Who Heals the Healer?

Hear me read this post.

Well, the obvi­ous answer is we are all one anoth­er’s heal­ers. Through sim­ple acts of appre­ci­a­tion, a will­ing­ness to lis­ten, the offer­ing of new per­spec­tives and ideas, just a touch, per­haps — all of which may trig­ger an inner con­nec­tion or two, and a res­o­lu­tion to some­thing that may have been both­er­ing some­body a long time. A very effec­tive leader I know told me one time her “secret” was this: “All you have to do is take care of peo­ple. They do the rest.” And it strikes me this is anoth­er way to say the same thing, that in the sun­light of one anoth­er’s care we are stronger, and because we are stronger, things can change. Things can get done. Oh, I know, it isn’t so sim­ple as all that. The leader I am think­ing of is an incred­i­bly good read­er of oth­ers and their needs, and she’s no pushover — what she has is a gift.

And yet, who heals her? Who heals any of us when we are alone, whether it is at the top of the orga­ni­za­tion or at the edge of a com­mu­ni­ty or even in its midst while attempt­ing to cre­ate pos­i­tive change? How does the one who brings care, the one who stands sol­id when oth­ers can­not, the one who gives, sus­tain her­self or him­self? The risk is what some col­leagues used to refer to as “change agent flu,” a dis­ease caused by not see­ing enough orga­ni­za­tion­al or insti­tu­tion­al change from one’s hard work, the symp­toms of which are such things as low self-esteem, per­sis­tent crank­i­ness, push­ing too hard at meet­ings, pri­vate pan­ic attacks, recur­ring depres­sions, dark­en­ing cyn­i­cism, and final­ly with­draw­al from the work that a per­son once loved the best.

And yes, sup­port groups can help, and that’s a vari­a­tion of where we start­ed, with the thought that we are all one anoth­er’s healers.

There is anoth­er answer, tougher, that takes us to a deep­er well, that caus­es reflec­tion at a more pri­ma­ry and some­times prim­i­tive lev­el of our­selves, that has to do with why we do the work we do, why we lead, why we need to cre­ate change, and ulti­mate­ly what we are try­ing to work out in our­selves through our own lead­er­ship. And so we are faced with our val­ues, per­haps our sense of wor­thi­ness to the roles we have accept­ed, and to the process­es of self-reliance and of our own heal­ing, process­es which are like roots slow­ly grow­ing down and in, search­ing for nour­ish­ment with­in our per­son­al, inner landscape.

I have found, like you, that some­times that land­scape is intact and suf­fi­cient, and some­times it has been washed away — by events, by dilem­mas, by pure exhaus­tion. And when it is washed away and there is no one to talk to about it at the moment, then there has to be anoth­er place to go. A place of essence or peace that is giv­en, not self-cre­at­ed. Pre­cise­ly because per­son­al land­scapes are prone to get washed away from time to time. But to find that place can be dif­fi­cult. It nev­er seems to leave a for­ward­ing address from the last time we were there. And so, in turn, the amaz­ing process of wait­ing kicks in, some­times for excru­ci­at­ing­ly long peri­ods, but nev­er, it seems to me, forever.

A lit­tle con­text and dis­clo­sure. The last time I got washed away, it was the prod­uct of an awk­ward con­ver­sa­tion with a friend (worse for me, in many ways, than a client), with the issue being exact­ly my role as a “heal­er” and the inex­press­ible alone­ness I some­times feel that comes with it. I was real­ly suf­fer­ing over this, busy link­ing stuff that went back to my fam­i­ly of ori­gin, feel­ing alien­at­ed, and want­i­ng some­thing more than me rely­ing on this role to keep the rela­tion­ship in tact. I was fac­ing where the role came from in the first place, how I’d used it to fos­ter and main­tain con­nec­tions and what that was now deliv­er­ing back to me in return, what bag­gage and inse­cu­ri­ties I was still car­ry­ing that might pre­vent me from drop­ping it. So that’s where the ques­tion came from. I was feel­ing like a burn­ing bush that had burned itself right out.

For­tu­nate­ly, the wait for me was­n’t too long. The next day I hap­pened to be sort­ing out some CD’s and ran across the Char­lotte Church song, “All Love Can Be.” The song, with music by James Horner and lyrics by Will Jen­nings, can be found on the sound­track CD for the film, “A Beau­ti­ful Mind.” I dug up Jen­nings’s lyrics, put the song on my play­er, and almost instant­ly felt some­thing reach into me and go all the way down to the painful places I had been feel­ing most alone. Was find­ing that par­tic­u­lar song that day syn­chronic­i­ty, just a mean­ing­ful coin­ci­dence? Well, per­haps, if you believe that syn­chronic­i­ty finds you.

Here are the words (there are sev­er­al slight vari­a­tions — if these are not the offi­cial ones, please let me know). Here is the song.

I will watch you in the darkness
Show you love will see you through
When the bad dreams wake you crying
I’ll show you all love can do
All love can do

I will watch by the night
Hold you in my arms
Give you dreams where no one will be
I will watch through the dark
Till the morn­ing comes

For the lights will take you
Through the night to see
All love, show­ing us all love can be

I will guard you with my bright wings
Stay till your heart learns to see
All love can be

There is agency in this world, of course, and maybe as the song sug­gests, it comes from the heart of an angel. I am sure you have your own inter­pre­ta­tions of this force; for me angels are but one ele­gant arche­type. But what­ev­er it is, it finds us, if we let it. And that did answer my ques­tion — at least on that day.

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