Letting Go of the Addiction to Your Wound.
Your deepest wound is one sexy son-of-a-bitch. It wears ass-shaping pants with really chunky crystal rings.
Your mother hates it, your therapist diagnosed it, and your friends all empathize with your addiction to its physique and charm as they remind you: it is just no good for you.
It almost seems to tell you, “I’m going to use you hardcore, and you’re going to love it. You’re going to spend hours asking your friends why I make you so miserable. I’m going to smoke and brood in the corner of your mind, while you try to get into my impenetrable head.”
It is that one lover who has done you over so many times you swore you would never have anything to do with it ever again. But you still think about it when you’re lonely and tired, when you hear something that reminds you of the world you created around it.
Your wound is the one you return to when life is shit and you want to drink over it.
The one you call on the way home, when it’s too late, and you both know you do not want to just talk. You’re crying and whiny and small and shitty, but your wound doesn’t care. It will be waiting for you on your porch just as sexy, self-indulged, and destructive as the day you first felt it.
But before you dive into the sheets with that old something of yours: Hold up. Don’t do it. Stop jumping in bed with your wound. Stop letting it be the closest thing to you as you ignore all else.
When you hang out with that wound, you are desperate and self-deprecating. You forget all the work you’ve done to heal it.
I get that indulging and going numb can feel good, but we both know when you wake up the next day totally disillusioned, you hate yourself.
I know the story: your wound gets you, understands you, knows you inside out. How could you go through life without it? What would it even look like to feel okay?
The thought of being without it is more terrifying than what it’s like to barely wake up the next morning. Yes, that old lonely seduction is more sad than sexy, but at least it’s predictable.
At least you know what’s coming.
What is on the other side of it? It feels like a foreign concept to picture a life where you are free.
It takes more of a risk being happy.
Jumping in bed with the wound won’t be great, but at least you won’t get your hopes up. At least you’ll be safe from the vulnerability of being in the game.
But that’s just it: this wound wants to keep you out of the game for as long as possible because it’s terrified of you, of your power, of being able to let it go for good and write about the story of the transformation of your wound from monster to soul fuel.
It knows that the minute you recognize your worth, that mother f’er has no hope because you will be ready to put all of that sappy self-loathing baggage in the past, where it belongs.
It takes baby steps to get there.
When you feel free and you’re congratulating yourself over being healthy, Bam, something will knock you off your feet so fast and quick that you’ll feel like you’re back to Square One.
But you never are.
You are always stronger, wiser, more whole. You are always tougher the next time around because each time you decide to own your life, you get less sidetracked by the past.
The more you decide to light a candle in the dark night instead of digging up the bones of that old wound, you’ll begin to see what it all was for.
It takes distance to recognize the gift in the wound, which doesn’t mean that it gets to be naked with you. It doesn’t get the best of you.
Calling out the gift from all of the pain of the past simply looks like feeling the hunger for that old wound and resisting it.
It looks like crying, punching, breathing, walking, falling on your knees and letting the Earth hold you instead of running to the arms of the thing that hurt you.
And in this space you’ll realize what it all was for: to bring you back to yourself, empty yet whole, completely enamored with this bliss of being.
Not to mention you are unstoppable with this distance from it because you can use that wound for good and help other women who have wounds lurking around, wearing fake leather and cheap cologne.
You’ll help them recognize that old seduction and nip it in the bud, and be the one they can come to when they are ready to break the addiction to being wounded.
You’ll teach them the difference between being wounded and having wounds. It simply is: no matter what it takes, you turn off your phone and fall asleep naked and alone. You do not let your body give into anything that is not good enough for it, and when you do, you hurry back to your own skin and bones and vow to keep coming back, quicker each time.
Each time you leave becomes smaller, more graceful. Like a bird hopping from branch to branch. You will not terrorize yourself with the candor of your youth. No, you will learn to endure the most uncomfortable feeling of all:
Total complete peace for no good reason at all.
Your body, once riddled with wounds, will not let them go completely. These wounds turn into stars in the skin that let the universe in, and you’re not willing to give that up. A vessel smoother than silk and fierce and yielding. Surrendering over and over and over, letting life rush in and through, and being carried away and always returning only to you.
You are not a walking coffin. You are walking earth, mud, water, fire, and sky. And all of this lives between your thighs just as it did before your wound came along and told you otherwise.
You’re allowed to enjoy this freedom, this ease, to come and go as you please, and to never, ever, let anyone put a dimmer on your joy again.
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Maria Palumbo’s ‘soul mission’ is to awaken women to their innate power. Beginning in community mental health, Maria served as a psychotherapist with a specialty in healing the wounds of trauma. Maria integrated holistic therapies of Yoga, aromatherapy, meditation, and dance therapy with the discipline of psychotherapy. She created a model for group therapy which is still being implemented by others today. She expanded on her education and experience in psychotherapy by becoming certified in Yoga and Reiki II. Recently she burst through the box of psychotherapy to create her own model of self-discovery which stokes the holy fire in every woman she meets. Acutely aware of the innate genius in all, Maria works with women to help them remember who they are. She watches and swoons as incredible magic happens in her soul-coaching sessions. She is the creator and dream-maker of BodyLove Goddess photo shoot, an event that is the impetus for a body-love revolution. She is currently available for individual healing work via her website.
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