Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will break my heart…
Do you remember the phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? I do. And I have come to appreciate that it was one of the biggest lies that has been perpetuated on the schoolyard. So I amended it to: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will break my heart.”
It’s one of those minor distinctions that ends up having major consequences and implications. If we think about it, physical wounds heal, and there’s often a visual frame of reference that can be used to measure just how much healing has taken place. If you break your arm, you can see the cast on the original break, the brace that may be worn after the cast comes off, and then finally, the arm is free. If the break was due to an assault of some kind, there may still be emotional damage to deal with, but there’s still the bodily cues that let others know that the healing process is under way.
With a physical injury, there’s usually a story to tell that elicits empathy or sympathy from the hearers. Maybe it was a fall while playing sports, or a car accident, or (heaven forbid) the result of abuse. Whatever the case, the sticks and stones have broken the bones, and the bones will heal.
But when it comes to words, when it comes to emotional and mental injuries, those hurts are less visible, and subsequently, less understood and tolerated. That doesn’t stop them from hurting though. And words, once said and heard, can often be rehearsed and revisited by the hearer, etching them in their minds and engraving them in the hearer’s spirit.
Some people are able to brush off words without issue. They truly embody the “words will never hurt me” philosophy. But for others, the words cut like a knife. Sometimes like a scalpel, sometimes like a hacksaw. Whatever the case, the hurtful words cause mental and emotional anguish that can take years to repair. Partially, this is because the damage isn’t a one time thing. Yes, you have the person that initially caused the damage. But through the victim’s reflections and ruminations on the words, the extent of the wounds expands and becomes more firmly entrenched, like a sore that won’t scab over.
So, are those whose hearts are broken due to the words that they’ve heard doomed to forever be in pain? God, I hope not.
(Seriously, if there was no avenue for healing, I’d be out of a job. But it doesn’t look like I’m going to be struggling for work any time soon.)
The work of rewriting internal scripts and messages, of overwriting the hurtful words that have been leveled towards us over months or years (even decades), is not something that can be done overnight. It takes intentional work, time, and effort to not only speak to oneself in more adaptive ways, but to understand just how deeply some of the wounds go.
It also takes time to learn how to forgive oneself for maintaining and sustaining the hurtful language. Forgiveness is hard enough when we’re forgiving someone else who hurt us deeply. And when it comes to forgiving ourselves, we have to remember that it is a daily process that we have to undertake with patience, grace, and compassion.
How do we do this? Well, that’s a discussion that we’ll have in a future post. For now, remember that some of the injuries we have go more than skin deep. And the ones that hit our hearts can take the longest to heal. But anything in this life worth having takes time, work, and energy. So I guess the charge is twofold: 1) Guard your hearts and take the time to recover; and 2) Care for the hearts and bodies of others by using words that bring life and actions that breed strength and health. May your journey be peaceful and your lives be filled with more blessings than you can manage. Until next time…