Gathering Tools for my tool belt

To heal, cope, journey with grief and trauma

Lately, I keep coming back to this metaphor of gathering tools in my tool belt to manage my mental health journey and healing/coping/grieving process.

It seems an apt analogy because my body and the experiences in my life journey—like many people’s—are complex. Between a dysfunctional family background and unstable childhood, then depression and anxiety, followed by complex grief and trauma resulting in PTSD, it’s been a journey.

I have come to understand that there isn’t simply one anecdote for all of that.

Instead, then, I’ve come to believe that I am finding missing pieces of a puzzle, or, perhaps better yet, gathering tools that are helping and will continue to aid me in coping.

Some of them, as I’ve written about before, are hot 26 yoga, medications, gut health with probiotics, EMDR therapy, improved diet, homeopathic remedies, exercise high and biofield tuning.

These tools evolve and change; I use some now more often than others, but now, I know that each of them are in my box, just in case, if/when I need to bring them out, to further manage myself and my life.

This may seem overly simplistic, but I assure you, it is not.

Managing mental health, for those who have struggled with mental illnesses or mental health conditions, is often a journey. It can be a guessing game, then trial and error, which ones will work and help and which ones won’t. It’s often a long and frustrating path.

Therefore, after many years, it’s a tremendous relief to finally feel like I have a more helpful set of tools than I ever did before, ones that really are helping and working for me.

The difference is comparable to having a really dull, cheap-o set of knives that you’re trying to use to cook a 5 course gourmet meal, versus some sharp and varied, quality ones. (I’ve always like Rada and Cutco). But the point is—

I’m also extremely thankful that I no longer find certain tools in my box, that I once heavily relied on, like a bottle of wine to calm my nerves and put me to sleep on the nights when I could not ease my spinning, racing thoughts.

Some people don’t have to trial and error so much to find what works for them. But, though it’s been long and frustrating at points, I am thankful.

I am tremendously grateful to live in a world and a day and age where I am able to access so much information, through the internet and email and social media and online support communities. That I live in a time where there are options for different medicines, supplements, therapies, stories, and knowledge of how an array of cultures address healing and mental health conditions.

This is a privilege and one that I do not take lightly. If I lived in a place before the internet or if I didn’t have to education and resources or access that I do, my story may have turned out very, very differently.

My biofield tuning practitioner told me the other day when I was there, after hearing some about my story, “You’re a pattern breaker.”

Amen.

If my life story dad only that, was just that, it would be enough for me.

Even if I don’t have ever children, still, the relationships that I have, with everyone: friends and colleagues and my makeshift family, anyone on my path…I know that my relationships and I how treat others will be better for the healing journey that I am committing too. Importantly, I will also treat myself better.

My goal is not to hurt anyone else or myself, to break that pattern as set forth by most of my family members.

That provides me with peace, believing that I may be able to break the ‘it runs in the family’ belief.

Because, let’s be real, it’s never a good pattern displayed in my family, but always excessively, related to lifestyle choices, substance abuse, dysfunctional family patterns, it’s negative.

I was speaking to my aunt about this the other day, and I said—the silver lining of all of these family tragedies, for me, has been being pushed to address intergenerational healing and PTSD and childhood pain that I otherwise probably not would have dealt with.

I learned to power through a lot. And I did for a long time.

After Jeremie’s death, however, so close to the death of my mother, it was all simply too much. I also recognized at that point that I had unresolved grief and trauma that I needed to address from my father’s suicide.

The complex grief and trauma and tragedies were intense. But they pushed me to admit that it was indeed too heavy for me to try to manage alone, by myself.

That sobering, humbling realization is what set me on this journey, working to address the healing and coping and mental health management that I otherwise would have ignored, repressed, and simply, powered through, miserably, holding on to the heaviness.

The journey pushed me to move from victim to surviver to, now, thriving.

It has been indeed an intense, hell of a journey.

My life likely could have turned out very differently, otherwise.

I am grateful. Grateful for all of the tools and the much bigger toolbox that I now have.

<3