"This is the only life I have, this one in my head,/ the one that travels along the surface of my body/ singing the low voltage song of the ego…" – Billy Collins
Your heart wounds are self-inflicted. It is not that you are masochistic. It is because your ego's ear is so finely tuned for praise that you bleed at every perceived insult.
From childhood to our last breath our hearts are both cut and healed by the language of living. The healing may come through the tincture of time whose days deliver perspective and dim loss.
But, there are better ways to nurture your soul than letting time thicken your scars.
There is the magic of forgiveness – not the kind that says, "I forgive you but I was right." Instead, forgiveness heals when you embrace understanding and generosity.
Wounds can also be healed through the stories you tell. Change your story and you will change your heart's experience.
This is part of what spoken word artist Minton Sparks (above with guitarist John Jackson) does in her story-telling workshops. She helps people engage their history so they can reinterpret their lives.
Suffering is compassion's best teacher. Heart scars are so hard-won you might as well let them inform you.
The finest caregivers remember their pain as a way to empathize. Ineffective caregivers hid their pain beanth a veneer of superiority. Instead of sharing common ground they adopt patterns of pity that demean instead of heal.
Self-healing is an art that can be both taught and learned. Like any art, it needs training and practice.
"This is the only life I have," Collins wrote, "and I never step out of it/ except to follow a character down the alleys of a novel/ or when love makes me want to remove my clothes/ and sail classical records off a cliff."
Self-healing begins when you strip off the hair shirt of self inflicted pain and throw the dragons that clawed your heart off a cliff. Confront your dragons and they lose their power. In their place comes a new choir of angels to sing the high voltage song of your one and only life.
Your three self-healing medicines:
1) Time
2) Forgiveness & Gratitude
3) Changing your story
And one more, 4) Rest
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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