The Five Soul Wounds: How Our Childhood Pain Shapes Our Grief
Author's note:
This blog post is a reflective exploration and summary of the Five Soul Wounds framework developed by Lise Bourbeau. While I offer commentary, personal insights, and cultural considerations throughout, I wholeheartedly encourage you to read the original text — Heal Your Wounds and Find Your True Self — to deepen your understanding and engage with the full depth of Bourbeau’s work.
This blog post is designed to be returned to, digested slowly, and engaged with over time. You may want to journal alongside it, share it with a trusted companion, or revisit sections as they resonate.
I have researched and referenced to the best of my ability, drawing from published literature, psychological frameworks, cultural knowledge, and personal lived experience. This piece is not exhaustive, but it is intentional. I invite you to receive it as an offering—one that seeks to educate, provoke reflection, and honour the complexity of our wounds and our healing.
If this piece resonates with you, you may also wish to listen to the companion podcast episode I’ve recorded (out in June 2025). In it, I share elements of my lived experience with the soul wounds, explore the grief woven into each one, and offer additional reflection prompts. It’s a deeper, more personal dive—one that I hope supports your own journey of naming, feeling, and healing.
Index
Opening Notes
Grief has many faces. It isn’t always tied to death. Sometimes it’s the ache of being unseen. The pain of not being chosen. The weight of dignity denied.
In her book Heal Your Wounds and Find Your True Self, Lise Bourbeau – a renowned teacher in emotional and holistic healing – offers a compelling framework to understand these deeper emotional undercurrents: the five soul wounds.
Although the five soul wounds outlined by Bourbeau aren't framed within the context of grief, this blog post will explore their deep entanglement with loss. Because grief is not only about death — it’s also about the quieter, often invisible losses we endure when we learn to suppress or sever parts of who we truly are.
This exploration also honours the ways these wounds are shaped and compounded by cultural and racial experiences. Understanding these wounds through a racialised lens reveals how systemic oppression and identity marginalisation deepen the impact and complexity of grief.
These wounds—formed in childhood—shape our responses to pain and loss throughout life. They are the invisible scripts behind how we cope, grieve, and protect ourselves.
Five Reflective Truths About the Five Soul Wounds
Before we explore the five soul wounds, here are five truths to hold gently in your hands as you read. Let them settle in your spirit, like warm tea or a knowing glance.
1. These wounds are not life sentences.
They are invitations — to come home to yourself, to soften, to reclaim who you’ve always been beneath the mask.
2. Grief isn’t always about death.
It can be about the parts of ourselves we buried in order to be accepted, approved of, or simply survive.
3. The masks we wear were once protective.
They were crafted in pain, stitched from self-preservation. But healing asks: Do they still fit? Or are they keeping you from your wholeness?
4. Sometimes, the wound isn’t just yours.
It’s inherited. Woven into your cultural lineage. Carried in your mother’s voice, your grandmother’s hands, your great-grandmother’s silence.
5. Healing is not about being flawless.
It’s about being honest. Tender. Willing. It’s about offering yourself grace, one breath, one question at a time.
What Are the Five Soul Wounds?
According to Bourbeau, before the soul wound emerges, there are four key psychological and emotional stages that set the foundation. Understanding these stages helps us see how early our adaptation to pain begins — and why it’s so difficult to simply “snap out of it” later in life.
1. The Joy of Being Themselves
In early childhood, we begin life in a state of authenticity. There is a pure joy in simply existing. At this stage, the child is not self-conscious. They laugh when they want to laugh, cry when they need to cry. They are free, expressive, and connected to their essence.
2. The Pain of Not Being Allowed to Be Themselves
This stage occurs when the child experiences disapproval, rejection, punishment, or emotional abandonment for simply being who they are. It might be subtle — a raised eyebrow, a scolding tone — or overt, such as bullying, neglect, or shame. The child begins to associate certain parts of themselves with pain or unworthiness.
3. Rage and Rebellion
In response, the child experiences anger, confusion, or emotional resistance. This stage might not always be visible to others — the rebellion could be internal, silent, or masked as over-compliance. But internally, the child feels the rupture: I am not accepted as I am.
4. Creation of a New, “Acceptable” Personality
Eventually, the child adapts by creating a version of themselves that they believe will win approval or minimise pain. They may become the “good girl,” the achiever, the helper, the peacekeeper, or the funny one — not because that’s who they truly are, but because it feels safer. This becomes the mask: a defensive identity built around the wound.
This process is often unconscious, and is intensified for children growing up in environments where survival or acceptance requires extra vigilance — including those navigating racism, gender-based expectations, or intergenerational trauma.
“The child stops being who they are and starts being who they believe they must be to be loved.” – Lise Bourbeau
According to Bourbeau, the five wounds are:
Rejection – leads to the withdrawer mask
Abandonment – leads to the dependent mask
Humiliation – leads to the masochist mask
Betrayal – leads to the controller mask
Injustice – leads to the rigid mask
“Each time we experience a painful situation and do not want to feel the pain, we create a mask to protect ourselves.” — Lise Bourbeau
These wounds don’t vanish with time. They resurface—especially during moments of loss.
Each wound also has a somatic expression:
Rejection may result in a contracted, slight frame.
Abandonment may show in drooping shoulders or clinging posture.
Humiliation may manifest as weight gain or protective physicality.
Betrayal may bring tension and muscular overdevelopment.
Injustice may reflect in rigid posture and perfectionistic appearance.
The Wounds Beneath the Grief
Grief reactivates the past. When we grieve something now, we often grieve everything it reminds us of. For instance:
A relationship breakup may reawaken abandonment or betrayal wounds from childhood.
A health diagnosis might bring back a sense of humiliation—especially if your body has historically been a source of shame.
A workplace redundancy might trigger feelings of injustice, especially in contexts where you're already contending with systemic marginalisation.
Cultural Lens: The Wound Within the System
For many Black folks and people of colour, the soul wounds are compounded by systemic and intergenerational grief. These aren’t just individual or family-based experiences — they echo through cultural, colonial, and structural forces that shape how we’re seen, treated, and allowed to exist.
Rejection might not just be personal — it might be tied to racialised invisibility, being overlooked, underestimated, or erased in environments that centre whiteness or dominant cultural norms.
Abandonment may echo historical and ancestral ruptures — from forced migration, separation from homeland, adoption, or displacement. It can also reflect the chronic lack of safe holding spaces, representation, or communal care in institutions that weren’t built with us in mind.
Betrayal can carry the weight of broken trust — not just in intimate relationships, but in institutions that promised safety or belonging yet delivered harm. Think: tokenism, performative inclusion, or being asked to educate others at the cost of your own wellbeing.
Humiliation often sits at the intersection of body, race, gender, and class — where shame is culturally weaponised. From code-switching to being policed for how we speak, dress, express anger or softness — the wound isn't just about a personal experience of shame, but a cultural pressure to conform or shrink.
Injustice might feel both intimate and collective — linked to navigating biased systems, microaggressions, or having to constantly self-advocate. The burden of being “twice as good” just to be seen as “good enough” can deepen the grief of being unseen, unheard, or dismissed.
Grief is not isolated. It is cumulative. Your grief is not just about what you’ve lost. It’s about the wound it touches, the mask it activates, and the healing it invites.
The Rejection Wound: Grieving the Loss of Belonging, Acceptance, and Worthiness
How the rejection wound influences our sense of belonging, visibility, and worth—and how grief can guide us back to self-acceptance.
The rejection wound is the first that Bourbeau explores in Heal Your Wounds, Find Your True Self. It forms in early childhood, usually before the age of three, when a child feels rejected by a parent of the same sex. This feeling may stem from being unwanted, ignored, criticised, or simply not emotionally attuned to — even if the parent didn’t intend harm.
“This child believes that he does not have the right to exist. He doubts his very being” — Lise Bourbeau
The child adapts by wearing the withdrawer mask — learning to emotionally withdraw and protect themselves from further rejection. This coping strategy often continues into adulthood. Those with this wound might become perfectionistic, avoidant, or fearful of intimacy. They often pre-empt rejection by rejecting themselves first.
“Physically, the wound can manifest in a narrow, contracted body — shoulders slumped, chest caved in, small gestures — as though the body is trying to make itself smaller, less visible” — Lise Bourbeau
Grief and the Rejection Wound
Grief is not always loud. Sometimes, it’s quiet — a slow ache that lingers beneath years of emotional suppression, masked by self-sufficiency, perfectionism, or withdrawal. For those carrying the rejection wound, grief can feel almost impossible to express openly. There may be an internalised fear that even their sorrow is too much — unwelcome, inconvenient, or shameful.
This is what we call disenfranchised grief: when the pain you're carrying doesn’t feel like it has a legitimate place in the eyes of others. When your right to mourn is questioned — or outright denied — because of who you are, the nature of the loss, or the cultural messages you’ve internalised.
Grief for people with the rejection wound might not just come from death or bereavement. It can also be the loss of:
Belonging — being made to feel like an outsider in your own family, culture, or community.
Self-worth — shaped by repeated invalidation, exclusion, or being overlooked.
Authentic expression — where parts of you were silenced, shamed, or deemed unlovable.
Connection — from friendships that faded because you stopped over-functioning to keep them.
Opportunities — lost chances due to fear of judgment, perfectionism, or self-doubt.
Spiritual identity — especially if your way of seeing or relating to the world was dismissed or mocked.
Cultural inheritance — when rejection comes from straddling multiple identities and being told you’re not “enough” of any.
When rejection is the wound, grief often turns inward: becoming silence, people-pleasing, numbness, or even self-abandonment. It takes deep, intentional work to give that grief a voice — and to believe that your sorrow deserves a place at the table.
Cultural Lens: Rejection & Black/Global Majority Communities
For Black folks and people of colour, the rejection wound is mirrored by societal invisibility. Racialised stereotypes, lack of representation, and experiences of being overlooked or misunderstood — all of these reinforce early emotional wounds. This is not just personal. It’s cultural. And healing must honour both levels.
Culturally, we are socialised to “get on with it,” to stay strong, to not burden others. This can deepen the rejection wound, creating a double bind: not only did you learn early on that your emotions weren’t welcome, but now the world tells you the same — professionally, socially, systemically.
In grief, this might look like:
Feeling guilty for mourning
Minimising the impact of a significant loss
Intellectualising instead of feeling
For many Black individuals and people of colour, the soul wound of rejection is complicated by the experience of feeling rejected or excluded within their own cultural or community spaces. These communities, which ideally offer identity, connection, and support, can sometimes also be sources of alienation. Some ways this manifests include:
Colourism and Internalised Bias: Preferences for lighter skin tones or Eurocentric features can create painful divides within communities, leading to darker-skinned individuals feeling less valued or visible (Hunter, 2007, p. 105).
Generational and Cultural Expectations: Individuals may face rejection when their life choices—such as career paths, relationships, gender expression, or prioritising mental health—clash with traditional norms upheld by family or community elders (Patel, 2018).
Mental Health Stigma: Seeking emotional or psychological support can be misunderstood or minimised, making it difficult for people to express grief and trauma openly within their cultural circles (Snowden & Yamada, 2005).
Diaspora and Identity Conflicts: For those living between cultures or generations, feelings of being “not African enough,” “too foreign,” or culturally “in-between” can create deep emotional rejection and invisibility (Reddy, 2016).
Intersectionality and Marginalisation: LGBTQIA+ individuals within communities of colour often face added layers of rejection rooted in cultural or religious conservatism, compounding their grief and sense of invisibility (Bowleg, 2013).
This internal rejection is a collective and personal grief—an invisible pain that can deepen the soul wound of rejection and complicate healing.
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
When have I been told — directly or indirectly — that my feelings were “too much”?
How do I tend to respond whenI’m hurting — do I reach out or retreat?
What would it mean to stay present with myself in my sorrow?
Can I identify moments when I felt rejected or misunderstood within my own cultural or community spaces? How did that experience impact my healing or grief journey?
How do cultural expectations or biases influence how I show up for myself and others? What would it feel like to claim my own space within these dynamics?
The Abandonment Wound: Grieving the Loss of Safety, Presence, and Care
How early emotional or physical abandonment creates lasting grief patterns and a deep yearning for connection.
Abandonment is the wound formed when a child perceives a rupture in emotional or physical connection. It often emerges during early development, between the ages of one and three, when children begin to form bonds of dependency and trust.
Bourbeau describes it as the wound created when the child feels isolated, unsupported, or emotionally neglected—often by the parent of the opposite sex. The fear of being alone becomes so intense that the child unconsciously adopts a "dependent" mask. This mask is characterised by neediness, people-pleasing, and emotional over-reliance on others.
"This person has a great fear of solitude and often becomes emotionally dependent on others to feel safe or validated."— Lise Bourbeau
Common adult traits of this wound include:
Difficulty with boundaries
A tendency to stay in unhealthy relationships
Deep anxiety during periods of transition
Fear of emotional or physical separation
Self-abandonment to preserve connection
Bourbeau notes the abandonment wound may show up physiologically as a long slim body that lacks muscle tone and tends to droop. stooped body shape—often symbolising an internalised message that they won’t make it alone and need someone to lean on.
Grief and the Abandonment Wound
This wound invites us to explore not only the pain of being left—but the grief of never having been fully received.
Grief here is complex. It might be the ache of a parent who was physically present but emotionally distant (known as ‘ambiguous grief’). The sorrow of being a child who didn’t cry so as not to burden anyone. Or the adult who is constantly bracing for someone to leave.
We often see abandonment grief in:
Estranged parent-child dynamics; Children who are emotionally or physically neglected, orphaned, or separated from caregivers.
Romantic relationships with anxious attachment; Adults who experience emotional withdrawal, ghosting, or being left without explanation in relationships.
Workplace situations where your loyalty goes unrewarded, leaving you feeling undervalued and expendable.
Friendships where support is inconsistent, so you’re never quite sure if you’ll be held or left alone.
Communities who’ve been historically dismissed, displaced, or dehumanised by society.
Moments when systems we rely on—healthcare, education, justice—fail us in times of deep need.
These scenarios reawaken the core wound that says: “I am not worth staying for.”
Cultural Lens: Betrayal & Black/Global Majority Communities
In racialised communities, abandonment is historical, systemic, and often inherited.
For Black individuals, abandonment may stem from:
Transatlantic slavery, where families were forcibly separated
Colonial institutions that displaced or redefined kinship
Foster care systems with disproportionate removals
Migratory trauma where children are left behind “for a better life” or “farrmed”.
Within the community, it might be:
Being shamed for being too “Westernised” or too “emotional”
Feeling erased in conversations on mental health or wellbeing
Experiencing cultural or generational divides that make you feel like a stranger in your own culture
The abandonment wound is deeply felt through several secondary losses:
Loss of safety – When those meant to care for or protect us become the source of harm or absence.
Loss of belonging – Feeling like you don’t have a place, a people, or a home you can return to.
Loss of trust – In others, in systems, and sometimes in yourself to discern who or what is safe.
Loss of worth – Internalising the idea that you weren’t enough to be chosen, held, or stayed for.Loss of consistency – Living with unpredictability in relationships and environments that should offer stability.
Loss of nurturing – Missing out on being emotionally held, guided, or celebrated during crucial developmental moments.
Loss of visibility – Feeling unseen or erased in spaces where your presence and pain should matter.
Loss of care – When love is conditional, absent, or transactional, and you’re left to self-soothe in silence.
Loss of advocacy – Having no one stand for you when it matters, especially in systems that weren’t built for your protection.
Loss of community trust – Being part of marginalised groups that experience societal neglect, betrayal, or systemic dismissal.
Loss of relational reciprocity – Always giving more than you receive, and being expected to understand why that’s “normal.”
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
What messages did I receive about needing support or help as a child?
In what ways have I abandoned parts of myself to keep others close?
How can I begin showing up for myself with the loyalty I longed for?
The Humiliation Wound: Grieving Shame, Control, Freedom of Expression and the Loss of Dignity
How the soul wound of humiliation impacts our relationship with self-worth, embodiment, and vulnerability.
The humiliation wound often stems from early experiences where our self-worth was stripped away through shame, guilt, or control. In Bourbeau's framework, this wound typically originates in childhood, usually with a parent or caregiver who exhibited controlling, possessive behaviour. The child learns to associate their physical body and emotional expression with being "too much"—too loud, too sensitive, too visible, too needy. In response, they develop the "masochist" mask—over-giving, over-enduring, absorbing blame, and taking on others’ needs in an effort to avoid further shaming or rejection.
Bourbeau describes the body of someone with a core humiliation wound as often being round, fleshy, or heavy—particularly in the lower half. This shape is seen as symbolic of the emotional weight they carry, reflecting unconscious shame, guilt, and the belief that pleasure must be earned or punished.
Humiliation wounds are particularly complex because they blur the line between care and cruelty. They're often inflicted by those positioned as helpers, protectors, or caregivers—people whose proximity to our vulnerability gives them intimate access to our sense of self.
Grief and the Humiliation Wound
The grief of the humiliation wound is layered and insidious. At its core, humiliation strips away something fundamental—dignity. And with that, come a series of silent, secondary losses: the loss of body autonomy, the loss of emotional expression, the loss of safety in one’s skin. You begin to question your instincts, your desires, even your posture. Your body, once a vessel of play or comfort, becomes a site of scrutiny. You learn to shrink, to hush, to harden. And that too, is a kind of mourning—grieving the full-bodied self you never got to be.
From a cultural perspective, for many Black folks and people of colour, this wound births an entire archive of ungrieved losses. The loss of cultural pride in spaces where accents are mocked or traditions dismissed. The loss of joy when movement, laughter, or sensuality is hypersexualised or policed. The loss of voice under the weight of respectability politics. The loss of belonging when one’s identity is fragmented—too much for here, not enough for there. These are the quiet devastations that accumulate over time. And they do not only live in memory; they live in the body, in the throat, in the nervous system. The grief of the humiliation wound is not just personal—it is ancestral, systemic, and ongoing.
Cultural Lens: Humiliation & Black/Global Majority Communities
For racialised communities, the humiliation wound is reinforced by both external oppression and internalised cultural dynamics.
Societally, our bodies, languages, cultures, and emotions have been historically pathologised. Colonisation and white supremacy have policed how we show up in public and private. We’re taught to be twice as good, twice as silent, and never, ever too emotional. The result? A deep, generational imprint of shame and a fear of taking up space.
And within our own communities, the humiliation wound often shows up through adultism, respectability, and a fear-based approach to parenting. Phrases like “You think you’re too nice,” or “Don’t look at me like that” echo across kitchens and living rooms. Emotional expression is mistaken for weakness. Individuality is mistaken for arrogance. Children are humiliated into obedience. Let’s break it down:
Systemic Humiliation
From the moment of colonial conquest to transatlantic slavery to present-day systemic racism, people of African descent—and global majority peoples—have endured humiliation as a tool of control. It is woven into:
Public dehumanisation: Our bodies policed, our voices silenced, our hair politicised, our emotions criminalised.
Microaggressions: “You’re so articulate,” “Where are you really from?”—all subtle messages that we do not belong.
Performative assimilation: Pressure to code-switch, suppress dialects, erase heritage, and present ourselves as palatable.
Institutional erasure: Not being represented in curricula, leadership, or media—or being tokenised when we are.
These create chronic shame, internalised inferiority, and a deep grief for the full self that’s never been fully welcomed.
Intergenerational Humiliation
Humiliation travels through generations. For many Black and global majority families, this has looked like:
Survival parenting: Caregivers raising children with harshness, not because they don’t love them, but because the world is harsher. (“I have to be tough on you so the world doesn’t break you.”)
Discipline in public: The child who is scolded loudly in front of others—taught that respectability is protection.
Shaming bodies and desires: Especially for girls and femmes—told to cover up, stop drawing attention, be “good” and quiet.
Colourism and texturism: Telling children their skin is “too dark” or their hair “too nappy”—echoes of colonial hierarchies passed down.
These humiliations are often unacknowledged because they’ve been normalised as discipline, tradition, or even love.
Humiliation Within Our Communities
Here’s the ache: Sometimes the most painful humiliation comes not from strangers, but from our own.
Policing joy or self-expression: Being told you “talk white,” “act too Western,” or “think you’re better.”
Class-based shaming: Judging someone for how they dress, what they eat, how they speak. Shame used to stratify who’s “respectable.”
Gendered humiliation: Boys not allowed to cry. Girls silenced if they speak up. Queer folks shamed or made invisible.
Culture as compliance: When traditions become rigid rules that strip children of agency, curiosity, and voice.
This form of humiliation says: “You don’t belong here either.” It can leave people emotionally homeless—never quite accepted anywhere.
This is not to shame our cultures. It’s to name what colonisation and trauma have done to our ways of relating. Many of our caregivers were doing what they believed was right, often repeating what was done to them. But naming it matters—because without naming, we carry the shame silently, assuming it’s ours to bear.
Humiliation, left unprocessed, can become a silent architecture for our lives. But when we bring it into the light, we make space for grief, healing, and new ways of being that are rooted in dignity.
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
When was I made to feel like I was "too much"?
What messages did I internalise about my body, voice, or needs?
How do I respond to feelings of shame—do I shrink, over-give, or hide?
Who or what helps me reclaim my right to take up space?
The Betrayal Wound: The Grief of Broken Trust and Being Let Down
How the betrayal wound shatters safety and trust, and how grief helps us make sense of loyalty, power, and agency.
The betrayal wound emerges when a child feels profoundly let down by a parent or primary caregiver—most often of the opposite sex—who they trusted, looked up to, or expected protection and consistency from. The caregiver may have broken promises, failed to meet key emotional or physical needs, or been inconsistent in their presence. This wound creates a rift in the child's ability to trust both others and themselves.
To avoid feeling betrayed again, the person develops the Controller mask. This can present as an intense need for control over their environment, others, and outcomes. They may be fiercely independent, highly reliable, and struggle to delegate. There's often a reluctance to show vulnerability and a discomfort with depending on others. Trust becomes transactional. Love becomes proof-based. Reliability becomes religion.
According to Bourbeau, the betrayal wound is commonly reflected in a strong, well-built, muscular body—especially the upper body. The person may have intense eyes and a confident, often rigid posture. The body itself becomes a symbol of protection and control, signalling: "I am strong. I am not to be taken advantage of."
Cultural Lens: Betrayal & Black/Global Majority Communities
For Black folks and racialised communities, the betrayal wound is often compounded by systemic and social betrayals. These may include:
Being promised equality but experiencing racism and erasure
Being encouraged to trust institutions—healthcare, education, legal systems—only to be gaslit, penalised, or neglected
Facing betrayal within our own communities when speaking up about harm, sexism, or abuse
Being labelled as strong and dependable, and then being abandoned or exploited because of those very traits
These betrayals leave deep imprints—not only in the psyche but in cultural memory. For racialised folks, betrayal is not always interpersonal. It is historical. It is generational. It is ongoing.
Grief and the Betrayal Wound
Grief associated with the betrayal wound is realising that the people we most depended on were not dependable. The loss is not only in relationship but in the foundational trust required for ease, softness, and surrender.
This grief may show up as:
Loss of faith in others' integrity
Loss of the ability to relax or be cared for
Loss of psychologically safe spaces
Loss of tenderness toward oneself
Loss of the part of you that was open, hopeful, and willing to lean on others
Those with the betrayal wound may experience ongoing anticipatory grief—expecting to be disappointed or let down, even when no betrayal is present. Their nervous systems may remain in a high-alert state, grieving a safety that never truly existed.
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
In what ways have I experienced betrayal—from others, from systems, or from myself?
Where do I notice an urge to control? What does that part of me fear will happen if I loosen my grip?
How does my body respond to trust? To inconsistency? To care?
The Injustice Wound: Grieving Misrecognition, and the Loss of Fairness
How perfectionism, suppression, and cultural grief stem from this soul wound, and how we might reimagine justice from within.
The injustice wound often develops in early childhood when caregivers are rigid, emotionally unavailable, or excessively perfectionistic. These environments are typically cold or overly structured, where love and praise are conditional upon performance, obedience, or the suppression of emotion. As a result, children begin to associate their worth with their productivity, stoicism, and ability to “do the right thing” — even at the cost of their humanity.
According to Bourbeau, the mask associated with the injustice wound is the “rigid” mask. This mask forms as a protective mechanism against being judged, mistreated, or deemed “not enough.” People with this wound may become perfectionists, highly disciplined, or emotionally distant. They often strive for fairness and justice in all areas of life but can be incredibly hard on themselves and others.
Bourbeau describes the body of someone with the injustice wound as often stiff and symmetrical. The posture may be straight and tight, with a controlled gait and clenched jaw. There is often a feeling of tension and restriction in the body, reflecting the inner emotional rigidity they carry. These individuals tend to favour neatness and control over spontaneity, which can show up in their environment, habits, and even clothing choices.
The hallmark of this wound is a hypersensitivity to perceived unfairness — both in how they’re treated and how they see others being treated. There may be an internalised belief that they must always be competent, in control, and perfect to be loved or accepted. As a result:
They may suppress or deny their emotions, especially anger or vulnerability, and instead channel their energy into work, achievement, or order.
They can be fiercely independent and find it difficult to accept help or admit weakness.
There's often a mistrust of spontaneity, mess, or the unknown — safety lies in control.
They are often incredibly responsible, capable, and high-achieving, but struggle with rest, play, or softness.
In adult relationships, this wound may lead to control issues, rigid boundaries, or black-and-white thinking. They may over-function, struggle with delegating, or judge others harshly when they don't meet their high standards — because they judge themselves even more harshly. There’s often a deep fear of failure, rejection, or being perceived as "not enough."
Cultural Lens: Injustice & Black/Global Majority Communities
For many Black folks and people of colour, the injustice wound is deeply enmeshed with systemic inequity and cultural conditioning. Historical and ongoing racial injustice creates a backdrop where many of us are taught — explicitly and implicitly — that we must be twice as good to get half as far. The performance of excellence becomes a form of armour.
In particular, the "strong Black woman" trope is a glaring societal example of this wound at play: stoicism, strength, perfection, and endurance are praised — but at what cost? The emotional, psychological, and physical toll of always having to be strong is often unseen. Vulnerability, softness, and uncertainty are rarely safe options in systems where injustice is baked into the foundation.
Within our own cultures, injustice may show up in the ways that emotions are policed, gender roles are enforced, and the pressure to conform overrides authenticity. Children may be told to “toughen up,” “stop crying,” or “fix their face” — leaving little room for tenderness or emotional nuance. In some families, discipline is mistaken for love, and fairness is applied through harshness rather than compassion.
This wound can also be inherited — passed down through generations of silenced pain and survival-based parenting. The perfectionism, control, and rigidity aren't always signs of narcissism or detachment — they are often the scars of people trying to survive unjust systems with their dignity intact.
Grief and the Injustice Wound
Grief weaves its way through this wound in subtle but profound ways. There is often a loss of spontaneity, loss of emotional expression, and loss of softness, loss of equality and equity. The rigid mask may protect the person from harm, but it also keeps them from joy, intimacy, and ease. There may be mourning for the child who had to grow up too fast or the adult who still feels unable to rest without guilt.
From a cultural lens, there is grief in the constant need to over-perform in order to be deemed worthy, the burden of representational fatigue, and the loss of safety in just being. Injustice robs people of their freedom to be average, to mess up, to be vulnerable, to be fully human.
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
Where in my life do I feel the deepest sense of injustice?
When do I feel most uncomfortable with messiness, vulnerability, or imperfection?
In what ways has cultural or systemic injustice (racism, sexism, classism, ableism.) impacted my experience of loss?
How was fairness or discipline modelled in my childhood home?
In what ways do I strive for control as a substitute for emotional safety?
Where in my life do I withhold softness — from myself and from others?
Integration and Healing the 5 Soul Wounds
A grief-led path to wholeness and visibility
As we bring awareness to our emotional wounds, we open the door to self-reclamation, softness, and the power of conscious grief work.
Healing the Five Soul Wounds is a layered and lifelong process — and while I offer reflections here, this post is not exhaustive. I’ve drawn from my lived and professional experience and Bourbeau’s framework, but I highly recommend reading her book for a deeper understanding of the full journey of healing.
At its heart, healing these wounds is about conscious reparenting — becoming the loving, truthful, and compassionate caregiver to yourself that you may never have had. It's about recognition, compassion, and responsibility — not blame. Bourbeau emphasises awareness as the first step: naming the wound, identifying the mask, and observing when and how it shows up in your behaviour, thoughts, and body. Healing begins when you meet your inner child with presence instead of punishment.
Culturally, these are not just wounds of the individual—they are wounds of a people, a history, a culture. Within a cultural context, we need to:
Name it: Call out the inherited traumas and systemic oppressions for what they are—not personal failings, but collective scars. Understand the ways colonialism, racism, and generational silencing have shaped how we see ourselves and each other.
Grieve it: Mourn the spaces that shamed us, and the ancestors who survived worse and passed on their pain. Honour what was lost—language, land, lineage, love—and make space for sorrow to be sacred.
Create new patterns: Parent with compassion. Speak life over our people. Make room for softness, mistakes, and nuance. Reimagine safety in our communities through accountability, tenderness, and generational repair.
Return to pride: Affirm who we are. Root in ancestral wisdom. Celebrate our cultural beauty—not just as resistance, but as joy. Let pride be a homecoming, not a performance.
Here’s a brief overview of how each wound can begin to heal:
Rejection
Path to healing: Self-acceptance and reconnecting with the right to exist. This means no longer trying to disappear or dilute yourself to avoid rejection — but daring to belong to yourself first.
Cultural lens: For Black folks and people of colour, this wound often intersects with histories of silencing, colourism, and systemic exclusion. Healing may require ancestral reclamation, decolonising your beauty, and surrounding yourself with affirming community.Abandonment
Path to healing: Building inner stability and trust in yourself. It means showing up consistently for your emotional needs instead of outsourcing your sense of safety to others.
Cultural lens: In cultures where collective survival is emphasised but emotional attunement is rare, healing abandonment might include learning to prioritise your emotional truth without shame.Humiliation
Path to healing: Embracing your needs, desires, and bodily autonomy. It’s about releasing guilt and reclaiming pleasure, power, and voice.
Cultural lens: Many racialised women are conditioned to suppress pleasure and endure suffering. Healing may include rewilding your joy, reclaiming sensuality, and unlearning religious or cultural scripts that taught you your needs were shameful.Betrayal
Path to healing: Cultivating trust and surrender — beginning with yourself. Releasing the need for control and vengeance, and choosing vulnerability without abandoning discernment.
Cultural lens: For those racialised or marginalised, betrayal is often systemic as well as personal. Healing might mean disentangling from survival roles, questioning hyper-independence, and allowing support from trustworthy people who honour your humanity.Injustice
Path to healing: Reconnecting with softness, flexibility, and emotional truth. Letting go of rigid perfectionism and allowing yourself to be seen as human, not invincible.
Cultural lens: For racialised or marginalised communities, this looks like reclaiming dignity in a world that tried to deny it. It’s about validating your rage, honouring your resilience, and creating justice within—through boundaries, truth-telling, and radical self-regard in cultures that may have prioritised obedience over liberation.
Let’s lean in together and reflect:
Which soul wound feels most familiar to me right now — and how does it tend to show up in my relationships or decisions?
What mask(s) do I notice myself wearing to feel safe, accepted, or in control?
What did I not receive in childhood that I am now learning to give myself?
How have cultural, racial, or gender-based messages shaped my experience of these wounds?
What would it look like to offer myself tenderness instead of judgement when an old wound gets triggered?
If you’ve read this far, I imagine something stirred. Maybe it named something unspoken. Maybe it gave shape to something felt but not yet voiced. If you’re ready to journey more intimately with your grief, I’d love to walk with you.
If you’re longing for a deeper, more spacious container to walk with your grief, I’ve created two gentle, soul-nourishing resources:
30 Days Through Grief and Healing: A foundational journey of daily reflections, grounding prompts, and loving reminders.
30 More Days Through Grief and Healing: For when you’ve already begun, but need continued support, insight, and deeper integration.
Both are designed to honour your pace. Your breath. Your becoming.
Whether you’re seeking personal support, a nurturing group space, or culturally aware wellbeing offerings for your organisation, I offer a number of ways to work together.
You’re warmly invited to explore the ‘Work With Me’ section of my website to find what might feel like a fit for this season of your life.
Healing the soul wounds requires tenderness, truth-telling, and often — safe, skilled support. Whether through coaching, therapy, or spiritual practice, healing is a sacred act of reclaiming your right to be whole.
REFERENCES
Bourbeau, L. (2000). Heal Your Wounds and Find Your True Self. Les Éditions E.T.C. Inc.
Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New York: Gotham Books.
Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and Loss: Volume III – Loss, Sadness and Depression. London: Hogarth Press.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. New York: Basic Books.
Bowleg, L., 2013. "Once you've blended the cake, you can't take the parts back to the main ingredients": Black gay and bisexual men's descriptions and experiences of intersectionality. Sex Roles, 68(11-12), pp.754–767.
Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
Comas-Díaz, L., Hall, G.N. and Neville, H.A. (2019). ‘Racial trauma: Theory, research, and healing’, American Psychologist, 74(1), pp. 1–16.
https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000339
Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (Second edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp. 1241–1299.
https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039
Fanon, F. (2008 [1952]). Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by R. Philcox. New York: Grove Press.
Gilligan, C. (2003). The Birth of Pleasure. New York: Vintage.
hooks, b. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow.
Hunter, M.L., 2007. The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status, and inequality. Sociology Compass,
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Levine, P. A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.
Maté, G. (2021). The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. London: Vermilion.
Morris, M. W. and Perry, A. (2017). ‘The Consequences of Structural Inequality for Black Girls and Women: An Intersectional Approach’, Review of Research in Education, 41(1), pp. 1–27.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X16689020
Neimeyer, R. A. (2000). ‘Searching for the meaning of meaning: Grief therapy and the process of reconstruction’, Death Studies, 24(6), pp. 541–558.
https://doi.org/10.1080/07481180050121433
Okazaki, S. (2000). ‘Asian American and White American Differences on Affect and Attribution: A Cultural Perspective’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 31(5), pp. 595–608.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022100031005004
Okolosie, L. (2015). ‘The price of shame: Black girls and respectability politics’, The Guardian, 24 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/24/price-of-shame-black-girls-respectability-politics (Accessed: [insert date]).
Patel, N., 2018. Intersectionality, British South Asian women and narratives of resistance. Feminism & Psychology, 28(2), pp.179–196.
Porges, S.W. (2009). ‘The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system’, Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 76(Suppl 2), pp. S86–S90.
https://doi.org/10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17
Reddy, C., 2016. Diaspora, identity, and belonging: Afro-Caribbean and African youth in Britain. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 9(1), pp.87–100.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (Second edition). New York: Guilford Press.
Smith, L.T. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Second edition). London: Zed Books.
Smith, L. (2006). ‘Psychological trauma and the developing brain: Neurological perspectives for treatment’, Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(1), pp. 29–45.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2005.07.010
Snowden, L.R. and Yamada, A.-M., 2005. Cultural differences in access to care. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, pp.143–166.
Sue, D.W., et al. (2007). ‘Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice’, American Psychologist, 62(4), pp. 271–286.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.4.271
Thomas, A.J. and Clarke, C. (2006). ‘Globalization and the Transformations of Race’, Cultural Anthropology, 21(3), pp. 443–471.
https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2006.21.3.443
Thomas, A.J. and Schwarzbaum, S.E. (2016). Culture and Identity: Life Stories for Counselors and Therapists. London: SAGE Publications.
Thomas, A. J., & Speight, S. L. (1999). ‘Racial Identity and Racial Socialization as Predictors of African American Activism’, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46(2), pp. 195–223.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.2.195
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin Books.
Williams, D. R., & Mohammed, S. A. (2009). ‘Discrimination and Racial Disparities in Health: Evidence and Needed Research’, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 32(1), pp. 20–47.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-008-9185-0
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). ‘The False Self’, in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press, pp. 140–152.
Winter, R. (2019). Perfectionism: A Practical Guide to Managing 'Never Good Enough'. London: Sheldon Press.