The Healing of the Wounded Healer

Shifting from the spoken to the written word

“The Tower” by Catrin Welz-Stein

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ~ Mary Oliver

Dear Reader,

This time last Easter, after nearly thirty years of working as a psychotherapist, I made the challenging yet heartfelt decision to retire. With two years’ notice given to my clients, I now find myself at a stillpoint, poised between ‘role to soul’.

This prose poem simply flowed into my journal after I turned over the Tower card from my Rider-Waite Tarot deck, placed in the outcome position of my Ostara spread during last year’s spring equinox – a quiet and deeply significant moment.

A year later, I find myself watching my beautiful tower crumble, not with despair but with love and understanding that its fall is both rightful and necessary.

The Healing of the Wounded Healer

Following numinous lightning strikes, including the death of my parents within months of each other, the walls of my tower are collapsing. Great internal fires are bursting forth as this wounded healer learns, once more, how to surrender to Divine Will. At the Crone’s crossroads of destruction and rebirth, my vocation, the one I have spent nearly thirty years building, is falling into my loving arms. As cracks appear up and down every wall and stones loosen, I sense the metaphorical phoenix dancing in the flames.

Facing death has changed everything and hurled me deeper down my healing path. I realise descending this tower must be done gently, with loving kindness, to prevent wounding myself and others. And so, with an open heart, holding no regrets, only gratitude, I step into liminal space and listen to my soul whisper of new beginnings. Finding solace in the duality of sorrow and joy, I recognise that each emotion is enriching the tapestry of my life. After all, this bittersweet farewell is not an end but a transition.

I remember the excitement I felt when I enrolled on my first counselling course all those years ago, where I discovered the foundation stone for my tower. A place where I recognised my own wounds, which ignited a compassionate desire to help others heal. Over the years, I have enjoyed my vocation hugely, but at the beginning of this year, I felt a shift in my motivation to support others as my attention turned towards creativity, ink flowing from my soul. My therapist’s chair, no longer the sole throne.

Even so, tears of gentle rain fall, as I feel like I will be leaving a significant part of my identity behind in order to start anew. Although embracing this collapse will be unsettling, I have no doubt that over time, much like the spiritual boot camp I have shared with others for years, my healing journey will continue. Yes, it is going to be disorientating as I consciously let the tower fall, however, I know I am blessed to be leaving this profession when my body is in good shape, my memory is clear, and my heart is soft with love.

Intuitively, I feel as though I have grown out of my role, my chrysalis, my holding station, where in the crucible of childhood I had to develop empathy and learn to listen so that I could be seen and heard. I know my own early, traumatic experiences prepared me well for my future role, conditioning myself as a child to tend to the needs and desires of others while quietly ignoring my own. With generational trauma etched deeply into my family’s script, I was launched early on the wounded healer’s path.

I am not even sure whether I am a good therapist, as I weep most days listening to heart-breaking stories beyond anything most people could imagine; rapes, molestations, beatings and abandonments. Being seen as a beacon of hope as I guide clients through their dark nights of the soul, whilst dealing with severe trauma on a weekly basis for almost thirty years, has had a profound impact on me. From time to time, vicarious trauma has meant I got sick, burning out and needing to take a break in order to recharge.

It has been a blessing and a burden to witness the healing of many lives, unravelling the knotted threads of narratives, finding patterns and making sense of the seemingly senseless. One cup of sorrow, one cup of joy. Even aged five, as a psychotherapist-in-training, I remember longing for healing, wishing my family’s suffering would stop, but it never did. I know I am not alone in placing myself in front of other people’s pain, many caregivers do, humbly learning that on stormy days all we can offer is tears and kindness.

Naturally, my ego is resisting change, clinging to the belief that I will be a psychotherapist forever! But no, in order to heal this wounded healer, I must allow the tower to collapse and initiate my heartfelt goodbye to the clients and work which has spanned nearly three decades. And so, as the first stones fall, I tell myself to remember, I am not just a psychotherapist; I am a witness, a Crone, a midwife to transformation and always a poet, knowing the ink of my words will heal, even when my tower becomes stardust.

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For those interested, “The Healing of the Wounded Healer” sleeps and dreams within the pages of Croneology: Poetic Reflections on the Crone, published this February. Within its covers, the full backstory unfolds – woven with depth and rich detail for you to explore. You'll also find a heartfelt letter I penned to my clients, a sincere gesture of thanks for all the chapters we've shared together.

As I stand on the bridge between speaking words to guide and writing words to explore, I find myself in a liminal space – a pause where reflection and transition meet. Still practicing psychotherapy for one final year, I now work just two days a week with a small handful of clients, allowing me to gradually step into the quieter rhythm of a writer’s life.

Words have always been my companions – spoken to heal, written to express. This stillpoint moment offers me time to reflect, honour what has been, and now, to embrace this next chapter.

Once retired, I plan to revisit this topic, exploring its themes further. As I continue writing my mosaic memoir, these reflections may evolve into new stories to share in the future.

Yours in words, Deborah

If my words strike a chord and you feel inspired to dive deeper into my poetry or explore my essays on Jungian thought, I invite you to visit: The Liberated Sheep