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“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ~ Mary Oliver

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It took me forever to conceptualize that core wounds are sacred allies.

A core or emotional wound can be compared to a veil or filter of sorts that colors the perception of our human journey.

We look and operate through the eyes of the wound, to the extent that it shapes our choices, relationships, and the quality of our life.

Psychology teaches about five emotional wounds, and I dare say, everyone on the planet has passed through their fire.

The five that we are most familiar with are abandonment, rejection, injustice, betrayal, and humiliation. There are more universal, tribal wounds, but these are the main emotional ones as generally addressed through therapy.

We incarnate into every lifetime with each of these wounds as potential teachers, having perhaps one or two prevailing ones that become a theme over many, many incarnations, until it becomes the medicine we bring to the world.

There are two more wounds, however, that are perhaps the deepest.

Deeper, you ask, than say, abandonment? Because that one has kicked the stuffing out of many of us from childhood on!

Here’s what I’ve learned from the sixth and seventh wounds:

Sixth: “Dark Night of the Soul” Wound

Affecting the root, sacral, and heart chakras, the “dark night of the soul” wound explores our deepest shadows. It is inexplicable melancholy—a disconnection with the meaning of one’s life, an existential crisis that seems to permeate every cell, every mood, every situation. We may cycle through it consistently for decades, or it may come and go in shorter seasons.

We question the point of life itself—why we’re here, and we may mourn an elusive purpose. Self-sabotage becomes a familiar pattern. This wound comes from an over-saturation of the previous wounds in this lifetime or over many, where each wound takes the shape of the others; the names run muddy, and we lose perspective of what is real and what the mind concocts.

This is where ego and thoughts take over the heart. Intuition becomes difficult to access.

The “dark night of the soul” wound brings perhaps the highest degree of pain and the greatest medicine because on the other side of those lessons lies a clarity about why we’re here.

It is a thick veil, separating us from the knowledge that we have everything we need inside us, that we are Source incarnate. The road to remembering is encountered by the bravest of souls, who one day become the mystics of the global village.

To find peace in the storm, take up a personal journey or vision quest as first steps. Turn every stone to learn about who you are.

What planet rose when you drew your first breath? That is a clue. What moon were you born under? That is a clue. What do the numbers of your birth date signal? Who were you born to—who is your tribe? What is your culture? What creativity burns in your heart? What is your human design?

Become curious about self. What is your story? Can you rewrite it? What service can you perform for another? Excavate your gifts and your destiny. Look inside and outside of yourself. Be the mystery.

Seventh: “Gaia/Mother Wound”

This affects the 10th chakra, beneath your feet, beneath the earth. It also affects the root chakra and the crown chakra, where we connect to the cosmos. The Gaia wound is the disconnection with the Great Mother and the inability to see oneself as part of the divine matrix.

We are, after all, children of the Creatress, she who nurtures us, who comforts and loves us. Over centuries, we have drifted further and further from the innate knowledge that we are no different from any other life form. Once, we lived in harmony and collective agreement with nature, with the cycles of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the flow of the rivers, and the rising and setting of the sun.

Our earthly mother is often the excavator of the seventh wound. It seems cruel, I know, having felt this wound so deeply myself, that the safety, warmth, and love of the womb that birthed or raised us could also be the igniting spark of deep soul pain.

Those of us who have encountered the seventh wound struggle with embodiment—taking our full space on the planet and accepting life in the physical plane. There is a longing for home, a deep desire to return to the unconditional love we knew beyond the veil. Our consciousness is only partially rooted in earthly reality. We may suffer from over-giving, poor boundaries, partnering with abusive individuals, craving constant validation, finding the world and humanity unbearable, and becoming a master of masking our emotions.

This wound requires us to take responsibility for our present and future moments. It asks for daily or even hourly grounding and intentional work with the tenth and root chakras. It calls us to the wilderness, to remember our own wildness and sovereignty. We may need to re-parent ourselves and attune to the energy of Earth Mother. We will need to acquire self-nurturing habits that affirm our place on Earth and in this particular lifetime.

The path to healing any wound, no matter the name we call it by, is often the same. It begins with acceptance of what is internally and externally in our lives. From this place of acceptance (and acceptance truly is the very first step), I encourage my clients to a place of awareness, as mentioned above—discovering their personal mystery and mapping their soul’s blueprint.

Then we create pathways for the next steps while reclaiming what was lost through the trauma of the wound.

Who was I before I began to live this story? Each time we discover that the person without their story is whole, it often comes as a great surprise.

As happens when one commits to their journey, the last two steps are transformation (shedding old skins) and embodiment of the restructured DNA and luminous light body.

This is a deep shamanic process involving less thought and more trusting one’s inner guidance, which comes through the heart. Its predominant architecture is not answers to unanswerable questions (as most trauma makes little cognitive sense), but seeking one’s stillness.

Once we gain clarity about our wounds, knowing that they’re allies for distilling our wisdom, and knowing that life can be beautiful in spite of the hard times, we can reach a sweet spot of integrated healing.

After a while, the filter through which we’ve been living over the centuries becomes a portal to the unseen realms. We can now call in wisdom from many dimensions to support us on our path. We can call in ancestors and spirit guides to help us grow into a good ancestor ourselves.

We are, in each lifetime, both the student and the teacher to varying degrees—because we’re hardly ever working on one aspect of personal evolution at a time. Therefore, we do not need to wait for that one magical incarnation when we no longer need to learn through our wounds; we can find harmony right here and now.

Although the sixth and seventh wounds take us on a most profound journey, they are not who we are. They are simply veils, whose texture we encounter as a way of evolving our own, and the collective consciousness.

Some of the most difficult moments in a person’s life are when they see no reason or purpose to their suffering, when things seem randomly cruel. But when we come to value our path, to see it for a wise teacher, and claim ownership to each next step, we can find beauty in the becoming.

As one who has tasted each wound with precision, let me offer hope.

Each decision to be the hero of our own story transforms the past, the present moment, and the future—not only for ourselves but for the whole of humanity.

And it all begins with the knowledge that each one of us is a profound mystery.

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