First Steps - Life After Trauma, Part 2 of 3

If you’ve ever Googled “how to recover from emotional trauma,” you’re not alone. You may have been inspired by healing from trauma quotes, like If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who did not cut you (unknown) or Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing creates change you do choose (Michele Rosenthal) or Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence (Peter Levine). That stuff kept me going, too.

In our last conversation (blog post), we talked about realizing there’s more - that you don’t have to struggle - and becoming aware of our hopes and dreams beyond healing trauma. It’s this awareness that bolsters our courage to step into the wilderness of the unknown. And so we do.

We first commit to doing things differently than we have before. We decide to make choices from curiosity and joy rather than from quiet desperation. This is a time of discovery that is sometimes both exhilarating and frustrating at once. Acknowledge that frustration, invite all of your feelings to the table, and host each of them as if an honored guest at your birthday party. Each has something valuable to share.

Our old ways had us searching, seeking, and striving for answers. We were pushing and willing ourselves to make things happen. And we understand we can’t function like that anymore. We know that discovery doesn’t come when we’re in that over-managed state. We learn new things when we’re open, receptive, and interested. We’re really not used to being this way, as hyper vigilance or “checked out” were our only modes of operation.

Relaxing into something new seems paradoxical to the masculine energy of GOING FOR IT. It’s here that we realize we simply cannot force our way through life anymore. It’s time to surrender. From this place, we let ourselves be led by the lights of our souls. And let’s keep this in mind: we got ourselves here, didn’t we? We’ll get “there,” wherever and whenever that may be. We’ll also get there faster if we stop pushing.

And then we get to the fun part: practicing deep listening and acting on what we hear. I say “fun” with a hint of irony, because this is notoriously where people revert to their former ways of being (a habit). It’s not easy at first to listen in and take new actions. If you’re growing, what you hear from your inner listening might “feel” right and “feel” wrong at the same time. It’s particularly challenging to do new things when we haven’t proven that they work in our lives. This is where faith comes in: trusting that you and your soul have gotten this far…surely there’s a way forward!

Creating carries with it the vulnerability of youth, which means understanding that she doesn’t believe in limitations, she wants to be seen and heard without the judgement of adulthood, and she’ll shine brightly the more we encourage her. We make space for creativity by nurturing ourselves at every level. We offer safety to make mistakes and attentiveness to our preferences. We honor what shows up and we stop beating up on ourselves for the decisions we made out of desperation.

If your healing journey has been anything like mine, you’ve had your share of false starts, being wrong, and banging your head against the wall (figuratively speaking, though I am aware that this may be literal for some). That, friends, is great training for the creative life. We’ve learned by now how to honor the process, surrender to the journey, and allow ourselves to be led by higher wisdom. So take heart: You’re already great at creating a new life—you got yourself here, didn’t you?

Come back next week for part 3: we’ll talk about developing courage and resilience to persevere in our journey to happiness and freedom as we meet our own barriers and blocks.