I have decided on a personal and professional post traumatic path forward and that decision has brought me both peace and well being. While it is true that trauma has not only formed me, it has also changed me — but ruin doesn’t get to be my rudder — I do.
As a survivor, and a Canadian to the very bone, my whole person leans hard into the principles of “peace, order, and good government.” I live with the most liberty when my “government is grounded and founded” and when “peace is my governor and well- being is my ruler.”
I will still occupy this space and #advocate, but I have chosen to return to the profession that I was passionate about before #churchtoo trauma overwhelmed me, B, and our family. I hope that all I have learned will help me not only personally but professionally. We need #traumainformed professionals at every level of service and care. I will return to my profession with renewed passion to protect the vulnerable and empower the powerless. Although trauma overwhelms and wipes out hope — recovery is possible.
In combination with with thousands of dollars and countless hours of trauma therapy — going to grad school has been transformative for us both. While we each occupy the same skin — B and I are categorically not the same people. What trauma originally trampled us — we have ultimately transcended.
Recovery can mean many things for many people. For me and B it means doing less, not more; investing in each other and less in others; cultivating safety and beauty in an unsafe and brutal world. It means the mundane and the meaningful mingle, we drink deep, and are well satisfied.
I believe I have a book in me. Someone should write it, and I just may be someone. Someday — someday far away — I will write about all the battles B and I have won. I will speak soberly of the lessons we learned in loss, the dross that despair brought to the top, and the silver we salvaged from the slaughter. Someday but not today. Today — and for the foreseeable future — I will just behold.
I believe that I also have a PhD in me. I love study — unequivocally — it also saved me. For the time being knowledge must give way to wisdom. Ever will I care for others. Ever will I care about others. But here is the rub. I only get one shot at raising up A, supporting H, wrestling J through adolescence, and loving B madly. The decades will fly by and they will all fly away. Never will I regret investing my treasures in unseen spaces.
I also cannot help but observe how much we love the seen and the known. It is human nature to seek for public applause and accolades. It is hard to be a nobody in a sea of somebody’s. But I’m a somebody to a few nobody’s who mean everything to me.
Whatever you do, I encourage you to drag your peace out of the river of ruin; gather the garments of well being; and let a healing south wind dry the brutality out your chooser. Use it to choose what is best for you. Nothing worth doing is worth your sacrificing even more of your post trauma peace and well-being. Trauma took enough — don’t let it take that too.