the television set for a year or two. We heal by feeling what we need to feel when we need to feel it. … We can’t just passively wait for ourselves to heal — or run away from ourselves in the hope that when we finally stop our frantic activity the grief-related feelings will have magically disappeared.”

Grieving brings opportunities to heal and grow. Spending time with others who are also mourning the loss of our loved one may be something that in our haste may be overlooked. But, later on it is not too late to reach out to others who might share a precious memory of the one we miss so much as they recall the relationship they had.

For today, do just one new thing to move along in the grieving process, and then tomorrow do another and the day after, add another. You can do this!