The Beginning of Healing

Too many people today are wounded. In fact, "wounded" might be too light of a word. We've been abused, traumatized, scarred, damaged... you name whatever words fits your life.

We long for healing. But it often seems beyond our grasp.

Trauma and abuse are easily found, but the healing from those things is hard-won.

It seems like healing isn't in our future. It isn't an option. We feel hopeless and permanently broken. Where do you go from there?

The truth isn't profound, but it is a multi-step process. And it begins with one thing: We're still here.

We're still hoping that one day our fingers brush against the light that pulls us into warmth. We long to reach the end of the dark tunnel and come out on the other side.

This dream, this persistence...

This is where healing begins

What Holds Us Back?

Before we "fix" ourselves, we have to understand why we're broken.

I thought that healing was a fantasy. I saw myself as broken beyond repair by circumstances beyond my control by people who should have protected me.

This left me powerless.

To me, healing couldn't be an option because, frankly, I didn't know anything besides trauma. It was my only path.

Worse, therapists, friends, family members... none of them seemed to get it.

And all the degrees and good intentions in the world couldn't bridge this gap between us.

No one understood because they hadn't lived it.

They wanted me to fight, but I was no David and my Goliath never felt more real.

I was just a little girl, perpetually trapped in the fear and hurt of being eight, or twelve, or sixteen. And I couldn't get out.

Things began to change for me when someone finally believed me.

Not believe what I had been through, but believe its impact on me and my inability to come back from it.

In my 20s, people began to believe I was unbelievably damaged. The evidence was clear and undeniable. Heads couldn't be buried in the sand anymore.

But that acknowledgment didn't healed me.

I knew what happened to me for years. Just because others finally saw the truth didn't change my reality. And their newfound support still couldn't heal me.

What changed was when someone believed what my trauma had done to me.

She understood that I couldn't recover in my own right.

My life was set on a new path the day a woman looked at me and said that she believed not only my trauma, but what it did to me.

It wasn't that she believed I would never heal or that I was a lost cause. She didn't tell me to surrender because I was too broken.

Instead, she believed that I genuinely didn't know how.

Why? Because no one has ever showed me how to heal.

She validated something I didn't even know I was saying.

People finally saw what had been done. But their complacency in my abuse-and their own-left them unable to take action.

These people didn't know how to heal themselves-much less for the generations following them.

Without them breaking their own chains, they were not in positions to teach me how to break mine, much less prevent me from being put in that situation in the first place.

Why is This So Important?

This observation provided me so much freedom with a simple underlying meaning: it's not your fault.

No less moving than Robin Williams' lines in Good Will Hunting, this reminded me that my trauma (and its impact) wasn't my own moral failing-something abusers love to reminder you.

This was a radical and foundational shift to my self perception.

It’s not my fault that I had endured abuse in a toxic environment; it was not my fault that I didn't automatically know how to fix myself.

I couldn't "pull myself up by my bootstraps," because no one before me had ever exemplified what that entailed.

This begs the question: how could I possibly build something new and go down a different path, without ever being taught how?

I couldn't carve out a new path for myself through sheer willpower when all I had ever been shown was how to keep walking the same abuse-ridden paths laid by the generations before me.

How was I supposed to know I could go off course? And even if I did, what would that even look like? How would I survive?

I share all of this because, unknowingly, these were the messages being reinforced in my life. Reminders that, "This is how we do things. There is no other option."

But what if it wasn't?

Once someone said, "Of course you don't know how to do something you've never been taught," it clicked.

What if there was more? What if there was a new way to live-outside of fear? One where I wasn't full of bitterness and self loathing? Where fear and inadequacy didn't rule my self perspective?

What if these iron chains linking me to what's always been were rusty and, with a lot of work, could be broke free?

With a few simple words, my world opened up. With the right therapist, I could see that maybe, just maybe, I could do, be, and have more.

If only I was brave enough to try.

This profound advice was extremely relevant in breaking through the brick wall I kept running into.

Why was this so important?

In all honesty, the love-given advice was one sentence in a long conversation. But it stuck with me, so much so that I kept revisiting it over and over again.

It challenged everything I knew and dared me to be brave enough to try something completely foreign. It dared me to see myself as loved and worthy, even if others didn't.

It validated the pain I had gone through. It told me I wasn't crazy. I hadn't made up my abuse (or made it sound worse than it was).

It told me the failing wasn't with me.

Those were the first few steps I had to walk through as this new idea found a home in my brain and my heart. Then, it freed me.

It gave me the courage to consider, to wonder, to hope, and finally to try.

But most importantly, it was a promise that I wouldn't be alone. I wouldn't be expected to fix myself immediately from the pain and 20 years of trauma with no effort. It didn't expect the perfectionism that had been drilled into me.

Instead, the person has come up alongside me, propping me up, holding my hand, and encouraging me every step of the way to turn my life upside down.

Essentially, she's been teaching me what I never knew (how to heal) by example, with techniques, and extreme grace-filled support.

It was no longer me versus everything.

This gave me 2 key factors in healing:

1. The freedom to forgive myself, which in turn meant I was able to stop being so angry at myself for feeling helpless.
2. After step 1, I could actually begin the work. I could try to counteract shame with self compassion. I could work on healing without the foregone conclusion of failure.

Just because I didn't have to have it all figured out because I wasn't alone. I could begin to heal.

By no means has this been a short and easy process. I won't lie and tell you it happened miraculously overnight. I won't tell you that it didn't take days of me fighting with my own mind and nervous system to not revert to old patterns. I won't even tell you that I'm "entirely cured" (whatever that means) or that you will be too.

But if you're like me, and you are at the end of your rope, this is where someone threw me a life preserver.

Self compassion, grace, and love might sound overly cheesy for such huge problems. But the role they play in validating your pain and rewiring yours self perception is foundational.

You deserve healing. You deserve peace. And you deserve freedom.

If you don't know how to heal, if no one has ever shown you how to do so, know that you're not alone. It's not a magic skill you understand or gain overnight.

But you are not a lost cause.

No matter how far away healing may seem, or how excruciatingly slow it goes, you are worth it. We are worth it.

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If you loved what you read, would you be able to offer a little support? It's okay if you can't right now. I still appreciate your support in reading.

Thanks for being a part of the journey