The Wounds We Carry: Help from Pema Chodron’s Tonglen Practice
by Elaine Mansfield
“They’re all wounded,” I thought as I watched people in the grocery store or on the street, “but I can’t see their scars and they can’t see mine.”
While anxiously awaiting my husband Vic’s cancer diagnosis in 2006, I walked through the produce area of the grocery store and watched serious and downtrodden faces. I noticed people in wheel-chair carts and others leaning into a push cart for support. I noticed faces without eyebrows and bald scarf-covered heads that shouted chemotherapy. I noticed those who were irritable, moving impatiently through beautiful heaps of late summer corn and cantaloupes, seeing nothing except the old person in front of them slowing their progress. I watched tight jaws that seemed on the verge of tears. Some people averted their eyes, unwilling to exchange even a glance or smile.
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