The Wound in Us

Weaving of a the story

Scared and wounded Tenko from My Hero Academia

My daughter took me on a journey I wasn’t expecting, deep into the world of an anime she loves called My Hero Academia. What began as fun, often silly explorations of archetypes and superpowers gradually unfolded into something much more powerful: a study in emotional wounds and attempts to heal them.

Again and again, we noticed: the villain or ‘bad guy’ was someone hurt. Someone whose trust in others had been broken. A child. A comrade. A dreamer turned skeptic. Their pain mutating into control, often in the name of protection.

And on the other side: the heroes, often wounded too, searching for ways to trust again. Trying to hold a space where trust could be reborn.

Spoiler alert: In these stories, the hero cannot defeat the villain. They must recognize the wound … as one they also carry … and grow a space where trust can take root again.

These roles are all around and we are all in them … over and over.
As if we are one story .. refracted through different lives, different masks, different choices.

The Protector Who Controls

There is a persistent social pattern I see everywhere … not just in stories, but in real systems and relationships - and myself.

A person is wounded. Their trust shattered.
They vow, “Never again.”
And in the name of safety (theirs or others’) they begin to control.
They build walls, rules, firewalls. They centralize. They override. They defend not just themselves, but sometimes everyone.

They (we) weaponize harm prevention.
“I’m just protecting others,” they say.
And yet, the very protection becomes a new wound.

I see this logic everywhere:

• In governance systems that patrol every risk

• In policies that remove voice under the banner of “safety”

• In broken families where silence is called peace

• In economies built on scarcity, not care

• In myself as I try to protect myself and others from the harm I faced from those I trusted

And beneath it all, a frightened protector, a wounded child …… still guarding the wound.

What can change this persistent story?

….. what do we plant … for ourselves, and for the next generation … that helps us thrive together?

What is the space where we can:

• Honor our commitments

• Build networks of trust

• Heal, without dominating

• Feel safe not because we’re controlled, but because we’re seen

I’ve come to feel … sometimes sense, sometimes even see through math … that there is a substrate to all this. A kind of soil beneath the systems. A geometry of relationship where I feel safe and ready for whats next.

It feels like the underground network of mycelium … silent, relational, alive .. enabling trees to share nutrients unseen.

It’s made of:

• The love I give … even when I don’t feel loved

• The compassion to feel what others feel .. even myself

• The joy in someone else’s joy

• The peace to just be

It’s a rhythm. A pattern of care.

I see that pattern in how living systems coordinate resources and in pooling systems for our commitments:
Where promises live not as stagnate debts, but as living trusts.
Where redemption means showing up.
Where leadership is not power over, but care with.

A Path Forward

… how do we move this story … our story … to a new place?

A place where the wounded, both out there and in here, feel safe again.
Where our ecosystems of care can breathe.
Where trust doesn’t have to be perfect … only present, and practiced.

I believe we start by:

• Naming the wound, without shaming it

• Creating containers of mutual commitment (not control)

• … planting seeds of trust in them and helping them to sprout (kuota).

• Designing protocols (language) that honor emotion, memory, and repair

• And most of all, refusing to give up on each other

We are one story, after all.
And it is still unfolding.

Let us write the next chapter together.

Spoiler alert: It’s going to be fun!