Life is full of ups and downs. The struggles are always real from the individuals perspective. We cannot dare to think we can compare or fully understand what another person goes through. Neither the elation of joy and happiness or the sorrow of sadness and fear. I have felt many emotions both those from my shadow and my light. Life is a duality, two things exist at once at all times. Though it is night here it is also day somewhere. Though, right now, my body is in crippling pain and my soul is crying huge tears of sorrow, I know that I will find joy and relief again. I know that these two things coexist inside me.

It has taken years of wandering, searching, listening, learning, and trying to even begin to understand how two opposites co-exist at once. In my original holistic PTSD program, Save a Warrior Cohort 018, they suggested that in my wounds I might find a gift. In my mind I have many images when I think of what this might look like. I’ve a romantic, fantastical imagination. So, when I suggest that we might all find gifts in our wounds I picture a Phoenix rising from the smoldering coals of its’ own death. The ashes remain, yet something new blooms and can live again. It didn’t erase the previous existence but built on top of it.

I have in my wandering been blessed with mentoring 10 different groups of women through another holistic PTSD program, Warriors’ Ascent. I have encouraged them to find the gift in their wound even as my own gift reveals itself in my work with them. It isn’t enough to just pass the gift though. I have to live it myself. I have to give the gift in my wounds to myself. I mention these groups of women though because they too are doing the work, they too are on this journey. I’m not the lone wanderer, others are traveling too.

Daily, as I wander through the various employment, volunteering, creating, and exploring I continue to unwrap the gift in my wounding. There are days like today where the wounding is deep and crippling. My physical injuries take my peace and open the door to my mental wounding. It reminds me of how I’m different, how I must treat myself more gently, and how I have to ask others for help. I struggle to see the gift in this wound. I start to shut down both physically and mentally. I wonder how I’ll make it through the night and the next day and day after that. Less pain feels like a distant memory, let alone no pain which was eons ago. The tears stream down my face, unabashedly. I let them leave trails on my face and I feel my skin tighten as the trails dry. I focus on a sensation that is not my pain and I try to breathe.

One of the things I’ve found in receiving my gift in my wounds is that I cannot stop the feeling. I cannot numb that which is unpleasing to me. If I sent this shadow self then I will inevitably deny my light self. It is the same when I let this shadow-self run rampant it will overrun my light. Finding the gift in the wound is the first step to finding balance after and through wounding.

I want to deny that this physical pain has a gift. I rail against it, full if venom and curse words. I am tempted to sink deeper into it, to give everything I’ve accomplished and strived for up, to live in darkness. This seems ridiculous to those whose darkness and wounding doesn’t have such a hold on them. I however have lived inside my darkness for a long time now, for a long time I couldn’t see the light at all. I find an odd comfort in my pain. It is the feeling I know the best some days. If I’m going to be honest though, being able to write is my gift in the wound. It is the gift I give myself to put all of this pain and suffering into something more than just my body. It is a gift I hope I can give to others who struggle like I do. I don’t know what other gift these wounds might give me, but I will keep wandering. I will keep searching for the value, the purpose, for the next chapter of my life. In the meantime I’ll put into play all the many things I must do to care for myself. I have to force myself, but I will keep trying, because if I’m trying, I’m succeeding.

So if you too find yourself wounded and struggling I hope you can find a gift in it to give yourself. However begrudgingly you may also feel towards it. I know it exists because I have found gifts in other wounds. If not for the gifts I’ve found I would be dead. Take the journey, allow yourself to wander and search out the gifts in your wounds.