The Original Wound is a Lie!

Do you have a deep original wound that has shaped your personality and character? Are you ready to look at it directly and banish its poison from your life?

When I was a very small boy, I could not help feeling that my father loved my older brother more than he loved me. This could have been my imagination. But I so wanted his love, that I probably showed my love too strongly. Sometimes I thought this annoyed him just a little. Although, in retrospect, I probably created these feelings based on a story I made up for myself to explain emotions and circumstances I did not understand at the time. And at some point, I started believing that my love for him is what killed him.

Then, when I was five years old, my father died under mysterious circumstances. My mother suffered from depression after the birth of my baby sister, and as a result both she and my dad consulted a doctor who was supposed to help them, but killed my Dad instead. I later found out that the doctor was helping them “relax” by giving them needles full of sodium pentothal, “truth serum,” and placing them on cots asleep in separate vestibules. This doctor had lots of other patients on “truth serum” asleep and placed in vestibules to help them relax. The doctor did not clean his needles and many of the people who needed his help died, including my Dad.

But I did not know this story for many years. The day he died, I only knew what I was told, “Your Dad is not coming home anymore”. I cried as did my brother and sister, although my sister was still very little and I don’t think she knew why she was crying. I don’t think I understood it very well either. Not coming home anymore? What did that mean exactly? But I knew enough that I was frightened every night thereafter. And that is when the black snakes first arrived and crawled into my belly.

For a long time, I laid in bed and thought of nothingness and felt cold all over. I had a recurring dream that the moon was trying to break into my bedroom through the window. But I got a knife from the kitchen and jumped off the top bunk bed and stabbed it. My brother, sleeping on the lower bunk, never woke up.

My mother lied about how my Dad died, probably to protect her father, who we called Pappy. Pappy was also a kind of doctor, but the kind that rubbed your shoulders and back to help you relax. Pappy had recommended that she and my father go to this doctor who was Pappy’s colleague and friend. My mother and Pappy told us children that my father died of cancer. Of course, no one could be blamed if he died of cancer. But as a five-year-old, I found this very scary: What if I catch cancer and die like my Dad.

But my brother and I eventually discovered the truth in a dark closet in the basement. We were cleaning out the closet to help my Mom and earn our allowance. One of us knocked a file off the top shelf by accident. Newspaper clippings spilled from the fallen file. “Doctor kills Jim’s Dad,” the headline read. “Kills other kids’ parents too.” At least I think this is how it happened.

It must have been something like that because my Mom then admitted the truth. But it didn’t seem to make her feel better. Now that we knew how he died, we could help her with her guilt, she reasoned. Of course, we were still small children and did not even know what guilt was. So, the empty place in my Mom that needed love grew and sucked all her energy. Even before my Dad died, my Mom was cursed with many black snakes in her belly, but I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t really know what was wrong. I just knew that she was also sucking energy from me and the empty spaces left by the sucking were backfilled with more black snakes.

*****

A wound is an original wound when it is suffered before our personality has fully developed and the wound develops into a key character trait. The original wound comes before we have learned how to defend ourselves from attacks and tragedy. Before we have learned denial. The original wound is often a secret we keep even from ourselves. A secret that controls our actions and choices without us even knowing it exists. But it is often only a secret to us. To everyone else, it is obvious. Everyone knew I was the boy who would not allow himself to feel because his father died when he was a small child. I was the boy who made jokes all the time because to stare into the face of reality is too frightening. Everyone knew but me.

The original wound pulls you down. Down and down until you are so low that there is nowhere to go but up. In that way it is the door to salvation as much as it is the bottomless pit of despair. “Normal” people, without deep original wounds, are less likely to get the wake-up call to battle for their authentic selves. Don’t get me wrong, we all have wounds. The human domestication process itself is a wound inflicting path. Is there a child that goes from pure freedom to the rules of school who doesn’t trade at least a tiny piece of their soul? But when the black snakes become so thick in your belly that you literally can’t breathe, you either act or you die. Hopefully, we find the path to do both: submit the wound to death and then be reborn to your snake-free, authentic self.

I suffered at least two original wounds, but I wasn’t aware of either until I was well into the middle of my life. They both involved my parents and they were both lies. One was a lie I told myself about my father: that I loved him too much and that is what killed him. Second, was a lie my mother told me: that I didn’t love her enough. Both were ridiculous lies that had nothing to do with reality. Nevertheless, for most of my life they affected every action I took, though I was oblivious to their control over me for most of that time. For the longest time, I didn’t even know that these were the lies that created my “outward” personality. That is how skilled our bodies are at lying to protect us from pain.

Now, the fact that my father died was not a lie. He really died. The lie was that it was my fault.

And my mother really did tell me – many, many times -- that I didn’t love her or, at least, that I didn’t love her enough. It was not a lie that she told me these things.

But it was a lie that I didn’t love her. I did love her as all children love their mother. And I loved her as much as any child could under the circumstances. I just couldn’t love her enough to fill the hole the snakes dug in her belly. And I couldn’t love her enough to make the snakes go away. And it turns out, much to my relief, that it was not my job and that her insatiable hunger for love was not my fault. But I didn’t know that for a long time.

Based on these two lies, I stopped loving and locked my heart away in a box. I had to hide from love. Because I believed my love was both too strong -- and killed those I loved, like my father – and, at the same time, too weak to fix and heal someone in as much pain and need for love as my mother. In retrospect, it is hard to believe that two such contradictory beliefs could hold equal sway in a soul. But logic and reason are not the language our body speaks or understands. So, not knowing about either of these lies, they were both just rumblings under the surface. The fact that they were contrary only increased the chaos.

The wounds caused by these lies were deep. They caused my body tremendous pain, as all lies do. And the black snakes came to feed on the pain. I made a secret deal with the snakes: “If you’ll eat the pain I have, I promise to keep feeding you more and more pain. If you help me not feel, I’ll pretend you don’t exist and leave you to your feast.” They readily agreed. But, of course, black snakes are unbelievably bad at keeping promises that are not in their self-interest.

The original wound is always based on a lie. A lie that we believe is the truth. A lie that someone we love and trust probably told us, believing it was for our own good. Or they were just too damaged themselves and told the lie to make themselves feel better. Or it could be a lie we told ourselves because we didn’t know any better at the time and needed it to explain some trauma or pain from which we suffered. Whatever the origin, it grew as part of us with time and became hard-wired in our head and in our heart.

Even those of us lucky enough to have a deep original wound find it hard to confront the lie. By the time we are ready, the wound is so much a part of who we are. Who will I be without my wound? Without my wound, will the person I know as me die? There is a real fear in letting go of your familiar pain for the unknown. And how many layers of protection, defense mechanisms, and castle walls must I remove to even get to the wound? And what might sneak in while my defenses are down and break my heart yet again?

Luckily, it is the imprisoned heart that cries the loudest to be heard. First, to express its pain, a pain that is felt even after you drink or smoke or snort all you can to shut it up. Second, as an anguished cry for help. If it cries loud and long enough, we may risk looking the pain in the eye and doing something about it.

That first wound can cut deep. It can scar the perfect child. Transform destiny into a forgotten dream. Roll dense fog across the path that once was paved with gold. Restoring that perfect child is a Sacred Quest. Addressing the first wound is just one step, albeit an important one, on the path to ultimate freedom: the freedom to create your own story and become the hero of your own life. Think of the wound as a door, a blessed pain that wakes us up before we fiddle away our precious time here on earth. A doorway into a magical world of our own creation.

But first you have to know what the wound is and why it is there.

Next time, we will discuss a process for identifying the wound and releasing it’s poison from your life.

All you will need to bring to the table is courage.

I am a tired old warrior

On an endless quest

To protect the heart

from constant threats

A heart so weak and easily broken

By the smallest slight, softly spoken

So I nailed it up in an iron box

And strapped the box with chains and locks

And set off to fight all who attacked it

Crusade after crusade, Battle after battle

But God I’m so tired, My chest so tight

Not a single defense has put the broken parts right

As the sun it sets, another path is revealed

For a fleeting moment my fate unsealed

Down the last crossroad I nudge my horse

Into the flowering fields, off the path of war

I throw down my sword,

My shield and gauntlet

Find a key to the box

and finally unlock it

Oh God, sweet release,

Out flies a dove

I no longer need this armor

to protect me from love

James Dey Harris

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