The Purpose of Healing Work

The Purpose of Healing Work

After finishing my first book, Healing Your Wounded Soul: Growing from Pain to Peace, it became clear to me that people needed something more to guide them toward transformation of mind and soul. That book introduced readers to the basic process of healing, drawing attention to how past hurts affect us in the present and how this can hinder our spiritual life if we leave them unresolved. Just as the lighthouse on the book’s cover sent a beam of light into the night sky, Healing Your Wounded Soul sought to illumine darker aspects of our inner life that many of us find easier to avoid. While remaining blind to our inner pain can be perilous, the light of healing—like that of a lighthouse—leads us safely back to the shore of ourselves and helps us avoid emotional and spiritual shipwrecks along the way. It seems that the first book helped many readers realize their own unresolved pain and awoke within them a desire for resolution. For some, this awakening was enough to lessen the effects of their wounds and enable them to find some measure of healing. For others, however, the healing process remained abstract, the starting point elusive. Where do I begin my healing journey? they wondered. How do I actually do this?

Bearing this in mind, Healing Work is essentially a how-to guide to help readers locate the starting point in their own healing process and gain confidence in responding to the ebbs and flows, successes and setbacks, of the healing journey. I invite those familiar with my first book to use this one as a kind of companion edition, a collection of tools to aid them in bringing about long-term resolution and resilience.

But Healing Work is more than a sequel. It can also be read as a stand-alone, practical guide to healing, one that is particularly

intended for people suffering from persistent, deeply rooted emotional wounds and for those who seek to help them. It’s worth noting, too, that this book was written for individuals who are unable or unwilling to participate in counseling. Many feel reticent to seek professional help, perhaps because they have been disappointed with psychotherapy in the past or because of personal convictions. (In the Orthodox world, for example, some prefer to rely on their spiritual father to guide them through the healing process.) Others wish they could see a counselor but lack access to mental health care services or geographical proximity to them. Although virtual therapy is becoming more commonplace, many feel uncomfortable sharing their sensitive inner wounds through screens rather than in face-to-face conversation. Healing Work suits people who cannot or choose not to work with a counselor, whatever the reason.

Regardless of who picks up Healing Work and why they decide to read it, however, the goal is the same. As ambitious as it might sound, this book is about helping people learn how to make their healing journey shorter. It’s tragic that so many get stuck in distressing emotional patterns for years or even decades, often because they simply don’t know how to identify why they are suffering. They spend precious time, money, and energy scrambling to resolve isolated symptoms, never gaining awareness of their root cause(s). This doesn’t have to happen. We can work to reduce unnecessary emotional suffering by learning to identify what we need to focus on and by developing skills to navigate the emotional space between the extremes of anger and happiness. In doing so, we can shorten the amount of time we struggle to move forward in our healing work.