Healing through Wonder
Photo: Pexels, Andrew Patrick
Little did I realize, as a survivor of trauma and loss, how much my lifelong capacity for wonder had been so vital to my recovery. I’d never recognized my ability to be amazed and wowed as a true strength, and no one I’d known had ever validated these qualities as a sign of strength, wisdom, or even maturity. If anything, being awestruck or wondrous was something akin to being gullible, naïve, or childlike. Yet profoundly healing encounters with awe and wonder are common experiences for survivors of trauma and loss. Indeed, a powerful moment of awe with a great blue heron saved my life decades ago.
Recently neuroscience has shown us the healing power of wonder, though previously underexplored and underappreciated. Now researchers echo what ecologist Rachel Carson believed was essential for human survival: “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” In the same spirit, I’ve launched a storytelling project and a YouTube channel called Healing Through Wonder, dedicated to the resilience-building gifts of awe and wonder for those living with grief and trauma.
Healing Through Wonder explores the power of moments that take our breath away and open our minds. In a post-pandemic, cynical world where many of us have lost faith in humanity or lost time doomscrolling through social media, it’s heartening to know that neuroscience research supports our awe-inspiring experiences despite the pessimism around us. Studies published by the Greater Good Science Center and the American Psychological Association show how our sense of wonder helps heal loneliness, trauma, and grief by giving us meaning, purpose, and a wider, more open perspective. In the past few years, exciting bestselling books such as Dacher Keltner’s Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life have been released on the neuroscience of wonder with evidence that even one moment of awe can transform our lives.
Indeed, one moment of awe did truly change my life—or saved my life. My story centers around a profound encounter with a blue heron at the age of twenty-four.
In 1979, as a homeless survivor of domestic violence, still running from my former partner, and in suicidal despair, I was ready to end it all at a campground alone by a river. I had a full bottle of valium in my hands, and beside me, another bottle of cheap red wine to wash it down. Out of the wide, twilight sky a majestic heron circled overhead and landed remarkably close to me—about ten feet away. In the dim, rising glow of the moon, the heron’s piercing eyes stared into mine, and I froze in amazement, entranced, causing me to stop swallowing the pills. This moment of sheer awe saved my life, as I realized there was just too much beauty and magic in the world to give up.
Naturally, after such a spiritual awakening, I followed herons to their wetland sanctuaries for years. Wandering and watching them quietly in their providence, I marveled at their stillness standing in shallow waters, or their determination to build nests with their mates, their elegance dancing in pairs as courtship, fishing, preening, and flying. I learned lessons about dignity, balance, grace, patience, the art of timing, and much more.
Robyn Houston-Bean, Founder of the Sun Will Rise Foundation, Co-host of the Healing Through Wonder project.
After four decades of wondrous encounters with herons and studying the neuroscience of wonder, I’ve joined with a colleague, Robyn Houston-Bean, the founder of the Sun Will Rise Foundation, to co-host storytelling sessions for our Healing Through Wonder project. Robyn has also found profound healing in experiences of awe and wonder and tells her story of a surprising encounter with a dragonfly after the death of her son, Nick. She describes a moment that took her breath away as the dragonfly stayed with her at her son’s graveside as she grieved, resting on her arm, her hand, hovering around her, following her. In her amazement and attunement to the dragonfly, she welcomed a sense of connection with her son and a sense of oneness with everything around her, opening to a warm, reassuring sense of peace. She now believes, as strongly as I do, that people struggling with grief, trauma, or addiction can be encouraged to claim their sense of awe and wonder in their healing—in nature, as well as in music and the arts, in spiritual rituals, in adventures and quests to other lands, in marveling at human acts of courage and ingenuity.
Through the Sun Will Rise Foundation, Robyn facilitates groups for those who are grieving the death of a loved one due to substance use and she has heard many healing stories of wonder from group participants.
Thanks to Robyn and other storytelling guests from The Sun Will Rise Foundation as well as storytellers from SADOD (Support After a Death by Overdose), our Healing Through Wonder channel includes firsthand accounts of wondrous encounters and uncanny synchronicities. Reflecting on these unexpected, life-changing moments, we examine the healing effects of what captivated and transformed us.
On YouTube: Robyn Houston-Bean, Val Walker, and storytelling guests Carol Bowers and Tanya Lord
Stories of wonder, awe, enchantment, and reverence that had been secretly tucked away for decades are generously shared on our Healing Through Wonder channel. Our stories show how our wellbeing thrives on our willingness to open ourselves to encounters of awe and wonder, no matter how brief or fleeting or odd. There’s a whole, wide, dazzling world to amaze us beyond the din our overthinking minds, ruminations, or nagging inner chatter. Our willingness to look up and be amazed can turn a bad day around, or give us pause in a good way, or even change our whole outlook on life.
As our project develops and as Robyn and I learn more about the healing power of awe and wonder, I’ll be blogging here about the exciting science of awe as well as sharing experiences that have sparked our recovery from trauma and loss.
About the Author
Val Walker is a contributing blogger for Psychology Today and the author of 400 Friends and No One to Call, released in 2020 with Central Recovery Press. Her first book, The Art of Comforting (Penguin/Random House, 2010), won the Nautilus Book award and was recommended by the Boston Public Health Commission as a guide for families impacted by the Boston Marathon Bombing. Val received her MS in rehabilitation counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University and is a rehabilitation consultant, speaker, and educator. Her articles and Q&As have appeared in AARP, Caregiver Space, Babyboomer.com, Caregiver Solutions, Time, Good Housekeeping, Coping with Cancer, Boston Globe Magazine, Belief Net, Marie Claire, and Sweety High. Keep up with Val at www.ValWalkerAuthor.com
You can also learn more about the Healing Through Wonder project through their YouTube channel, The Sun Will Rise Foundation, and Support After a Death by Overdose (SADOD) project.