How Trauma and Grief Interweave

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Today I read something online that basically said:

Trauma is not only what happened, but it is also what didn’t happen.

Perhaps it’s admitting what should’ve happened. What we wished had….

Or, maybe it’s what you should have had. But didn’t.

I reflected then on how similar trauma is to grief then. It’s easy to see how they meld together and inter-tangled.

Both acknowledge loss.

I considered what could have happened in my own life:

I could’ve had family reunions with my parents and an extended family with my brother and niece- if he hadn’t ended his own life.

If my parents had made better health choices—not smoked or drank.

I may have had my own family if I hadn’t miscarried and my former partner wasn’t a narcissist.

I may have had a more stable upbringing if my father wasn’t an alcoholic for most of his life.

I may have had a less dysfunctional background if my parents had gotten the mental health help that they needed—especially after the deaths of their siblings and if my mother had gotten help for her own traumatic childhood.

I want to be clear—

The point here is not a woe is me or I’m a victim.

But acknowledging your very real loss and what you don’t have, may never have—

When so many others have it and it is considered as just normal.

I helped my dear neighbor move today to her new place about a mile and a half away.

Her great grandchildren came to help. Other people from her church did as well, which was nice and important, since my dear neighbor is nearly 90 years old.

I got to play with her great great grandson. A baby of 16 months.

I rarely interact with infants. And I do like babies.

So it was a joy to watch him, play with him and talk to him. I found myself improvising creative little ways to keep him entertained. And you see the world—all curious and exciting and new adventures of things to explore—through the eyes of someone who has a fresh, young, untainted, perspective.

And, of course, I thought about my life and how different it would be—how different I would be—if I had had children.

Now—I don’t regret not having children.

I didn’t want them burdened with my traumatic family history.

I also recognize now that I enjoy my child-free lifestyle and all the liberties it affords.

I am glad I didn’t have a child with a narcissist.

But—

In holding a baby, what’s left of my biological clock, seemed to give a few protest pangs.

I took a moment to acknowledge the trauma, the grief, the loss, of what I almost had. Of what my life could have been.

I could’ve been a mother.

A step-mother.

I recognize I could still be, the latter.

But the former, no. I’ve shut that door.

A family? Well, I could form my own from community, which I’ve been blessed enough to have here amongst my neighbors. And perhaps I will have through a future partner.

But my own nuclear family is gone. The image of a family reunion amongst my brother and parents cannot exist anymore, at least in this earthly and corporeal realm.

I live in the south, in a small town. And I frequently meet and am surrounded by people who live close to extended family of many generations. I work with people who chose to stay in the state to be close to extended family.

It’s all quite foreign to me.

This is my acknowledgment.

And sometimes it does feel very lonely that I don’t have these family relationships and community—

These are my losses.

For others, they take different form:

Perhaps parents who were not unconditionally loving and supportive but emotionally manipulative and abusive.

We all may mourn our individual losses—

And it may involve our own acknowledgement that in trauma we lose things too that others readily and easily have:

Like the person who gripes the common complaint of having to go to the family reunion.

The annoying uncle or grandpa or father that gets all riled up about politics and spouts his conservative views.

Taking your grandma or aunt or mother shopping.

I live a very solitary life.

I am surprised by how content I am with it but also I sometimes stand back, in amazement.

At how different my life is now then I thought it would be.

But that is okay.

I am learning to embrace the life that I do have, rather than the one that I had planned on having, that I don’t

I am proud of me and happy, and even impressed, with myself that I can enjoy solitude and single life—no partner, children and limited family.

Here’s to acknowledging all we have and all we have lost.

And owning all of it.