Chiron suffered from a wound that never healed. Surprisingly, his wound gave him great compassion and power to heal. Carl Jung used this myth to develop the idea of the wounded healer, which both he and the theologian Henry Nouwen used to help understand how psychological healing takes place. For Jung and Nouwen, doctors are only effective when they themselves are affected: only the wounded physician heals.
But you don't have to be a physician to be a person who heals. Nouwen writes, "Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds so we don't have to be embarrassed, but how can we put our woundedness in the service of others? When our wounds cease to be sources of shame and become a source of healing? We have become wounded healers." I think there is wisdom in this concept for all of us, but it starts by admitting that we have all been bruised. This is Dr. Scott Morris for Church Health.
