Looking back now--

In and From a new climate

“It is possible to transform the effects of historical trauma? To come through life’s heavy blows with more wisdom and a sense of inner freedom?

The answer is yes.”

~Rabbi Tirzah Firestone PhD

Another point that Dr. Firestone makes is that “We now understand that unprocessed trauma does not simply disappear” in her book, Wounds into Wisdom.

However, as she points out, it was not until after 1980 that PTSD earned an official diagnosis as a physiological condition, and by that I mean that it is not only within the mind—a mental illness or strictly psychological condition. But rather, that PTSD changes the very way our brains work and how they appear on brain mapping and imaging. They rewire us.

I know that mine looks different.

I can still feel the difference.

Though I’ve done the work, EMDR and craniosacral and biofield tuning and other versions of meditation in attempts to urge forward somatic healing, and I have had success…

Yet still—

I jump out of my skin when something or someone surprises me. It need not be loud or that I’m deep in a trance or tense or in a scary movie.

I will think myself relaxed and then something minor surprises me and I jump, and I mean I really jump, high and far, out of my skin.

My reaction looks so over the top and exaggerated, it’s almost comical.

And indeed, I’ve had to laugh at it with my friends many times. Because there is no rhyme or reason with it. And what else do you do with the effects of trauma on the body to elicit such a response?

In those moments, I continue to be surprised, as I was not consciously or cognizantly keeping my body in a hypervigilant state, on high alert.

And yet, it is so true that the body remembers. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the doctor responsible for helping to get PTSD characterized as the 70’s and 80’s, points out, in his book by the same name—

The body does (indeed) keep score.

My brain changed because of my PTSD and my body carries the trauma. My energy field remembers my wounds.

I often find myself wondering if it will always be this way, if it will ever go away.

I don’t know. I have to remind myself that it hasn’t even been three full calendar years since my trilogy of loss—baby, mother, brother. Oh, then the other baby, in 2020.

In many ways, I only feel that I am starting to accept that they are all gone. It took awhile. The sleep walking and the dream like, surreal existence that I walked around in, it took awhile to process.

I am only now comfortable with the idea that my father is dead and how he died. And that was 8 years ago.

I imagine it will take some time.

I supposed I have to continue to extend this grace to myself:

As my friend, Allison, reminds me, it is still quite recent and to be patient with myself.

I am trying.

I know healing and grieving takes time.

Still, I’ve done the work. I still read. I still cry and grieve.

And sometimes I want to be all better.

Though—mostly, I do accept the inevitability of the waves, the step forward and step back days where it feels that the current is carrying me backwards. Moments where I feel so small because I feel like the progress and all the work that I have done on myself has been in vain and my body and mind and heart transplant me back in time, almost squarely plopped in the midst of the year of chaos and death of 2020, or last year, traumatized yet again because of the cataclysmic betrayal of my partner.

I am thankful that those moments do not last long, that they are not constant or incessant as they used to be.

There is, certainly, residual grief, and yet also, the waves are less huge and all encompassing, rushing over me and taking me down, carrying me through their force up top and the strong current of the undertow. They do not last as long now.

For this I am thankful.

And when they do, I can usually trace these emotional downward times, connect them to my hormones or a period of fatigue/ lack of sleep or times of high stress or when I am not taking proper care of myself.

I have heard it said and read that grief lets it know when it is done with you.

I have also read and understood grief to be a sort of trauma.

I agree with both of these: I wholeheartedly believe that trauma exists in all ways and on all sorts of spectrums, yes, but also overlapping and running together.

I know this is true for me. I have read and identified with both the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD (Complex PTSD) and I know that I have both.

My complex PTSD stems from my experiences of repeated abuse from my verbally abusive father and my emotionally abusive ex-partner. Whereas my PTSD event tied to large events from my father’s and brother’s suicide. And all the graphics.

Those are the ones that come to mind.

Perhaps there are others.

There are other points of grief, from losing two babies to my beloved mother having a breakdown and giving up on life, engaging in her own form of passive suicide.

My point is that many of us have many traumas and they are on spectrums and yet they are complicated, overlapping, intersecting Venn Diagrams. Some are large circles and some are tiny concentric, almost imperceptible, nearly hidden ones, ones we are less aware of, and yet, they may rear their heads and reveal that they too are wounds and scares we carry and bear.

Human experiences with trauma are complex. Suffering takes a toll on the body. And yet sometimes, it can take years to uncover, to mentally make sense of, to grasp, to piece together, to be aware of, all of these effects on your body and psyche.

I mostly nod in agreement and think about this in regards to how I ended up with such an extreme narcissist.

My best friend told me recently:

“Danielle, no one who knows you do not think that B—— (my ex) would have happened had you not been traumatized.”

I know she’s right.

That makes it easier to forgive myself for allowing myself to be so mistreated for many years.

I take heart though, that despite all the suffering of my many moments of trauma and ongoing abusive experiences with trauma, that this is also true:

“In the deepest suffering we may find the seeds of transformation.” (Dr. Gabor Mate)

When we are beaten down and raw and exposed, vulnerable and deep in grief, and heavily traumatized, if/when we make ourselves power through—

If we can do that—

And allow ourselves to do the work, we can eventually get to the other side, where we realize that we learned deep lessons about reworking ourselves, bearing our emotional inheritance and working through intergenerational trauma and mental health challenges, to rework ourselves into much better versions of ourselves.

My experiences have taught me greater compassion for others traumas and suffering.

As my new good friend and colleague told me—

‘I often times think it was nothing in comparison to yours’, and yet, when I explained to her the issue that I take with those statements, especially if/when it comes alongside dismissing your own pain, she said—

‘Well, maybe that’s what you offer others.

From your own deep suffering, trauma and grieving, you can understand and have compassion in ways many people can’t.’

I think so. I certainly hope so.

When you experience such deep pain, loss, and trauma, and you’re already sensitive and empathetic and compassionate, my capacity for feeling grew even deeper still, Far beyond what I thought possible.

Exponentially.

And sometimes that is overwhelming. All the pain.

I have no adequate words, other than it hurt like hell.

It felt like my heart was cracking open and bleeding, like my entrails and innards and very soul were all so raw, exposed, and vulnerable.

And yet also, now, later, after feeling all of that, then finally being able to and allowing myself to do so—

There is also such joy.

I feel such a renewed courage and strength, a conviction in myself and ownership of my own power, potential and, fuck—what resiliency—that I made it through.

If it is true that Celtic belief that we choose our life experiences and what happens to us before we are born, then—to find some meaning for why I would choose this family story—I can only come to this—

All of that shit has forced me to do some very critical ancestral healing work; I had no excuse or choice otherwise. I had to make the efforts to break intergenerational trauma.

That’s how I [have to] make meaning from it.

I am not done healing or processing the trauma and grief. I know that I never will be.

However, now, I liken it to I have made it past the hurricane, the golf-sized hail balls raining down on my head, knocking me physically down, to my knees, again and again.

I can now turn around and see where and who I was then, looking back at that part of my life, that past, the eye of the storm.

I still see the gray skies when I turn around, feel the dampness of the earth and the sprinkles of rain around me still, from time to time.

But I also more and more often turn and look ahead now, and where I am facing, where I’m walking—I can see blue skies, and beautiful rays of sunlight peaking through the clouds. I can see greenness and life, and I know that there is still more beauty and panoramic view beyond what I can even see now—

So long as I keep walking and—for the most part—face forward.

It is a much more beautiful view than I thought possible, even before, earlier in my life, when I thought I had seen [the most] gorgeous vistas.

Because now, I am healthy enough to enjoy the journey, my body and mind.

I am reaping the benefits of my labor.

And I believe in myself so strongly now, to weather whatever the fuck life may throw at me next.

I didn’t develop resiliency or a thick skin easily.

I’m a Cancer. We are known for our soft underbellies and our sensitive souls and strong, fluctuating emotions.

That is still true.

And yet, I feel that my outer crab shell is made of titanium now.

And with it, an unshakeable confidence that—

I’ve got this.

Even, despite, whatever the ‘this’ may [ever] come to mean.