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“Wounds are where the light comes to you.” ~ Romani
I watched my Son beats By his father, and something inside me finally opened up.
Do not separate. Broken Open. There is a difference.
Over the years, I have absorbed the chaos. I made myself smaller, quieter and more comfortable. I convinced myself that if I could love more, the better, the more I tried, the more things would change. But then, watching my child suffer in the arms of the man who had to protect him, I clearly understood that nothing I did was enough to fix this. The only thing to do is leave.
It took me three months to make an escape plan. Three months of pretending everything is normal, while quietly collecting documents, secretly saving money and mapping the future I can hardly imagine. Three months of my breathing and praying for my baby to be able to hold on a little longer. I then moved myself and my four children to safety.
I want to tell you that it is the hard part. I want to say that when we are physically free, healing begins and things get easier. But the truth is, Departure It was just the beginning. A real transformation, the part that will turn my deepest wounds into wisdom, still awaits me on the other side.
What no one tells you about escaping an abusive relationship is that sometimes your child does not run away with you. Not emotionally. Sometimes they get hurt in ways you can’t predict or control. Sometimes they blame you for disturbing their world, even when that world is hurting them.
My eldest daughter decided to go back to living with her father. She is angry with me. Teens often, but this feels different. This felt like denying everything I had sacrificed to keep her safe.
I begged her to come home for months. I cried myself to sleep more nights than I could count. I asked every decision I ever made. Am I wrong to leave? Did I ruin my family in vain? Am I in trouble as he always says I am?
Grief suffocated. I struggled to protect my baby, and now one of them has chosen what I tried to protect her from. And then there was something I did not expect. She came back.
Not because I persuaded her. Not because I begged hard enough or said the right thing. She came back because she had finally experienced for myself what I was trying to do to protect her. The fact that I tried to describe in a thousand different ways suddenly became her own reality.
When she returned, she was different. Stronger. More awake. She learned something that my warnings could not teach her. Today she is one of the strongest young women I know.
Coming home to her taught me something profound. It shows me that it is okay to come home too. For a long time I have Give up my personal needsMy personal voice, my personal values. I was so focused on saving others that I forgot I needed to save. Watching my daughter find her way back reminded me that I too could find my way back.
This is what I mean by injury becomes wisdom. It is not that suffering is good or that pain has a metallic purpose that makes it useful. But experiences that separate us can also be experiences that show us who we really are. The place we suffer the most often becomes the place we offer the most. I learned this lesson again last year.
My son, now fifteen, decided he wanted to live with his father. History is happening again and every cell in my body wants to shout, fight, do everything to stop him from making the same mistake his sister did. But because I had walked this path before, I knew something I did not know for the first time. I knew I could not prevent him from traveling.
This time things got harder. He starts acting. Drugs. Alcohol. Problems with the law. Testing. Every call brings a new heartbreak. Every update reminded me of all the ways I wish I could fix it for him.
But this is what my injury has already taught me. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is give someone a place to learn their lesson. Sometimes our children have to touch their own fire before believing it is hot. And sometimes the hardest part of loving someone is believing that they will find their way, even if the path they are walking scares us.
So I did something that would once feel impossible. I left. Not loving him, not believing in him, but trying to control the outcome. Instead, I opened the door. I am currently staying. I am constant. I believe that the love that I have poured over him for so many years is still alive in him, even though I can not see it.
And then something happened, I could not force it. After sixty days in the treatment room during each visit, my son looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Mom, I saw it and I never wanted to go back to Dad’s house and I did not want to be like him.”
It was then that I realized that the patience, trust, and love I had maintained when I was feeling most powerless worked quietly beneath the surface.
His sister, who used to walk that path on her own, hugged him with a calm understanding that came only from personal experience. Their love affair deepened during that time. Share the truth, joint treatment, joint resolution.
And like his sister before him, he finds his way home. Not because I persuaded him. Not because I struggled harder or found the right words. He came home because he had traveled far enough from personal experience to see clearly for himself. The truth became his. That is the opposite of love. Let go. When we stop trying to control someone’s path, we create a place for them to choose their own.
My son’s journey did not turn out as he had hoped. It involves pain, consequences, and lessons learned in difficult ways. But it also reveals what influences. The foundation we lay for our children — a year of love, security, and truth — never fades when they leave. It is with them. And when they are ready, it calls them to go home.
This is an alchemy of change. The pain we live with has become the medicine we offer. The wisdom we gain from our most difficult seasons becomes a beacon for others who are still walking in darkness. We do not treat. Although Our wounds. We treat Through They.
If you are in the middle of something that feels impossible right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Whatever fire you are going through, whatever heartbreak you are having at night, whatever the impossible choice is, sit in front of you, listen to me as I speak. You are stronger than you know.
The wounds you are holding now may one day become a lifeline. Your story, its chaos and its pain and imperfection, is powerful. Not a day when you realize it all. Not when you reach the other side and can tie it with a nice bow. Now in the middle of it, your survival is important.
This is what I learned about turning wounds into wisdom.
First, allow yourself to feel.
Do not rush through the pain to get to school. Grief is not a problem to be solved.. It is a process to respect. The only way out is to cross and try to skip the hardware, meaning you will have to circle the back.
Second, resist the urge to control what you can not control.
This is the hardest lesson for me. I want to seriously protect my children from all the consequences of their choices. But some lessons can be learned directly. Our job is not to remove all obstacles from the path of our loved ones. Our job is to be there when they stumble, ready to help them back up.
Third, come home yourself.
That is why so many of us spend our lives sacrificing ourselves for others. We shrink, stay, disappear. We make the needs of others more important than our own, forgetting that we have needs. Healing requires us to return to ourselves with the same compassion that we freely give to others.
Fourth, believe in time.
Your discovery will not look like everyone else’s. Your treatment will not follow a predictable schedule. The wisdom that is built up in you now may not manifest itself for months or years. But it is coming. Every hardship you survive is an addition to a reservoir of strength that you do not yet know you have.
Finally, let your story be medicine.
When you are ready, only when you are ready share what you have learned. Not from all thoughtful places, but from honest and imperfect living places. The world does not need more people pretending they have never struggled. The world needs people who dare to speak “It almost destroyed me and this is how I survived.”
I still have a hard day. I still worry about my children. I still have scars from marriage that try to convince me that I am worthless. But now I also take something else. I take the knowledge that I am not afraid that I have the ability to walk through the fire and come out to the other side. I take the wisdom that comes from my deepest wounds. I mention one thing that can only help others believe that they can survive.
Over the years, I have believed that loving my children means fighting every battle for them. Now I understand something different. Love sometimes seems to hold a fire on the porch and believe that when they are ready they will see it and walk home.
Wounds are where light enters. Not because pain is good, but because pain leaves us open with nothing else to do. And in those cracks, if we look brave, we will find the unexpected. We find ourselves. We find our strength. We find the wisdom that awaits us all.
You are not broken. You have never been. You are being improved.
About Rebecca Wells
Rebecca is a life midwife, life coach and health consultant who specializes in theoretical, attachment and healing information. She is the author of Refined by Love and six workbooks. A mother of four, she lives in Tennessee, where she helps others turn their wounds into wisdom. Connect with her at Welfare with rebecca.com.
