The Wounded Walk Differently

I let out a long slow breath. Seated in a chair across from a trusted advisor I realized I was carrying wounds. She had encouraged me to begin an art journal to connect my left brain to my right. I’d spent years catching hurt in my palm and throwing it into an ever growing trash heap behind me. If I didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. Until it became a mountain.

Slowly I opened the black 12” x 12” hard bound leather notebook and showed her the newest addition. It was the black knight from Monty Pythons Search For The Holy Grail. After all….it was just a flesh wound. I had lost pieces of myself in the last five years in the campaign of productivity and survival. Here I was, a bright smile bouncing around on a fragmented heart.

Two years ago I scouted Scotland for what would become a return two years later with a group. I laid awake for more nights than I can count battling anxiety over this workshop wanting everything to be perfect. When I first visited, I appreciated the beauty but didn’t fall in love with Scotland. Until now.

After leaving the hustle and bustle of Edinburgh in quite possibly the smallest car I’ve ever driven, on the wrong side of the road no less, we drove north. The bright blue waters below the bridge to the Isle of Skye were breathtaking.

As we continued north the trees turned to barren land that ushered in barren mountains and I heard a whisper “The Highlands don’t hide their scars”. This became a theme for my time in Scotland and my goal was to find and follow the thread to find the meaning.

Knowing the workshop would fall flat if a blonde American female attempted to guide a group in the highlands, I began the search for a Scottish guide. On my first trip I grabbed the business card of every kilted guide I saw and made notes of companies to contact. Until one day in my South Carolina office a man named Stewart was dropped into my life. His family traces their roots to the Highlands for over 700 years and he immediately understood my goal of bringing the guests the best cultural immersion possible. During this trip I also saw first hand how real and true Scottish honor actually is. For me, Stuart became a symbol of a Scotsman and his love for his homeland knitted itself into my heart and made me love it too.

As we drove through the barren mountains and rolling hills I heard that whisper again “the highlands don’t hide their scars”. I was passing places of pain. Where once there was trees, it was now barren. In centuries past forests were harvested for fuel, ship building and survival. The volcanic soil of the earth and the nibbling of the residents like the red deer don’t bode well for a struggling sapling attempting to do its part of reforestation.

In the crevices of the mountains there are whispers of clan feuds, lives lost, English betrayal, and mass murder. Cairns are scattered amoung the land of the crofters to hold space for tangible memories. Stone walls scatter the land—remnants of familial boundaries, where belonging once had form.

In the 1700-1800’s tenant families were forcibly evicted by wealthy landowners to clear the land for sheep farming. Homes were burned, no notice given. A woman would wake up going about her daily routine only to find hours later her home was ashes and her family was being forcibly loaded to a ship destined for an unknown land. In fact communities whose family had lived on these lands for centuries were now abducted from a land as dear to them as the blood running through their veins.

Mid way during the workshop we hosted a Ceileigh (Gaelic for “gathering”). During the evening we learned through storytelling and whiskey sipping the attempt of the Clearances to erase the Gaelic culture.

It was in this moment I began to understand her scars.

During the workshop I took the group to a sliver of land with a sharp vertical cliff that plunged into the blue waters of the North Sea where sheep were safely grazing. While we captured the coast, the flock moved from one end to the other, weaving as a group between us. I turned and watched as two sheep slowly moved together, side by side well behind the group. It was then that I noticed a limp in one, followed by a lost leg with the remnants of the limb attempting to hang on in the other sheep. They stayed side by side going at their own pace, but in the direction of the flock. My heart clenched. It was a timeless truth in a poetic moment: The wounded walk differently—the wounded walk with deeper grace, gentler steps, and greater understanding.

After writing about Keith’s struggle in 2020, I had promised to write about my experience through that season of change. I found it exceedingly difficult. I couldn’t write about something I hadn’t named. I also was fearful of authentically displaying imperfections and hurt. My business is tied to my happy, adventurous spirit ready to explore and guide, but even guides need guiding.

Two days before my flight to Scotland I sat again in the same space with my trusted advisor, seated in the same chair. We unraveled more knots in my heart and found a particularly sensitive one from the moment my 10 year old self was moved from Ohio to a tiny hamlet in Northern Alberta: population 300. We left everything and everyone familiar. We sold possessions while waving goodbye to family.

My story doesn’t involve the violence of the clearances and I wouldn’t dare put my very small experience of displacement into the tragedy of an entire people group. But as I stood and looked up at these bare mountains and endless glens, I realized the land knew. I was wandering among a land and people that understood my pain. The land didn’t hide its scars and it invited me not to hide mine.

It was April 29th, just two days before Beltane, a traditional Gaelic feast, when I stood at the Pools of Torrin and heard a whisper: “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” I knew, instinctively, those words weren’t meant for me.

I leaned over and whispered them to her—my dearest friend—and she turned to me with tears in her eyes and her hand over her heart. “I just heard those exact words,” she said softly. Four years ago, I nearly lost her to a life-threatening medical event. Since then, she’s been waiting patiently for her body to move the way it used to.

She squeezed my hand and said, “This trip represents my restoration.”

Later, I learned that in Celtic tradition, people would often journey to the still waters at the base of a mountain for healing. In Gaelic, the phrase tobar na gréine means “well of grace.”

Leaning into a new place, listening, staying attentive, patient, recording moments that feel important but you’re unsure why becomes a map that guides you into life changing truths.