Who we are arises from how we have been hurt

From Mari Ruti’s The Call of Character pg 18:

Likewise, there is perhaps nothing that contributes to the uniqueness of our character more than our suffering. In so many ways, who we are arises from how we have been hurt. This does not mean that we cannot find our way past our injuries or that they determine our future. But it does suggest that our sense of authenticity cannot be divorced from the hardships and disappointments we have endured.

From pg 21:

It may, for example, turn out that something that causes us suffering will eventually grow into a nugget of wisdom that guides us to a valuable course adjustment. And a breakdown that leaves us gasping for air can eventually lead to an important breakthrough that reconfigures our lives for the better. This is why Nietzsche believes that we should choose to love our fate—that instead of struggling against the constraints of our situation, we should actively welcome these constraints because they are the foundation of our ability to elaborate our character.

This is exactly what I found so powerful in Hans Loewald’s notion of transforming ghosts into ancestors. There’s a particular mode through which we metabolise suffering, the deep and profound ontological injuries which mean we can’t continue as we were, which makes a particular mode of growth possible. From Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein pg 200-201:

The psychoanalyst Hans Loewald wrote of transforming the ghosts that haunt patients into ancestors, through tasting what he called the “blood of recognition” in the relationship with the therapist. He asserted that the ghosts must be led out of the unconscious, reawakened through the intensity of the therapeutic relationship, and then laid to rest, relegated to history, thus allowing the person more flexibility and intensity in present relations.

There are things we can be lost within which these wounds, or rather the process of moving through them, can lead us out of. We don’t become someone who wasn’t hurt in this way but rather become someone who can live well despite being hurt in that way. In Lacanian terms we see a reconfiguration of the relationship to our own enjoyment, as we reclaim it through a movement of traversing a (now shattered) fantasy. But Mari Ruti expresses it so much more beautifully and concretely than any of the Lacanians do.

I keep having dreams of things I need to do
And waking up but not following through
But it feels like I haven't slept at all
When I wake to a silence and she's facing the wall
Posters of Dylan and of Hemingway
An antique compass for a sailor's escape
She says, "You just can't live this way"
And I close my eyes and I never say
I'm still having dreams