Wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people

We help and heal one another. My solace comes from those who know. In that way I come to trust myself.

The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise. — Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

More on topic: The wounded healer: visiting the archetype

More posts inspired by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.:

• Healing as opposed to curing

• Service as a way of knowing

• Wounding and healing are not opposites

• The art of living: stories as sustenance for the soul

And also see: What does it mean to heal?