What a week for those born under the sign of Aquarius (feel free to pause and hum or sing loudly one of the great songs, “Age of Aquarius”)…..January 24 was the birthday of Henri Nouwen, January 27 is Mozart’s birthday and Saturday is Gandhi’s. Of this listing, the one most unfamiliar, I’m guessing, is Henri Nouwen.
Henri, a Dutch Catholic priest, gave us the notion of the wounded healer and encouraged honesty and realness about our wounds and hurts and to use those experiences in connection and healing.
When I was a kid, one wore a band-aid with a sense of pride and if the cut required one of those larger bandage patches you provided evidence to your bad-ass-ness. A popular disinfectant of my growing-up days was mercurochrome, when applied it burned, “that’s how you know it works” said my father while my mother applied and blew, applied and blew in an effort to take away the sting. Mercurochrome left a pinkish orange stain on one’s skin providing another visible stamp of toughness. Of course, casts and crutches were the grand images of grit.
As adults we hide our hurts and keep private our pain. We don’t ask for help and if offered will quickly say “it’s OK, thanks.” Stereotypes and stigma draw us even further inside of ourselves. In my work with persons living with behavioral health concerns one of the best programs I led was the creation of a Human Library wherein persons participated in a training learning how to tell one’s personal story with passion, precision and purpose. The individual stories were shared at community events, college classrooms and themed teach-ins. The project was two-fold ---- one, to encourage persons to share their stories and in doing unstick the label and smash the stereotype and, two, to educate the shared community and break the stigma. Storytellers connected and their willingness to share their personal journey provided a healing space.
Mozart was a genius, composing his first piece at the age of six. I don’t know about you, yet, at that age, I was mastering the wooden sticks and showing off my pink-tinted arm and my bandaged knee. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said, “I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.” May we all be real, resilient and whole in our connections and building and living into shared community.