Friday Care Package: Becoming the Healing of the Wounds
More on the Collective Breach of Trust
Dear Becoming Ones: It is Friday, again, which means I am not only putting away all of my technology for my regular Tech Sabbath, but it also means I’m rooting into what is present for me. I am breathing and I am wondering / wandering when we might become the healing of the wounds. I hope you enjoy this Friday Care Package! I’ll be back tomorrow (Saturday) for my free-write of Coffee & Sativa! Stay Tuned!
Friday Care Package: Becoming the Healing of the Wounds
“Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar.”
Traveler, there are no bridges, we build them as we walk.
— Gloria Anzaldúa
“To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.”
— Mark Nepo
Dear Becoming Ones,
Colonial patriarchal violence is not an abstract concept. It is in our bodies. It courses through the nervous system, shaping our reflexes and desires. Too often, we take what has been done to us, and without even noticing, we weaponize it in our relationships. Violence teaches us how to survive, yes. But unless interrupted, it convinces us that survival itself is the only way of living.
In Northern Ireland, I learned that reconciliation is not a single act of forgiveness, but an orientation of the body. It is deep listening with all five senses—eyes that see beyond appearances, ears tuned to the tremor of truth, a mouth that speaks without domination, hands open to hold pain, a heart willing to break and not turn away.
Walking with former members of the IRA, I heard stories that scraped against the bone of history. Stories of loss, stories of rage, stories of longing for a world that could not yet hold them. Standing on streets where the British Army mortally wounded Irish citizens, I felt the weight of collective betrayal—the breach of trust that empire always leaves behind. This is what patriarchal, colonial violence does: it severs belonging, it fractures communities, it convinces us that domination is inevitable.
But Anzaldúa whispers another possibility: we can become the healing of the wounds. To do this requires an unlearning of the habits violence has inscribed into us. It requires pausing before the sharp word, breathing before the hand clenches, noticing when fear takes the wheel. It requires tending to our own wounds, not so that we can close ourselves off, but so that our healed flesh can become a bridge for others.
This is relational work. We cannot move toward peace and reconciliation without first cultivating the capacity to sit with ourselves in honesty. As Judith Herman reminds us in her work on trauma, safety and truth-telling are the foundations of healing. Attunement to self—listening to the cries of our own bodies—is what makes possible attunement to the cries of the world.
The breach of trust is real. It is old. But so is our capacity for repair. If violence cascades like a river, so too can care. So too can tenderness. So too can the stubborn love that refuses to repeat the harm handed down to us.
This weekend, I invite you to practice the art of composting violence. Notice where the residue of domination still shapes your reactions. Hold it with curiosity. Breathe into it. Refuse to weaponize it. Instead, imagine what it might become if transformed—fertile soil for another possible world.
May we learn to interrupt the old patterns. May we listen with all five senses. May we become the healing of the wounds, together.
Paz,
Roberto
Ritual Exhale
Breathe in the weight of the world.
Breathe out the violence you will not carry forward.
Breathe in the memory of wounds.
Breathe out the tender courage to heal them.
Breathe in the cries of the earth, the broken bodies, the fractured trust.
Breathe out love that refuses to vanish,
love that composts harm into new soil,
love that makes another world possible.
Rest here.
You are part of the healing.
You are part of the belonging.
You are part of the bridge we are building together.