So now what...

It was now my responsibility to create the life I needed. I had exploded my family, my children were in another place, my marriage was over and I had to make it better. If I didn't, I was just another statistic of a broken human creating pain and heartache in their wake. But how? How do you create a whole new life from the same understanding, the same knowledge, the same person you were before?

Just like when I got married and started my family, I believed in the ability to create a better life than the one I had been living. That sat on my heart and in my belief system as a core value. I had faith in it and in myself. It was strengthened as I watched The Oprah Winfrey show and as I learned the concepts each expert taught. It was strengthened as I sat with the therapists who explained new behavioral choices to me and attempted to teach me how to implement them in my life. It had been taught to me in my childhood as I attended church classes and learn about Jesus' and God's love. I knew it was possible, but was it possible for me? Could I figure it out?

So here I was, 29 years old, wanting to quickly fill in the gaps so that I could become the mother, woman and someday wife again that I wanted to be. That was the desire that sat on the inside, along with all the self loathing that sat in the darkness too. Those first days, nights, months of that first year were tear stained. I punished myself almost every night for not having the boys with me. I punished myself for not being able to buy better groceries for them when they came home. I punished myself for not being stronger, smarter, wiser.

What I didn't know then, was that trauma impacts us until we deal with it. If I could time travel back to the day I left my marriage and sit with myself, I would tell her that we are not making any decisions, not a single one, until we heal. I would sit with her and hug her and tell her that a lot of the feelings she was feeling had nothing to do with the marriage, nothing to do with her husband and everything to do with the pain of her childhood. I would tell her that time was necessary to allow her brain to come back to a regulated state so that then she could make decisions based on her own values and desires. I would sit with her until she believed me and not let her use her typical strength to "power through" to lead the way.

I think back to conversations with my then mother in law. I think about the letter she wrote me when I left my husband. I think she tried to tell me what I now know. I couldn't hear her then but I understand now what she was trying to tell me. But what she didn't know was the same thing I didn't know: trauma takes over until it's healed. If there is anything I can share with anyone reading this blog, it is that trauma requires our attention so that we can gain the ability to respond to our lives instead of reacting to them. RESPONSE is when we CHOOSE based on our values, our goals, our desires and we have actively reviewed our options and conscientiously decide which option we will move forward with. We've weighed things out, we've examined ourselves and we move forward and can then accept the consequences of that choice. REACTION is when we move forward without accessing any options, we UNCONSCIOUSLY ACT based on the patterned actions of the past that aligns with the safe vs. danger belief we established early in our life. Reaction is our brain telling us that we are in danger and that in order to be safe we must quickly fight or flee or freeze. I know the word "trauma" has become a buzz word and it can elicit different responses in different people based on the understanding we hold. But I am here to tell you that the brain is going to work the way the brain works in spite of anyone's belief about it. We can belittle the idea that trauma is impacting lives, but it won't change the outcome of anyone's life by simply minimizing it. All that does is enable the current patterns to continue. Because it is patterned, we will continue to see patterned outcomes in our lives. "This always happens to me"! Our lives start to reveal ourselves to ourselves.

The pattern that would show up for me is that I was searching for a man to be safe with, but there wasn't one. Each man that I would bring into my life would seem safe, then I would believe that they were not safe and I would need to find my way out and start looking again. I would continue to distrust myself, judge myself harshly, punish myself and then "power through" to the next scenario. I spent many years replaying this pattern because it was the pattern of my childhood. And because the pattern included traumatic experiences, it created trauma responses in my brain. (For more details., see a previous blog "Mother")

God had instilled in me the desire to learn and improve and would provide teachers and experiences to guide me along the way. Some lessons I needed to experience many times before they penetrated my inner world and eventually become the new patterns of my life. I'm so grateful for the unlimited times we each get to learn what we need to learn. But if I can serve anyone, I want to tell you that you don't need to spend decades doing the same thing so that you can then look back to see the pattern like I did. Take my word for it and try sitting in the place you are right now and do what is necessary to address the trauma and/or unhealthy patterns that have been created in your life. Once you do, you will move from reaction to response and that is where the magic is! Then you will be able to truly create the life you have been sent to create. Then you will be able to use your own internal guidance system and make choices that align with who and what you are, instead of what patterns you've experienced in your past.

Give yourself the permission and the time to manage unmanaged wounds from your past. How should you do that? There are many ways to healing and you can start with knowing the only person who you need permission from is YOURSELF. Start today by giving you permission to reach out to a therapist, to a trusted friend or mentor, buy a book, listen to a podcast but reach out and start by acknowledging that there are patterns that require rewriting and that you would like some help in remodeling your internal landscape. Give yourself time to rest and regulate your body and brain because it's been working really hard to keep you feeling safe in a world that has felt unsafe. If you don't have anyone, call me, I will listen and sit with you just as I wish someone had sat with me until the calm can take control from the fear and chaos. There are many tools that can help us heal and accelerate the process bringing us to the regulated state we need and also help our brains create new patterns that are healthy.

There is a song that I used to consider sort of a personal anthem from The Chicks called "The Long Way Around". The songs tells of a woman who has many adventures and in my life, I was taking many adventures too. It helped me develop an attitude that the adventures were good for me. One line says "Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself, I opened my mouth and I heard myself, It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself, Guess I could've made it easier on myself, But I, I could never follow, No I, I could never follow" I've sang that song with my whole heart and loud voice in my car over and over again wanting so badly to make it my truth. I wanted to make sense of the choices I had made but here's the truth that I know today: if you make a choice to take the adventure because your soul craves the adventure, you will have little sorrow around the choice. But if you make the choice out of fear, you're not really choosing it. My heart hurt because while I did find myself and my voice, it was in spite of my choice, not because of it. Taking the long way around can open us up to see new sights and we will meet wonderful people. Taking the long way around can be wonderfully fulfilling and we can gain knowledge of things that we will take with us throughout our lives. But it can also bring with it loss and painful experiences that we will need to heal from. The difference is that one is a choice and one is a reaction. I have enjoyed the long way around, but it wasn't always a choice, it was mostly a reaction and the pain has been intense. My greatest desire was to create a family that was healthy and whole. My dream was to be able to correct the unhealthy parts of my family in my own family. I had to take the long way because I didn't understand how to do it and trauma ruled for many years in my adult life, just as it did in many of the lives of my role models.

My prayer today is that someone reads this blog and stops long enough to heal so that choice becomes the pattern instead of reaction. Whether you take the long way around or not, you get to CHOOSE and as you CHOOSE, you will find more joy because you know it came from the deepest parts of your heart, which is where all the love resides. From the deepest parts of ourselves, we can create the beauty we dreamed of and more.

As I started to understand how trauma impacts us, I'd often wonder who I was before the trauma "changed" me. Because I was so young, it seemed hard for me to remember who I was before I was "damaged". But with healing, we are able to return to ourselves because you see, we never lose ourselves, we never really change. Yes our brains operate differently, but the core of who we are, our hearts and souls, remain intact, waiting to take the lead again, once we regulate our brains. This is a picture of the face of me before I got so scared and I often look for that smile in my heart now. Yes, my face looks very different, but my heart and soul is as full of love and joy as hers.