Returning the Same Way We Came

Introduction

Healing is not escape. It is not the promise of leaving pain behind. In therapy, the deepest work is to return—into the very places we once abandoned: the wounds that split us, the shame we buried, the parts of ourselves we exiled. What is buried does not die; it waits, shaping us in silence, until we are ready to face it.

The meditation below explores that return: how the wound becomes a portal of transformation, how surrender becomes courage, and how the very path that once broke us open can also lead us home.

Returning the Same Way We Came

What wounds us does not disappear.
It waits—patient, relentless—
until we meet it again.

The path that cut us open
is the same path that brings us home.
There is no other way.

Return the same way you came.
Return the same way you came.

At first, it sounds like survival advice:
if lost, retrace your steps.
But in the wilderness of the psyche,
it is more radical.

Transformation demands we walk back through the very places
we first buried our pain—
the wound, the shame, the exile.

The wound is not an ending.
The wound is the portal.
Through it, the tidy stories of the false self are stripped away.

Our fluid, expansive identities include trauma, loss, grief.
They do not die.
They live in shadow,
shaping every step.

To face them is to reclaim what was disowned.
What blindsided us becomes newfound sight.

No Secret Exits

There are no secret exits.
What we repress returns,
again and again—
until we turn toward it and bow in submission.

To submit is not collapse.
It is courage.
It is opening.

Winnicott named this surrender creation:
the willingness to
be undone,
to be surprised,
to find life where annihilation once threatened.

Benjamin named it recognition:
meeting another as real,
not as a mere projection.

In such a field,
submission is not defeat.
It is threshold.
It is freedom.

The Wound as Threshold

The wound is not against you.
The wound is your life refusing to die.
In moving through it, you are broken open,
and in that break, made whole.

The way home is fierce and simple:

The way home:
the known—bondage.

The way home:
the unknown—submission.

To submit
to the unknown
is the way home—
to you in me.

The Journey Twice

There is only one path,
but it must be walked twice.

First as descent—
into repetition,
into enactment,
into blind survival.

Then as return—
into remembrance,
recognition,
integration.

And so:

There is one road.
It does not change.

We do.

On return,
the exiles walk beside us,
not as burdens,
but as our humanity.

From the wound, light.
From the light, a star.

Aligning you to the central truth:

You are the path.
You are the traveler.
You are home.

Return the same way you came.

Closing Reflection:

In the therapy space, this return is not theory but lived reality—slow, raw, and often painful. To retrace our steps is to turn back toward the places where pain first entered and allow ourselves to feel what we once fled. What once seemed like collapse begins to reveal itself as courage. What once felt like exile takes on the shape of belonging.

Met in this way, the wound is no longer enemy but threshold. It becomes light. And in walking with our exiled parts—not as burdens but as our humanity—we uncover the paradox of healing: the very path that once broke us is the same path that brings us home.

Author’s Note

This reflection is part of a series on the poetry of healing—where lived experience and the depths of the psyche meet, shaped by the inner life we all carry.

Yoon Im Kane is a psychotherapist, educator, consultant, and speaker whose work explores mindful leadership, the poetry of healing, and the power of lived experience. Trained at Yale and practicing for over two decades, she founded Mindful Psychotherapy Services in Manhattan and MNDlink in Maui.

Her publications include The Mindfulness Workbook for Depressionand Women, Intersectionality, and Power in Group Psychotherapy

Join us in ongoing conversations of healing. Connect on social media @mindful.nyc.

References

Benjamin, J. (1988). The bonds of love: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and the problem of domination. New York: Pantheon Books.

Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. London: Tavistock.

Freud, S. (1920/1955). Beyond the pleasure principle. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 1–64). London: Hogarth Press.

Ogden, T. H. (1994). The analytic third: Working with intersubjective clinical facts. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75(1), 3–19.