Healing the Healers: Unlocking Our Capacity for Change

I believe that many people who want to create positive change in the world do so because they experienced the problem first hand. My dad was one of them. He was an agriculture student in Madrid in the 1950s - like his two brothers - when their mother became ill. He interrupted his studies to return home to Sarria (in Galicia) to care for her. She died of breast cancer at the age of 58. When my dad returned to university after her death, he changed his course of studies. He became a doctor instead.

Unfortunately, difficult life experiences can also cause trauma and keep people stuck in the past, stealing much of their energy, focus and confidence. My dad battled depression for much of his life and once told me, when I was a teenager, that he felt he had wasted his life. This despite probably helping thousands of people throughout his working life.

Imagine the world we could live in if everybody received the treatment and supports they needed to heal from their trauma, break the cycles and turn pain into purpose? Their experiences could then become the fuel that drives the change that they want to affect in the world - for a better world.