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The Wound Makes the Medicine: Elemental Remediations for Transforming Heartache
A healing journey broken down into bite-sized pieces that readers will return to repeatedly finding new treasures each time.
In Pixie Lighthorse's most personal work yet, The Wound Makes the Medicine , we are invited to embark on a journey of self-acceptance. This intricate tapestry of prose illuminates the paths we often avoid—the hidden corridors of suffering—and beckons us to walk them courageously, armed with a gentle understanding that we can withstand and learn from our pain.
Each page reveals a profound prescription for the soul, a remedy curated from the unique synthesis of Lighthorse's wisdom as an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation and the transformative insights gained from a life courageously lived. The Wound Makes the Medicine isn't a call for immediate transformation but a guide to embracing our wounds as teachers that reveal our strength, resilience, and capacity to heal. Lighthorse assures us that while wounds may create fractures, they also serve as openings for medicine.
In Pixie Lighthorse's most personal work yet, The Wound Makes the Medicine , we are invited to embark on a journey of self-acceptance. This intricate tapestry of prose illuminates the paths we often avoid—the hidden corridors of suffering—and beckons us to walk them courageously, armed with a gentle understanding that we can withstand and learn from our pain.
Each page reveals a profound prescription for the soul, a remedy curated from the unique synthesis of Lighthorse's wisdom as an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation and the transformative insights gained from a life courageously lived. The Wound Makes the Medicine isn't a call for immediate transformation but a guide to embracing our wounds as teachers that reveal our strength, resilience, and capacity to heal. Lighthorse assures us that while wounds may create fractures, they also serve as openings for medicine.
208 pages, Paperback
Published December 12, 2023
61 people are currently reading
741 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
December 25, 2025
a guiding voice through transformation
May 19, 2024
Beautifully written
May 20, 2024
A brave and poetic deep-dive into grief, loss, and heartache. Beautiful. The author holds space for these pivotal and purposeful moments in all our lives in a way that is rare in current society. We, as a collective, have forgotten, and she reawakens this inner and ancestral wisdom.
"I cherished these moments of creative inspiration, even when they were just a quick whisper. I wrote them in my journal so that I would remember I am my own autonomous being with my very own relationship to the spirits, who are guiding me and teaching me about life through how I cope with loss."
"It is love that breaks our hearts, and it is always love that heals us."
"I cherished these moments of creative inspiration, even when they were just a quick whisper. I wrote them in my journal so that I would remember I am my own autonomous being with my very own relationship to the spirits, who are guiding me and teaching me about life through how I cope with loss."
"It is love that breaks our hearts, and it is always love that heals us."
August 28, 2025
I am a firm believer that the right books will come into your life at the right moments. Lighthouse wrote this book as part of her healing process from a broken heart, and she did such a good job that I was able to use her words and wisdom in my healing journey after an almost year of uncertainty. I haven’t written in or highlighted in a book this much since college. I recommend this book for anyone traversing the roads of heartbreak and healing.
November 10, 2024
Musings on what the elements teach us about healing heartbreak, perfect for tarot readers and magical folk.
The short chapters make it a lovely little bedtime read, and the prose is beautiful and raw. There is magic in these words.
The short chapters make it a lovely little bedtime read, and the prose is beautiful and raw. There is magic in these words.
February 28, 2024
Lighthorse’s writing is beautiful and poetic but feels innately personal and personal. I have given this book to a handful of friends already and see myself continuing to do so.
September 19, 2024
Best book I've read in a long time. Beautiful and meaningful.
November 12, 2024
Another book with some useful elements but lots that didn’t land much. I also always struggle with books that are USA-centric in so many references.
March 28, 2024
This ceremony of life in which we kill the little untruths over and over to save the big truth of love that lives within us Sit up for the ceremony!
Love cannot exist without the justice of healing
Braving the cauldron…
“Give your pain to the fire in prayers and watch the flames rise to change it into another form. This is the gift of fire-“
“remember that fire reunites you with what is ancient and eternal within you— and what you smell, touch, taste, see, and hear colors your day.”
“Heart wounds make their own medicine by rupturing the old system, creating a paste of ash and blood to draw out the infection and soothe.”
“I light the torches of liberation by offering the fuel of my outdated beliefs and patterns to the spirits in the flames.”
“Simply letting yourself be in the tender fog of your becoming will eventually help you to step over the threshold and move into the next phase, when the moment is right.”
“It's as if I can feel the water up to my chest and see another relative just upstream carrying out the same sacred task of being with their feelings. We comrades are sprinkled all up and down this river.
I'm hearing more and more talk about taking time to be with our feelings of grief and loss. And yet, we need not rescue each other. This is interdependence: the system of connectedness. It is the ease of knowing you are here with me, that we recognize each other here, and that you cannot do my sacred inner work for me. We can stand in the current of healing together as witnesses while trusting one another with our own unique processes. Healing our hearts from ordeals builds relationships. When we share how we are moving through the rivers of grief and not around them, we cultivate a special kinship that can help without trying to rescue or fix another.
I am comforted by the presence of others around me in the current, without the need for rescue.”
“To be earthed is to become like rock: not immovable or unchangeable, but anchored by a power greater than herself. Her gravity comes from a community of intricately placed fellow celestial bodies throughout the infinite cos-mos. We can lean into this supportive network to recog nize that we, too, are cosmic beings — constantly evolving and learning to integrate even more of the mystery.”
“I will dig a grave for what is gone with great love, so that Earth can do the holding.”
Love cannot exist without the justice of healing
Braving the cauldron…
“Give your pain to the fire in prayers and watch the flames rise to change it into another form. This is the gift of fire-“
“remember that fire reunites you with what is ancient and eternal within you— and what you smell, touch, taste, see, and hear colors your day.”
“Heart wounds make their own medicine by rupturing the old system, creating a paste of ash and blood to draw out the infection and soothe.”
“I light the torches of liberation by offering the fuel of my outdated beliefs and patterns to the spirits in the flames.”
“Simply letting yourself be in the tender fog of your becoming will eventually help you to step over the threshold and move into the next phase, when the moment is right.”
“It's as if I can feel the water up to my chest and see another relative just upstream carrying out the same sacred task of being with their feelings. We comrades are sprinkled all up and down this river.
I'm hearing more and more talk about taking time to be with our feelings of grief and loss. And yet, we need not rescue each other. This is interdependence: the system of connectedness. It is the ease of knowing you are here with me, that we recognize each other here, and that you cannot do my sacred inner work for me. We can stand in the current of healing together as witnesses while trusting one another with our own unique processes. Healing our hearts from ordeals builds relationships. When we share how we are moving through the rivers of grief and not around them, we cultivate a special kinship that can help without trying to rescue or fix another.
I am comforted by the presence of others around me in the current, without the need for rescue.”
“To be earthed is to become like rock: not immovable or unchangeable, but anchored by a power greater than herself. Her gravity comes from a community of intricately placed fellow celestial bodies throughout the infinite cos-mos. We can lean into this supportive network to recog nize that we, too, are cosmic beings — constantly evolving and learning to integrate even more of the mystery.”
“I will dig a grave for what is gone with great love, so that Earth can do the holding.”
March 25, 2025
A Mirror for the Broken Open
Some books do not merely offer words; they offer echoes.
The Wound Makes the Medicine felt less like reading and more like remembering
a remembering of what it means to be tender and torn, yet still standing.
Pixie Lighthorse speaks in a language I know deep in my marrow,
the language of loss, of fracture, of ache turned to alchemy.
In her pages, I found my own unraveling, the silent spaces where grief curled itself around my ribs,
the weight of sorrow heavy as wet earth after the rain.
She does not rush the mending
does not insist on silver linings too soon.
Instead, she walks with us into the places we’ve been told to avoid,
the places where heartbreak lingers like a ghost waiting to be seen.
And there, with the patience of a healer,
she reminds us that wounds are not weaknesses but wisdom waiting to be recognized.
This book met me where I was, and each time I return, it meets me anew.
It is a companion for the long road, a light in the quiet dark.
Lighthorse reminds us that pain does not just hollow us out
it also makes space for the medicine we are meant to carry.
And so, I carry mine a little differently now,
with reverence instead of resistance,
with tenderness instead of fear.
Because grief, like love, reshapes us.
And healing is not forgetting but becoming
Some books do not merely offer words; they offer echoes.
The Wound Makes the Medicine felt less like reading and more like remembering
a remembering of what it means to be tender and torn, yet still standing.
Pixie Lighthorse speaks in a language I know deep in my marrow,
the language of loss, of fracture, of ache turned to alchemy.
In her pages, I found my own unraveling, the silent spaces where grief curled itself around my ribs,
the weight of sorrow heavy as wet earth after the rain.
She does not rush the mending
does not insist on silver linings too soon.
Instead, she walks with us into the places we’ve been told to avoid,
the places where heartbreak lingers like a ghost waiting to be seen.
And there, with the patience of a healer,
she reminds us that wounds are not weaknesses but wisdom waiting to be recognized.
This book met me where I was, and each time I return, it meets me anew.
It is a companion for the long road, a light in the quiet dark.
Lighthorse reminds us that pain does not just hollow us out
it also makes space for the medicine we are meant to carry.
And so, I carry mine a little differently now,
with reverence instead of resistance,
with tenderness instead of fear.
Because grief, like love, reshapes us.
And healing is not forgetting but becoming
December 8, 2024
Currently going through finals, and this is one of the books I had cued. This playing in the background was wonderful. I think this is a book everyone should casually listen to. I loved it.
"We do not have to disconnect from life to process the past". What a hard hitting line. Currently dealing with my own sort of way of navigating grief/regrets. It's so easy to shut down and think that's the only way to focus on the feelings, but it's never helped in the past.
I loved the emphasis on feeling. We don't do it enough.
"We do not have to disconnect from life to process the past". What a hard hitting line. Currently dealing with my own sort of way of navigating grief/regrets. It's so easy to shut down and think that's the only way to focus on the feelings, but it's never helped in the past.
I loved the emphasis on feeling. We don't do it enough.
May 18, 2024
Lighthorse uses her own experiences to bring companionship to readers’ heartbreak. Artfully organized into bite-sized revelations, this book is an easy one to pick up when you need support. The writing itself is an art form sure to leave warmth in your heart and even a smile on your face as you feel seen and understood in the messiness of life. This is a great gift for yourself or those who might be in the thick of grief.
May 8, 2024
Listening to this audiobook was transformative, grounding & deeply healing. I saved it on Spotify as I see myself revisiting the chapters often - I hope to purchase a hard copy as well. This book is so masterfully written, reading it feels like a warm hug & the words brought me closer to myself and helped me to mentally work through some blocks. Thank you Pixie 🙏🏼💖✨
December 26, 2024
Beautiful book for self care when moving through trauma, heartache, & grief. Each brief chapter ends with an affirmation/journaling prompt. Lovely audiobook that left me needing a physical copy for my shelves. A meditative book, sans toxic positivity, to return to time after time and a great gift book for loved ones with broken hearts.
August 27, 2025
Excellent. A breath of fresh air. I will immediately seek out this author's other books. Also a good book for seasonal transitions of all kinds.
Mid-read, I purchased a copy of this book as a gift. The context is that I was raised by a librarian mother, so am almost 100% a reader of library books, rarely purchasing.
Audiobook.
Mid-read, I purchased a copy of this book as a gift. The context is that I was raised by a librarian mother, so am almost 100% a reader of library books, rarely purchasing.
Audiobook.
May 25, 2024
A necessary read if you’re experiencing the loss of a significant relationship. This small but mighty book is a wisdom-filled love letter to all humans brave enough to sit with, and learn from their heartbreak and suffering. Brilliant and inspiring. Pixie never disappoints.
September 3, 2024
Pixie Lighthorse writes with a clear vulnerability combined with the ability to look closely at herself with compassion. This is a book about letting what is happening happen. About enjoying the unfolding event of one's life. About grief receiving grace. Recommended to anyone living a human life.
February 7, 2025
This little book of affirmations is actual “self-help.” We all have trauma and baggage that we carry with us and that is okay. Pixie Lighthorse explains ways to aid in recovery and self-acceptance in a way that everyone can understand and relate to. As a disabled person, a lot of this spoke to me.
May 9, 2025
A book similar to many I read sometime ago, when I really needed answers and to navigate through difficult periods.
As per the reviews on Goodreads, it is a book that benefits those seeking to make sense of unforeseen changes that can debilitate and annihilate the self.
As per the reviews on Goodreads, it is a book that benefits those seeking to make sense of unforeseen changes that can debilitate and annihilate the self.
June 4, 2025
I would read this book again! And maybe should do so every year. The teaching were simple and profound and felt like exactly what I needed in the time of reading. The message I remember the most clearly was that of the owl with the snake that died. Burying, letting go of what's gone.
July 30, 2025
This book was so good. I really felt a connection to the reading with some experiences in my own life. I loved listening to the audio which was narrated by the author. I’m looking forward to reading some more of her work.
December 26, 2023
An easeful guide to and through acknowledging and accepting loss
April 18, 2024
Very relaxing self help book. A delightful listen.
June 10, 2024
Audiobook listen. Struck some hurt (speaking on avoided truths) & enabled some healing (I'm not responsible for others).
"I will allow what is happening to me to be what is happening for me"
"I will allow what is happening to me to be what is happening for me"
July 10, 2024
This was wonderful and I have many highlights, notes and bookmarks to revisit. The writing is beautiful and the ideas rekindled a necessary self nurturing for me that I will carry forward
August 26, 2024
Pixie Lighthorse provides short, meditative chapters and pieces based on the four elements and how they can relate to enduring hardship, particularly grief in its various forms. Thoughtful, beautiful, and worth revisiting, comparable to Matt Haig's The Comfort Book.
January 17, 2025
Beautifully poetic and full of little wisdoms to spark the heart snd soul!
January 25, 2025
Wonderful audio! The narrator has a nice, soothing voice. I love the messages.
March 6, 2025
Beautifully written
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews