Wounded Healers Heal Wounds
A special nurse’s tattoo attests that blessing isn’t a prosperity-gospel outcome or a trite hashtag blessed affirmation but a firm hope born of struggle and turmoil.
My first time in the infusion room, I notice Linda, one of the oncology nurses. She injects compassion and courage into the space, where patients of all ages sit in cozy recliners with heated blankets connected to life-saving, yet life-draining, plastic bags of liquid dripping into the superior vena cava. Most sit quietly, some sleep, others talk in hushed tones with companions, some are alone, many are subdued with drawn faces.
Linda is the lifeblood of the room, pumping sustenance to the nurses, who fill these brave and struggling souls with cheer. She assists the other nurses but confidently asks for help when needed, governed by an understood rule of give and take. Everyone likes and respects Linda. Even a patient once openly skeptical of her ability to change PICC lines—those annoying externally placed ports to transport chemo to the heart—now feels she is the only one who can do the job properly. He drives an hour through L.A. traffic to the suburban office just to have Linda change his PICC line, a rather simple procedure.
I’m intrigued by the cursive tattoo Blessed subtly inked on her dark forearm. When I tell her I like it, I’m introduced to a story of her sister—and best friend—whose chronic alcohol abuse creates a family crisis. After many years of supporting and rescuing her, Linda’s family tries a new approach: tough love. She tells a grueling story of taking custody of her sister’s two children while also mothering her own son as a single mom and oncology nurse. A restraining order against her pleading sister has to be enforced. It isn’t easy to stay strong; old patterns are hard to break, but after two tumultuous years, her sister starts getting the message. She cleans up, proves her parental fitness to a court, and reestablishes a relationship with her children and family. Her sobriety lasts.
What about the tattoo? Celebrating recovery and renewal, the sisters file into a tattoo shop together to ink identical message on their left forearms. The tattoo declares that blessing isn’t a prosperity-gospel outcome or a trite #blessed affirmation but a firm hope born of struggle and turmoil. Their wounds are a part of their story of blessing, which they wear and share. Linda’s story connects me to the theme of Henri Nouwen’s book The Wounded Healer, that wounded healers heal wounds. It’s a mystery how a person with scars becomes a healer. The healing takes flight and lands on parched soil with limp plants; it cross-pollinates and fertilizes a desert soul in need of comfort.
Being comforted propels us to eventually embrace our scars. My friend Janet had a freak fall in Yosemite that broke her shoulder three miles from the trailhead. That three mile walk out makes me cringe, but she experienced an out-of-body comfort. She was aware of God’s presence because of “the overflowing mercies like the doctor and nurse that met me on the trail and evaluated me. And had tape and made a splint for me. And the man who gave me a sweater off his back so I could have a sling.” The nurse at the emergency facility gave the sticks for the splint to Janet’s husband, Brad, who made a cross for her when they returned. Janet reports: “I had it [the cross]in my bathroom and looked at it every time I went in there, especially in the night when I had to get up 5 or 6 times. I remembered that God said ‘I am here, my child.’” For many months she fastidiously nursed the surgery wounds, applying ScarAway, an adhesive to minimize scars. A year later, still concerned about the scars, she realized that they were a part of her story now, something to integrate into her life and benefit others if she reveals not conceals them.
Healing is a process that starts with feeling and naming the losses and shifts to acceptance, a journey from disbelief, disappointment, and anger to integration. Acceptance is a crucial step in healing. I’m learning to accept my body—after a double mastectomy, single reconstruction, failed abdominal surgery, residual pain and dogged digestive pain—lop-sided, scarred, and unattractive. Ruthless elimination of comparison to others is an essential step in the process, when “Why me?” becomes “Why not me?” I’m not beguiled by curated projections of the charmed life on social media. I’m embracing my story, my portion. The scars are treasures in earthen vessels, scars that find others in need of healing. Our wounds create passions; passions connect to purpose, and purpose proffers hope.
At a later visit to the infusion center, Tess, another devoted nurse, hands my friend Lauren and me a devotional booklet I asked about earlier. She and Linda read it together on breaks. We joke about how the media push the message that Christians are becoming extinct, but there are many of us “in a campaign of sabotage”—as C.S. Lewis states—“listening-in to the secret wireless” when we go to church and spreading hope, courage, and cheer wherever God places us (Mere Christianity II/2). During Tess’s hour plus commute each day, she prays for the patients, nurses, and clinic and looks forward to being at work, even Mondays in an infusion center. I’m awed. Her voice and face convey the confidence of a calling, where skill, passion, and joy intersect.
Two months after my last chemo, I return to see Linda and Tess. Warm affection greets me at the door. When I remove my cap to reveal the cropped buzz with a tinge of embarrassment, Linda and Tess instruct me, in a “you-go-girl” tone, to put the cap away and wear the buzz with pride. Soon, I’m enveloped in a pep talk with them and the waiting room staff about the sexy look of a buzz. They’re pumping me up like a spirited huddle during half-time, and I’m floating on their affirmations, the miracle of flight where wounded healers find wounds to heal.
I leave the clinic, hat stuffed in my purse, confidently braced against the fall chill and my embarrassment.
Source cited:
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. Touchstone, 1980.