I don’t feel that trauma can be justified- I just want to make that clear- over intellectualizing or finding “reasons” for trauma to have existed in our lives, I find, is self-defeating. At worst, it can force us into a space of passive acceptance in a way that can minimize our healing around it. The pathway to healing the trauma is first, accepting and processing the anger around it. We have to feel into the INJUSTICE to move the energies trapped, move through the grief and anxiety, and then move up the ladder to finding the gifts within. If we bypass this stage then we get tuck in a bypass, in an over-justification that can look like acceptance from the outside, but one in which we haven’t actually healed. It’s like forgiveness in a way- it’s harder than we think it is because it’s not just accepting an apology or saying I forgive you, it’s actually moving through all of which is underneath that- the feeling of betrayal, the hurt, the anger, the hatred, perhaps, the resentment AND THEN reaching a point of resolution: forgiveness, acceptance, letting go.
I just started working with a healer who told me that in her experience, all of her clients who have had traumatic upbringings are highly intuitive. That it was, in her words, “the gift of trauma”. What she said was that because those of us who had traumatic upbringings learned to brace our bodies and go out of it, we learned how to be in the etheric space. I found that really beautiful, as it is a piece that clicked for me this far into my own healing process. Like, oh, it created something that I can live with, that defines me in a unique way, that now I can make a difference with. It was liberating.
The hard work for me during the earlier parts of my process was learning that power is in the body and to integrate and open up my body and make it a safe place from where I can use all these intuitive tools. When we do that, we need to be prepared that it can be very trying. It can feel very unsafe because our bodies developed the way they did to protect us in childhood. I believe the path to healing requires great discernment- when do these defense mechanisms need to shift and be healed, and when are they okay to stay, because they’ve developed from wisdom and experience?
I will admit that there are so many moments in my life where I’m fed up. When does it stop? Why did all of that happen to me? Why do I now have to live with this? Why do I have to suffer the consequences of other people’s bad behavior? Why do I have to be stuck in cycles of trauma? There are times I feel so lonely and so defeated from this terribly painstaking process. But we can’t run from trauma, it either catches up to you, or you learn how to integrate it, process it, learn from it, and find the gifts within because there are many.
All of the most gifted healers and therapists I’ve ever worked with had their own hardships. It is a rough training ground, but one that prepares you in a way that nothing else can. I can say assuredly I’m starting to see how much my background supports me today, even if I had no support during the time I went through it. In my acting, it gives a true, lived experience, it gives me a wider emotional bandwidth when I’ve been to some dark places, it gives me a fearlessness to delve into all of that, because I’ve already been there. More than anything, it’s given me more compassion and humanity.
What they did was not okay, it never was okay, and today, because of all the work I’ve done around it, I’m better for it. I’m okay.