The Box Around the Thorn: Chiron Wound Healing & Sacred Return (part six of six)

Invitation to the Reader

This piece is the final reflection in a series that began with the opening of a deep soul wound—the wound of being unseen and unchosen.
Here, I walk the full circle of that wound, not to “heal” it into disappearance, but to witness what has grown around it.

This temple also marks a new turning point in my client offerings and how I represent myself - it made me see that my website itself must become a temple space, a true reflection of me and what I do, not a glossy marketing push. And my offerings must now be where your parts are met somatically, and where their mythic stories are held and allowed to unfold.

May these words meet you wherever you are on your own sacred return.

A Spiral back to the start

My real healing journey began a month ago, with the Blood Moon Eclipse portal: a raw reopening of an old wound.

An opportunity to face it head on—the oldest wound in my field—the wound of being unseen, unchosen, left at the margins.

It was Chiron's wound but also entangled with my Black Moon Lilith shadow, and so that was were I met it head on - in The Bone Temple for Lilith.
It was the deep pain of how it feels to try so hard to be chosen, to be valued, to belong—and yet still be unseen, and ultimately, abandoned.

As the Sun and Chiron prepared to meet on April 12th, this is a typical reactivation point for wounds, and I could feel mine stirring again.
But this time, there was a new perspective.
Not so much a reopening, but a new vantage point—and a call to walk another spiral.
To return not as the collapsed Exile, but as the witness.

To see not only the wound, but how I have lived around it.

Seeing the Box

Michael Singer, in The Untethered Soul, writes about the ways we respond to pain:
Rather than removing the thorn that causes suffering, we often build intricate structures around it—constructing our entire lives to avoid bumping the thorn and aggravating the wound.
We change how we move, how we love, how we speak, all to protect the vulnerable place without ever addressing the cause directly.

Until now, I had only had real awareness of the thorn itself: the sharpness of abandonment, the ache of not being chosen.

But in this field, I saw the box.

When someone sat down and said—"I can’t see your wounds. You have to tell me what you need. You have to tell me if I hurt you"—

Wow, this was new. And there was a strange realisation that this could be a possibility...
A way I know that other people live—but that, somehow, was out of bounds for myself in unspoken ways.

I saw the architecture I had built to survive - my special box:

• The minimization of my needs.

• The acceptance of breadcrumb relationships.

• The fear of speaking my truth because it might push people away.

• The deep, exhausting gratitude for even the smallest gestures of affection.

Could another way actually be possible—for me?

I saw how my reactions to others held clues.

Someone incapable of taking up space and claiming his needs had recently intensely repulsed me. His constant fear of abandonment, his bottomless need for validation—it was exhausting and suffocating.
Yet at the time, I felt myself to be the opposite of him, I believed what I needed was an equal: someone strong, secure and capable...like me.

I see the truth now:

He was mirroring a part of me I could not bear to see

His poorly masked desperation reflected my own unspoken one. And I rejected him because I had rejected it within myself.

These moments of repulsion are often trailheads—pointers toward the parts of ourselves we have disowned.

New questions now emerged:

• What would it be like to be clear with people about what I need?

• What if confrontation wasn't something to fear, but something that could create deeper connection and understanding?

• Can I charge what I feel I deserve for my services?

The possibility itself felt radical...alarming..., yet expansive.
But something squirmed at the edges—a part that felt icky, needy, exposed.
I imagined this as acting from that place of neediness and recoiled.

And yet, deeper still, I did feel a new knowing:

There is something powerful and wholesome here.
A life not built to minimize pain—but to embrace the fullness of living

Walking Chiron's Temple

A Spiral around a wound embedded in my path, and learning how to let it soften and open me

I feel this will be a constellation that constructs around me as a spiral of cards with myself at the centre, maybe like the box around the thorn.

I light a candle for Chiron:

I pulled a card for Chiron’s wound:
Mother Rose—the core wound in all of us that keeps us separated, heads bowed, building our boxes around our thorns.

I asked what ancestors were walking with me:
The Wild Woman—those who lived in truth and authenticity and allowed their bright light to shine, shameless.

Wild Woman whispers: "Take up space."
Mother Rose whispers: "And when you do, don’t shut the world out. Let them see your tenderness."

I laid the cards around me and began.
Each marker placed in the field whispered a forgotten truth.

“Chiron, sacred guide of wounded truth, I invite you into this space. Help me see with clarity, feel with courage, and act with love.”

Chiron's Gifts

It began with disorientation—The Hierophant reversed, The Lightning striking.

This is the wound, a wound that struck like lightning because it was in given to me in my core —growing up with unstable caregivers who consumed me and made me lose myself.
I felt dizzy, small, sick, collapsing—spun so far from my center.

A sacred disruption from my own inner knowing.

I sat with this small, collapsing child part.
She demanded embodiment: rubbing arms, thumping limbs.
It felt good—and I didn’t want to stop.

"I am here. I exist. I have edges. I am not collapsing into nothing."

This was trauma-informed self-regulation - demanded naturally from the part who needed to feel real.

I asked for a guide—a teacher for the small part missing her inner compass.
7 of Earth – Running Stags appeared.

The instinctual teacher.
The body's ancient knowing, returned.

This stag energy is the healing counterpoint to the collapse:

• Instead of spinning confusion: hoofbeats grounding me back to the earth.

• Instead of numb disconnection: musk, breath, pine, sweat—full sensory presence.

• Instead of shame for needing: ecstasy and virility, the sacredness of desire.

Next, I turned to the placement for Shadow Mirror.

The Gatherer (Mystical Shaman Oracle) and Eight of Pentacles revealed the hidden part:

• The part capable of crafting, gathering, working toward beauty.

• The part unseen because there was only space for one light in my childhood home.

The shadow isn’t always what is ugly, just what is hidden and unseen.

And yet, I felt cold, disembodied.
An Exile of Capability. A truth disembodied: It is easier to stay small than to risk being powerful and unseen again.

I selected a marker for her—the newly seen capable, abundant, self-trusting self—and felt into her.

A known truth surfaced:

There was no space for me to be radiant.
There was only space for my mother.

The Trauma of Identity:
When the parent's unmet needs eclipse the child's soul.

I named this part. I honored her.
I placed her beside the small figure of my mother and said aloud:

"It’s my time now."

And for the first time, my breath deepened into my own lungs, into my own radiance—not into someone else’s story.

The Volcano and The Magician reversed spoke for the next Exile.

The one who has never been allowed to rage, to erupt, to express the full magnitude of feeling.
The one who was born to channel magic—but was punished for her power.

Inside her, there's lava—rage, grief, creative fire.
But no voice.

“If I unleash myself, I’ll destroy something.”
“If I reveal my power, I’ll be punished, abandoned, or shamed.”

So she turned her magic inward, trying to contain the volcano—but it’s not meant to be contained.

When I asked for expression, she clamped my jaw shut, forcing all breath from my body.

When I tried to scream for her, she could only blow air. The heartbreaking language of a part that has been silenced for so long, she no longer even knows what full expression feels like. But she's trying. She's remembering.

“If I open my mouth, I might say something I can’t take back.”
“If I scream, it might never stop.”

This is protection woven into the body.

Not a weakness—intelligence.

I ask for a witness figure to step forward: Who can receive her breath, her power, her truth?

And from the forest’s edge, Baba Yaga comes.

The exiled crone.
The firekeeper.
Not only a witness but a soul-grandmother, a guardian of the outcast, and she knows exactly how to hold this part of me. She walks the same forest my Exile was banished to.

My Exile thought her eruption would destroy love. Baba Yaga says:

“What they exiled in you was your power. I will not exile you. I will feed you from the fire and sit with your storm.”

She blesses the volcanic force—not as a danger, but as ancestral fire.

I turned next to the Protectors.

The Andean Cross and The World revealed how, when the world around me became too fragmented, too unsafe, my soul had fled to other dimensions, wrapping itself in stone and darkness to survive.

Cosmic architecture, a dimensional survival strategy:

“If I can’t be safe here, I’ll slip between worlds. I’ll keep the thread of who I am alive in another realm.”

A way to suspend linear time so the wound cannot deepen further.
An energetic structure that says:
"I will place her in the temple of elsewhere, until she is ready to return."

And now, the return has begun.

And what of my self-essence, what emerges through all this? Rising from the fertile darkness, comes the Witch of Earth, I first met her as a protector of my erotic fire, she stood at the threshold.

Now she is stepping into the temple.
And alongside her, the Fertile Void—the cradle of rebirth in the womb of the world.

Receiving the Gifts

As the temple walls dissolved into light, two final messengers remained, luminous and ethereal with a message of the healing steps. Not tasks though, soul-work.

The Rainbow (Mystical Shaman Oracle)—the bridge that exists between myself and spirit, the seven steps of the true spiritual path and full realisation of our essence.

And the Messenger of Water (Witches Wisdom) — Healing through Story, Emotion, and Magic. My inner selkie, a shapeshifter between worlds, an oracle of emotion and myth.

And this is the work I’m doing right here, right now, with myself, with my offerings - I am building the bridge from self to spirit and I am weaving myths and stories of the soul, shapeshifting between worlds.

And it's this that is the healing action, already in motion! I can see how to weave my website as a temple - telling the stories of my return—is itself the healing action.

I am not waiting for a new beginning.
I am already living it.

Chiron's gift is truely beautiful to behold.

And lastly...the medicine...the tranformation to Wounded Healer...

Gifted from The Sun (Witches Wisdom)

“There's a divine light that shines, even in the darkest of times, when you face the most hidden and shameful things within you, when you are confronted by the most flagrant and wounding things in the world around you.

The Pilgrim’s heart beats again and joy awakens within. She finds the courage to hold her heart and her shame, her brokenness and her beauty, for all the world to see. She is serene and radiant, surrounded by allies who are helping her transform wounds into wisdom, humiliation into hope, emptiness into splendour.”

For anyone with Chiron so strongly in their astrological pathway, who feels their wounds spiralling, this is for us, the ultimate gift of Chiron

The wound has not disappeared.
Chiron’s wounds never do. They remain as sacred reminders. They bring their gifts.
But now, it is an ache, not a stab.

I see that I no longer need to shape my life around the wound.
I can shape my life around the light that shines despite it.

The fear of abandonment, the longing to be chosen—they do not define me.
They are part of the soil from which I rise.

And now, with each breath, each step, each word written,
I can choose a different path:

Not armored by survival.
Not hidden in stone.
But crowned by the Sun,
and rooted in the Earth.

The journey with this wound will never be over—there will be more spirals.
But the season of hiding from it has ended.

Final Reflection - from thorn box to temple

If this resonates...

If you’re living with a core wound — one that feels woven into your very identity, as if it shaped your life from the inside out — this may be Chiron

I would love to help you honour this wound, find its story, find its place in your life. In our work together, we’ll trace this wound through your birth chart, through myth, through memory.

And then, we begin to spiral outward: To find the gifts buried inside the pain. To soften the grip of shame. To stop living around the wound — and start living through it - stop living a small life, stop shying away from love or connection, embrace abundance and joy.

Together, we can craft a Temple of Chiron, one that is uniquely yours, where the wound is no longer something you hide, but something you carry with grace.