Perspectives

Healing Is Not Repair

On Re-Nourishment, Maturity, and Coming Back into Relationship with Life

In therapy, the focus is often first on what was missing: protection, mirroring, holding, the room to simply be, belonging. Touching wounded parts is necessary, nourishing them just as much. And yet development does not end with tending old lack. It also asks for another view: on the mature person, who does not wait until everything is healed, but is willing to work with what remains unfinished. Recently a friend visited me whom I had met in Peru about eight years ago. Among other things, he works with systemic constellations. We sat together for a long time and came to an observation that occupies both of us: workshops and therapy can quickly open access to wounded parts. That is valuable, sometimes necessary. At the same time, the question arises how this touching and re-nourishing does not become a lasting orientation toward lack, and how the safety of such spaces can gradually be transferred into one’s own life.