“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
We teach that little rhyme to children as though it were truth. But despite how comforting it sounds, it simply isn't truth.
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can wound us in places no one can see. Words can shape how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, what we believe we deserve, and even how we move through the world.
And those wounds do not always disappear when the person who spoke the words walks away.
Words can echo for years.
A child who repeatedly hears, “You’re stupid,” “Nobody wants you,” “You’ll never amount to anything,” or “Something is wrong with you” may eventually stop hearing those statements in someone else’s voice and begin hearing them in their own. What was once spoken to them can become something spoken within them.
Science increasingly confirms something many wounded people already know from experience: prolonged emotional and verbal mistreatment can affect mental health, stress responses, relationships, behavior, and even physical well-being. The tongue may not leave a bruise that can be photographed, but that does not mean it cannot leave a wound.
But here is the good news:
We can heal from words.
Healing, however, may require more than simply saying a prayer and expecting years of pain to disappear overnight. Prayer matters. Faith matters. Fasting may matter. But God has also given us tools for healing.
Sometimes healing looks like therapy.
Sometimes it looks like confronting beliefs we have carried since childhood and asking, Who told me that? Why did I believe it? Is it actually true?
Sometimes it means intentionally renewing our minds every single day until the voice of truth becomes louder than the voices that wounded us.
Romans 12:2 tells us to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” There is something powerful about that word renewing. Healing can be a process. Thought patterns that were built over years may need to be challenged again and again as we learn a new way of seeing ourselves.
And Jeremiah 30:17 gives us this beautiful promise:
“For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord.”
God is concerned with more than the wounds that bleed.
He sees the wound left by the parent who constantly criticized you.
The teacher who humiliated you.
The spouse who tore down your confidence.
The bully whose words followed you long after childhood ended.
The person who made you feel ugly, unwanted, unintelligent, unworthy, or unlovable.
And He sees the words that became so deeply rooted that somewhere along the way, you began saying them to yourself.
Those wounds can be healed too.
Sometimes God’s healing comes through prayer. Sometimes it comes through Scripture. Sometimes it comes through a therapist’s office, through boundaries, through safe relationships, through forgiveness, through grieving what happened, and through the long work of learning to think differently.
And sometimes it comes through all of those things together.
Sticks and stones can break bones.
Words can break hearts, identities, confidence, and spirits.
But broken bones can mend.
And so can the places inside of us that were wounded by words.
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