A friend was frustrated. "What's with shamans" she said, "who haven't done the work?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Shouldn't a healer, heal themselves first?"
Well...how well do we have to be?
Chiron was the son of suffering. His father, the god Kronos pursued his nymph-mother who had taken the form of a mare and raped her, and when the young centaur, Chiron, was born she backed away in horror. Despite this first wound he apprenticed himself to wisdom and became a teacher. It was one of his students, Hercules, who accidentally shot Chiron with an arrow dipped in lethal poison. Because Chiron was immortal, the poison did not kill him.
Agonizing, Chiron tried to heal the wound with herbs. Herbs failed to heal the wound. So he tried with fire. And fire failed. He tried all medicines known, he made up medicine on his own, awaking from convulsive dreams with new ideas to try and watch fail. Because it was hydra poison the painful laceration could not be healed.
Chiron learned how to heal every wound but his own. Most healers have wounds that brought us to the work. Most of us are what Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls "members of the scar clan."
The main difference is do we know we are injured, as Chiron knew or if we deny, ignore or attempt to hide the damage. Do we believe we must put up a front, does shame drive us toward perfection? It is our unconscious wounds that fester and become home to contagious pathogens.
