What is Healing?
- Mar 16
- 3 min read
By Duncan Rinehart, PhD, NBC-HWC, ACSM-CPT
I heard the sizzle and saw the steam as the flesh on my forearm vaporized the instant it touched the exhaust pipe of my Norton (motorcycle). Immediate third-degree burn. Yes, that really hurt! I was 19 at the time and I had that scar on my forearm for many years. But now in my 70’s, it is no longer visible. The scar is gone and the pain is gone but the memory remains. Is the wound healed?
Wounds and scars
As a kid, I had wounds and scars on my knees, legs, arms, face and head from the life of a boy in the 50’s and 60’s. Now I can’t see those scars. Neither can I see the emotional scars from my parent’s divorce and physical and emotional abuse. But those wounds are still there. They show in thought and behavior patterns such as emotional numbing, self-criticism, and the anger and resentments throughout my adult life that have affected my own relationships. Though I have worked to heal them, and some of the wounds and their scars have diminished, they are still there.
Now in my 70’s, not knowing how much time I have left in this life, I do not want to carry these wounds to my grave, not only to ease my own passing, but also for whatever benefit it may give to the people I leave behind. I want to fully heal if that is even possible.
Healing?
We often talk of healing as the wound (or infection) is gone. This goes for physical wounds as well as emotional/psychological ones.
Medically, healing can be the “process of returning to health.”[i] In this view, once health is restored, healing is done. Remaining scars, or physical and behavioral adaptations to the injury or disease seem irrelevant. The lower back pain from favoring an arthritic hip that was finally replaced after many years, is separate from healing the hip. But it is not separate from healing the person.
More holistically, healing can be the “process of returning to a state of balance – mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.”[ii] Many if not all of us, have experienced trauma (emotional as well as physical wounds) in our lives. This holistic approach understands healing as “learning to live with (our trauma, wounds, scars) in a way that no longer controls or defines us.”[iii] But we are still wounded.
Answers?
Maybe healing is best understood as a process of conversion from one painful state to a less painful state that may in time become very little if any pain though some of the wound remains (scars, memories, emotional triggers, dysfunctional behavior). Maybe healing is learning, integrating a wound into our being over time in ways that cause us fewer problems. Maybe part of our task in this life is to experience physical and emotional injuries and loss yet find ways to adapt to them so that we can still learn to fully love.
As I work to resolve my own dysfunctional patterns, I find that I carry wounds from much earlier in my life that sustain those patterns these many years later. Will I ever heal those wounds? The answer is elusive. Will the deeper scars ever go away as most of the scars on my body have? I wish they would.
Is healing only ever partial? Do our wounds, with work and time, ease and transform yet stay with us, shaping who we are and how we live? This may be part of our challenge in being on this earth, to find whatever healing we can in the time that we have. The wisdom – and the healing – may be in seeking the answers to such questions, not in the answers themselves.
[i] https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/healing (Jan 9, 2026)
