I’ve been through heavy and f*cked up situations and I still manage to be here today. I still manage to be kind, full of optimism and life. It wasn’t an easy journey and it wasn’t a walk in the park, it was hard, confronting and uncomfortable as f*ck.
I’m sharing my story because I want to and my story isn’t about the detail of the abuse, because that is not mine to tell. My story is about how I overcame a trauma that bonded and held me, prisoner, in my own mind for years.
I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Growing up I was ashamed of what occurred to me. I held on to the belief that it was my fault and that I could have done something to change it or stop it. I grew up with that shame and it manifested itself in many ways and all areas of my life, through platonic and romantic relationships, career, my relationship with myself and my family, academic abilities and the way I moved in life.
Childhood abuse creates so many distortions and illusions within our self, the world and those around us. It creates filters that are based on shame, hate, judgement and pain. Filters that we go out into the world and use, the same filters we use to cultivate relationships and go after what we want. Although with trauma being the main foundation it’s distorted and usually isn’t what we truly want underneath all of it. -
Trauma healing is not something that we overcome in a certain period of time, it's a gradual process that has its own layers and cycles to it. Each cycle is as important as the next, each of them has lessons, fragments and new experiences we get to taste and reclaim. Trauma healing is reclaiming fragments of our self, as trauma gets us disconnected from our self.
In my experience in healing it wasn’t necessarily talking about what occurred during the abuse. I spoke about the emotions attached to it, how I felt and how I adapted to my trauma. I spoke about my behaviours, habits, thinking patterns, my belief systems and the narratives I followed about myself and the world around me. -- In order to break out of these patterning and conditioning we have to talk about it and feel it without having to escape them. -- During certain cycle within my healing journey, I was called to quit weed and drugs overall. At the time I wasn’t sure why and I couldn't pinpoint it, although now reflecting back it was because I needed to feel the emotions that were coming to the surface for me. Like I've stated, in order to let it go, we have to feel it and welcome it to our body, especially if we have been repressing them for many years.
Each of our emotions is there to tell us something and give us a sense of awareness. It’s there to guide us. Our emotions are not our enemy, there are there to help us gain self-awareness.
Trauma healing is not easy and it definitely put me out of my comfort zone. I grew, matured and changed a lot during the process of healing. I mean I’m still healing and growing now although it’s a different level and a new cycle I’m on. It also put me in on a path of spiritual awakening, which I didn’t even know was a thing.
I’ve learnt that I didn’t have control over my childhood and those around me. I had zero control over people and as a child, I was not to blame. Having a full-grown adult take advantage of someone’s innocents, vulnerability and pure-hearted soul is pure evil. We don’t have to try and comprehend or justify someone’s evilness, we can accept that someone people are just evil and it is what it is. With justifying it or coming with a conclusion does not make it any less wrong, it’s still f*cked up.
From that, I’ve learnt that my story isn’t about being abused, it’s how I’m overcoming it. How I’m still a kind, pure-hearted and optimistic ball of energy, even if I had seen and lived through evil at a young age. I’m taken my power back, found enlightenment and creating a new pave way that isn’t going to mirror my childhood or upbring.
What occurred during our childhood and upbringing is not for us to continue to carry, we are allowed to put it down and let go of the burden. The burden of shame, guilt and pain. We don’t need to carry them in order to be a strong person. We are strong as we are, having to experience childhood abuse and still be continuing with life is absolutely brave and take a lot sh*t tone of strength to do.
We’ll all have different ways of processing trauma. It doesn’t make us ‘more broken’ or ‘damaged’ if we went on a different route of processing them. What we did during the times we didn’t know how to deal or had the right tools to deal with our trauma is not who we truly are. Like I’ve stated trauma creates distorted views on our self, where we follow beliefs and narratives that were founded from the traumatic experience.
When we go on the path of trauma healing it’s pealing all of the illusions, distortion and facade we have created and brought out to the world. For this, we shouldn’t feel guilty about changing or having the desire to know who we truly are, without our trauma and misery being the main piece.
Underneath all the trauma, pain and hurt are strengths, resilience and courage. It’s all there, it’s just having to peel off all the layers that have blocked us from seeing and stand in our power.
I will continue to tell my story of empowerment and enlightenment to be the example for those who are unsure if trauma healing is for them. I can’t express the gratitude and pride I have for myself for overcoming certain obstacles and seeing the result of the work, effort and patience I have put in. Like I’ve stated it was not a walk in the park, it was a very steep and rocky hike. Although, very worth it because of the view.
We all have cycles and processes we go through and not all of them have a pleasant view on the side. Some are hard and times we want to give up, although we choose not too, because it’s never been an option to give up. One thing trauma teaches us is resilience. Tap into that inner power of resilience and it’s our golden gem through life. No matter what lemons we get chucked at, we’ll keep going. We might stop to have a good cry or take a break, although we get back up and keep f*cking going.
No matter what we have gone through in the past don’t let it define our future and who we are and want to become. Our past is a set reality and we can not change it although our future is the complete opposite. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty and a lot of possibilities can happen within that space.
Take a leap of faith in yourself, you might be surprised what you’ll stumble upon on.
Be Kinder, Less Critical
