D.H. Lawrence – “Healing”

I’ve experienced three major health crises in the last six years: a ruptured appendix that nearly killed me in the fall of 2004, a serious back injury that sidelined me for a month in the fall of 2006, and a broken wrist and shoulder sustained seven weeks ago, from which I am still working hard daily to recover.

Two of these three events (ruptured appendix and broken wrist/shoulder) required major surgeries and nearly a week of hospitalization each. In all three cases, I found myself temporarily helpless, vulnerable, and completely dependent on the kindness, mercy, and generosity of others for my daily survival for extended periods of time. And in all three cases, I was deeply and profoundly reminded that injury and illness, rehabilitation and recovery, and health itself are never purely physical in nature, as so brilliantly expressed in the following poem by D.H. Lawrence.

Healing

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

D.H. Lawrence

I hope to write more about the emotional and psychological aspects of my current experience in injury, incapacity, and recovery in a future post.

The D.H. Lawrence – “Healing” by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.