Hi, I’m Nina, a Catholic Mystic (with a heavy emphasis on the mystic). The purpose of Redeeming Home is to help you dig deep into your awareness of God and self (read what I mean in my Manifesto of Love) so you can feel at home with who you are and create a life of joy, meaning and purpose. Welcome.

I’d like to say that I dove back into Mass after I felt the prompting to return. I did not.

Instead, I went, listened, got irritated that so many responses had changed during my 22-year hiatus, and then got more irritated at the excessive focus on sin. I went home, simmered in my judgment and self-righteousness, and stayed away for a week.

Then I jumped in with both feet.

I felt such a strong pull to return that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I was still grappling with the whole sin/self-betrayal thing I mentioned in my manifesto. And what I kept coming back to was the idea that wounds are the source of it all.

As it turns out, Mass was right where I needed to be because I quickly found that our priest understands the connection between wounds and sin (or self-betrayal as I see it) and the importance of acknowledging them to receive healing. And when we don’t, it just opens us up to further self-betrayal and perceived separation from God and the unending, unconditional love that God is.

I gleaned much wisdom from his homilies. And at a recent women’s retreat that he spoke at, I loved how he kept drawing everything back to how our wounds affect our relationship with God, ourselves and others.

I also noticed a lot of blank stares and some quizzical, “What the fuck is he talking about?” looks. (They probably thought that without the f-bomb. Maybe.)

What I’ve discovered in the past six months is that when I start talking about wounds with people, they fall into two camps:

Which is understandable because it’s not really a common thing to talk about. I never sat around the table with my family and discussed how childhood traumas/events created emotional wounds and altered the way I perceived reality.

My life would be drastically different had we done that.

Instead, we live in a culture that likes to pretend that problems don’t have root causes. Roots that shoot off branches (symptoms) that we struggle with in our daily lives. We attack the branches and then are perplexed that they just keep growing back. But they will always grow back if we don’t remove the root.

And, like that tree, the roots of our wounds go deep and it takes focused, intentional work to remove them. Work that requires silence, introspection, curiosity, self-awareness, and probably a lot of tears. Basically removing distractions and getting real honest with ourselves. But that’s for another post.

Wounds are the result of experiences/interactions that happen in our lives and we get many of them as children. And they don’t necessarily have to be traumatic events to wound us.

Being abused as child will wound you. But so will a very simple misunderstanding that was made because your brain wasn’t developed enough to understand the whole situation.

I’ve gotten a lot of visuals when it comes to wounds, and I think the one that explains it best is to think of wounds as cuts.

Some cuts are really just scratches and don’t affect us much at all, but they’re still there, nagging at us, especially when something rubs it the wrong way.

A lot of cuts go deeper, though. You can probably think of a time where it felt like someone cut you right in the heart with something they said or did. If that was an actual cut on your skin, it would require stitches and TLC to facilitate healing.

Most cuts don’t get that attention, though, and they stay open. Sometimes, they just keep getting cut, deeper and deeper. And then they get infected. It’s painful. It takes all of your focus. It affects how you do life.

The nice thing about physical wounds is that they’re (usually) out there in the open and they get taken care of so you heal.

If only emotional wounds were treated with such care.

Have you ever noticed how almost every villain backstory in a book or movie starts with somebody treating said villain like shit as a kid. And then that pain just grew and festered until they became a monster because it changed how they saw the world and other people?

That’s what happens when we don’t address our wounds! Well, thankfully not everyone becomes a villain, but our wounds affect how we see the world (what we believe) and how we behave - both toward ourselves and others.

I think it’s time for an example.

When I was a little girl, I got really sick, and so did one of my brothers. It was a bad flu or something. And I remember my parents making the decision to take my brother to the hospital because he wasn’t breathing well (I think that’s when they discovered he had really bad asthma) and left me at home (not alone, but they didn’t take me to the hospital for care).

Nothing crazy, right? I know he could have died and I wasn’t so bad so they took him in. That’s not what little me perceived, though.

I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation with him and I just saw them choosing care for him and not me, which created a wound.

From that point on, I lived with the subconscious belief that I don’t matter, which dramatically altered how I saw the world and interacted with others. So many problems stemmed from that belief, along with so much self-betrayal as I got older.

I don’t share this for pity (I’ll share my healing story another time), but to illustrate how a seemingly insignificant thing can turn into such a deep wound and life-altering belief.

So even if you haven’t had massive trauma in your life, there were likely still experiences that left you with some deep wounds and altered beliefs. And the symptoms of those wounds keep showing up in your life.

Let’s say that something wounded you as a child that left you with the belief that you don’t matter (most of us aren’t aware of the beliefs that formed until we do some digging).

Emotionally: You might struggle with depression, as I did. And/or you might be willing to give your love to people who don’t really love or appreciate you because you believe you’re only worthy of scraps of love.

Physically: You might struggle with your weight or physical issues, because if you don’t matter to anyone else, why would your health be a priority? You’re not worth the time and effort it takes to get in shape.

Spiritually: If you don’t matter to anyone else, why would you matter to God? Surely he doesn’t want a personal relationship with you. You were probably a mistake. Or, if that wound came from a parent, you might see God the same way as you see your parent and hide or completely reject His love.

When I first realized how extensively wounds can affect our lives, and the lies they make us believe, all I could do was sit back and say, “Holy shit.”

And then I realized how so many people are stuck in patterns they don’t want to be in because they have an underlying belief that keeps them there. And that belief is being perpetuated by an unhealed wound.

*Insert mind-blown emoji here*

If there’s a habit you just can’t get to stick, no matter how disciplined you try to be, there’s probably an underlying belief and unhealed wound preventing it.

If there’s a relationship (or several) that are always on the rocks, there’s probably an underlying belief and unhealed wound keeping it that way. It’s not just them. Spoiler: addressing the bullshit you bring to the table is part of healing, sorry.

If you always have money problems or always fall short of being successful in your business, there’s probably an underlying belief and unhealed wound perpetuating the problem.

Let that sink in for a bit.

Yeah.

Holy shit, right?

But.

The good news is …

Like any wound, once you acknowledge that it’s there, you can take the necessary steps to heal it.

Once you’re aware, you can also ask God for healing and believe that He will either heal you now or show you what to do. Healing doesn’t need to take forever and can be quick and pretty damn miraculous. And trust that if there is a lot of wounding, God will not overwhelm you with it all at once. He knows what you need when you need it.

There is hope.

*If something is dinging inside you that this is something you might need to explore more, I invite you to sit in silence and ask for wisdom on your next steps.