Healing the Wound: Recovering from Loss

HEALING THE WOUND is based on workshops Dr. Fox-Hines conducts for people who have experienced major losses in their lives whether those loses be the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, illness or injury that causes massive changes in one's life style, trauma such as rape that tears into our very beings.

Dr Fox-Hines created the image of a wound as she dealt with her own grief and with clients' grief. Most people understand that wounds need several forms of care in order to heal. Often they do not know that our often invisible emotional wounds also need several forms of care in order to heal. This book takes the care needed for physical healing and shows how each of the steps in healing bodily wounds can be applied to often agonizingly painful wounds of the spirit. Each chapter in the book focuses on a specific aspect of caring for a wound: cleansing, applying ointment, bandaging, medication, stitches, rehabilitation and dealing with scar tissue.

Wounds need to be washed. Emotional wounds need the cleansing of tears. Wounds need antibiotic ointments or medications. Gentle self care and accepting the caring ministrations of others is the ointment that works on wounds of the spirit. Wounds need bandages. Our human support systems are the bandages for emotional pain. We often need some form of pain killers when we are physically wounded. People when grieving too often turn to unhealthy medications such as alcohol or over eating. Activity and diversions are the healthy forms of medication for attacks on our beings. Large wounds require stitches. The stitches involved with emotional wounds include dealing with reality -it was a "death" not simply a "moving on."-and the anger that often comes with reality. After initial healing comes rehabilitation and with life wounds versus physical ones, rehab is refocusing on the future versus the past; it is making plans for one's life. Lastly, with many major