The Wounded Healer : What My Grandmother’s Spirit Taught Me About Healing After Death

I never went to my grandmother’s funeral.

I didn’t feel like I could.

There was so much left unsaid between us. Not in some dramatic, final conversation kind of way—but in the quieter ways that relationships can stay disconnected. I’d spent time with her growing up, but very little. We lived in different states, and when we did see each other, it always felt like we were playing our expected roles: adult and child. Cordial, polite, but never close.

I spent years carrying this ache I couldn’t fully name. A yearning to be loved by her… the mother of the father I never really got to know. I was born after he died, and I don’t know if that made it harder for her to connect with me, or if my presence was a reminder of everything she’d lost. But whatever the reason, I never felt that emotional warmth from her. And over time, that lack of connection turned into resentment.

The last conversations we had, when I was an adult, were filled with drunken rants. Usually directed toward the man who raised me after my mom remarried. Regardless of how I felt about him—and there’s complexity there too—I couldn’t tolerate the toxic, angry energy that came through the phone. So I distanced myself. I let space win.

When She Came Through Anyway

Years later, during a mediumship workshop, I was paired with someone practicing readings. I wasn’t expecting anything significant—it was just practice. But then, the woman looked at me and said, “Your grandmother is here… and she’s coming through as a wounded healer.”

I’d never heard that term before. But I felt it.

And strangely, she didn’t just show up once. She started appearing again and again—each time I had a reading with someone else. Gentle. Present. Almost… trying. Like she was reaching for a connection we couldn’t form while she was here.

I didn’t know how to receive that at first. Part of me was still angry. Still disappointed in the kind of relationship we never had. But over time, those walls began to soften—not because I forced them to, but because something deeper started to shift. Something in me began to wonder: what if she didn’t know how to love me back then? What if grief shaped the way she showed up in the world… and I just happened to be caught in the ripple of that?

What the Wounded Healer Means to Me

When I think about the term now, I don’t see it as someone who has to be fully healed in order to help others. I see it as someone who carries their wounds and still shows up with heart. Someone who turns toward their pain, even when it’s uncomfortable, and says—this, too, can be of service.

That’s what I think she was trying to do. Not fix the past, but be part of something better now. For me. For both of us.

The Healing Goes Both Ways

I used to hate when people said I looked like her. I’d flinch at the comparison, not because of how she looked, but because of what it represented. I didn’t want to carry any part of her.

But now… I’m not so quick to shut that down. My mom tells me stories—how funny she was, how she lit up a room, how people were drawn to her energy. And I wonder if those are pieces of her I do carry. Maybe I’ve just been too focused on the pain to see them.

Now when she comes through, it doesn’t feel invasive. It feels like something unfinished finding its way back around—not to be wrapped in a bow, but to be acknowledged. Witnessed. Even appreciated.

And maybe that’s the kind of healing that matters most. The kind that says: We didn’t get it right while you were here. But I see you now.

Closing the Gap

Forgiveness, for me, didn’t come all at once. It’s been in layers. It came in the quiet understanding that I might never know what she was going through. It came in realizing I was clinging to a version of a father I never knew, and pushing her away because she didn’t give me more of him. It came in moments of spirit, meditation, synchronicity—where she shows up not just for me, but with me.

These days, I see our connection differently. Not perfect. Still imperfect.

But honest. And healing. And that’s enough.

Copyright 2025 Angelique Declercq. All rights reserved.
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