March 1, 2005
The Sacred Wound
by Margaret Wolff
Each of us has a sacred wound. It is what makes us both human and divine. It weaves its way into the warp and weft of our lives like an invisible thread that tugs at the twilight of our longing; it twists our unconscious into knots until, one day, it shapeshifts into an arrow that pierces our complacency and cannot be denied. If we embrace our sacred wound, if we make peace with it, it delivers us into the waiting arms of Spirit. From that moment on, we live with greater abandon and compassion, with renewed purpose and profound gratitude. No longer shackled by the fears that keep us inextricably bound, we are free to become who we always hoped we could be. New sorrows come that may, at times, sever us from the sacredness of the wound --perhaps, more often than we might like -- but they do not keep us hidebound, for we know now that when we lay ourselves and all that we hold dear at the feet of the Divine Compassion, we are made whole.
I did not know this, however, on the day the arrow pierced my heart, on the day it came to me in the guise of a car accident. Seven years, one month and fourteen days ago, a woman ran a red light at an intersection in Pasadena, California and obliterated the right side of my car. The impact spun me like a top. I hit three other cars, ricocheted down the block and came to rest in front of a old stone church. I had felt the Archer's presence at other times in my life cloistered discreetly behind the chaos, lingering providentially beneath the slick surface of my comfort zone. I had even felt the arrow's sting. But the accident unleashed the full compliment of the Archer's quiver. I did not see it coming.
I remember two things about the collision: the sound --the rage of steel imploding in on itself --and that my consciousness bifurcated, it split in two. The lion's share of my ego, rabid from the fear of its near annihilation, screamed in holy terror at exact moment an evil twin --an impatient, imperious voice inside my head --declared, "Who is this woman screaming and will she pul-eese shut up!" The accident left me with enough brain damage to definitively blunt the interior processes that had previously ordered my life: I lost 80% of my peripheral vision, a prodigious chunk of memory and the ability to process and communicate information in a linear fashion. I stuttered. I got lost. I disappeared beneath the din of conversation. When I went out --if I went out -- I almost always cupped my hands over my eyes, an unconscious attempt to reduce my visual field to an expanse that did not hot-wire my brain. It was not pretty.
It took a while to understand what happened. I clung, for well over a year, to an ingenious medley of rationalizations that allowed me to superficially coexist with my symptomology, my family and my colleagues. No longer able to comply with the roles I had once used to define myself, I drifted lost and disheartened across a black and stormy sea. Then one day, my attorney insisted I get a neurological work-up to substantiate the case we were building against the driver of the other car. I became so agitated by my inability to complete the diagnostic that I lashed out at the technician, threw my arms up in the air and burst into tears. Still, I did not consciously entertain even the slightest possibility that something was amiss.
My initial response to the diagnosis was an alchemical mix of horror and relief --horror at being told that I would never again regain the brain function I had lost, and relief that the considerable life energy I had employed to sustain my idealized version of self and circumstance could now be directed more constructively. One of the ways I did this was to go with my husband to France, a country that was, for me, steeped in the Divine Feminine. Her presence was always before me, in the cathedrals, in the Louvre --that great womb of the world's most inspired art --in the gentle curves of the road that gird the villages of the Loire Valley. I felt embraced.
When we returned to California I had, to my utter dismay, a new and unexpected loss to contend with -- an agonizing barrenness of heart, a spiritual void that was almost more than I could bear. It was in that state that I decided to do the impossible and write a book, a book whose subject matter would keep my connection to the Great Mother alive. Given the nature and extent of my injuries, my determination was ludicrous. But I took what was for me a non-negotiable leap of faith and began a journey through a passage that was so narrow, I could not take any baggage --any pride or doubt or fear or woundedness -- with me. I had heard a call. The intensity of my longing would simply have to do what my brain could not. It was in this manner that my book, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE, was born.
What I did not know when I cast my tangled net out on the water was that writing IN SWEET COMPANY would be a life-transforming experience. Though I could not string a sentence together to save my soul, over the next four years I met with fourteen famous women --activists, artists, religious leaders and visionaries; women like Sister Helen Prejean, Margaret Wheatley, Riane Eisler, Katherine Dunham and Olympia Dukakis; women striving to embody their deepest values --and talked with them about the ways in which their personal relationship with the Divine informs their life. I asked hard questions --of the women and of myself --because I really wanted answers: How do you keep your relationship with God vital and alive? Is there a core value, a "Golden Rule," that guides your decison-making? Have you ever had a "Dark Night of the Soul?" How did you make it through your Dark Night? Keeping company with these women, both during our initial conversations and spiritually as I edited their words, re-made me. Giving them a forum to articulate their thoughts connected me more fully to my own voice, to my own ability to speak and act from Truth as I understand it. Writing IN SWEET COMPANY filled me with awe and confidence at what one person, no matter what her path or process, can actualize inside herself and accomplish in the world when she connects her life to Something Greater. Even me.
And though it was not my intention when I began the book, though I never once considered it as an option, over time the constancy of the process of editing, of editing work that I loved -- the repetition and focus that editing demands -- became a means to re-groove the neural pathways in my brain just as repeatedly taking the same route through a grassy meadow eventually leaves a tried and true footpath for others to follow. In the end, I not only had a book, I regained 70% of my peripheral vision and hopefully, a fairly conspicuous degree of brain function. I also discovered what that voice in my head was actually trying to tell me: Who among us has not screamed out loud or demanded our fair share of the pie when wrested from the potential to live out our days in relative safety, in peace, with meaning and purpose? It was then that I came to understand the sacredness of the wound, how the limitations of self can pave the way for the emergence of the True Self, the Self that lives in divine reciprocity with the God of one's heart no matter what the outer circumstance.
I tell you this story as a way to stoke your own longing, to stimulate the remembrance of your True Self and of the unerring Grace that silently, lovingly surrounds us all. I tell you this story to build bridges I myself may never cross, to open doors I may never walk through, to forge relationships I may never actually participate in. I tell you this story so that you might feel more ease in telling your own story, so that we all might feel less alone in our times of trial. I tell you this story that you too can learn to honor the disparate voices in your own head, that you too can come to know the sacredness of the wound.
Margaret Wolff, MA is a journalist and popular speaker who leads retreats for women based on her book around the country. To learn more about her book and her work, please visit www.InSweetCompany.com