I’ve been wondering lately: is there a gift in my childhood trauma? Is there something beautiful in the bad, some sort of meaning that I need to find? Is there something to learn from my painful experiences to help me live differently, to mould and shape my life and make better choices?
The questions arose from something I watched recently. It was just a diarised program about someone living an alternative life on his boat, quirky lazy-afternoon-on- the sofa TV. In that particular episode, he interviewed a woman who had gone through a traumatic event, I think it was an illness, which, rather than sitting in the ‘poor me’ camp, was the catalyst to change her life for the better, how she took her ‘bad’ situation and turned it inside out. It triggered me because I don’t seem to have used my pain in the same way; I have sat in the ‘poor me’ camp. And I don’t feel as though I’ve alchemised my trauma and pain or used it as a catalyst to change my life positively.
If I should have, what is the alchemical process and what does the trauma pain body transmute into? What’s on the other side of this initiation by trauma and is it a rite of passage into something better that I haven’t figured out yet? I’ve been thinking about those questions and similar ones for some time now but not come to any conclusions about my life (yet).
Maybe I’ve been missing something all these years…
There’s polarity in all situations isn’t there – two sides to every coin as the saying goes. I’m not talking about the sickly “finding the positive” and washing situations over with false positivity (pass me the puke bag) but genuinely trying to find the meaning and the message, and the calm in the storm, to be at peace with a situation. What is, or was, the polarity in my situation which is largely emotionally-based trauma? What was the polarity of being racially harassed, victimised and bullied for my colour, fraught with fear for years (which shot my nervous system to pieces)? And being surreptitously and suddenly abandoned by my closest and only family, witnessing my mum being witch-hunted and villified, leaving me heavy with grief and a shattered heart by those whom I loved unconditionally, only for them to reappear decades later, and, rather than having the opportunity to absolve them of their trangressions, had acid poured over my wounds again, and my pain doused with kerosene – what’s the polarity of that?
Perhaps me and my mum didn’t turn the situation around to our advantage. Perhaps we didn’t see what we could do and instead, got blind-sided by our pain and suffering, what had happened to us and what we couldn’t do. Back in the mid to late 90’s we could have moved anywhere in the country, even emigrated abroad and started a new life. But ironically the pain kept my mum frozen where we were, ‘in fear of _____________’ [fill the blank] believing that we might jump from the frying pan into the fire. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. And we also stayed in the hope of familial reconciliation that would never, ever happen. What a waste of years and yearning…
When the transgressors will never atone, how do you find the beauty and peace? Peace doesn’t come from revenge either.
Going back to polarity….
I was polarised by my shadow for most of my 20’s, an all consuming, rageful, bitter, hateful, envious, jealous and angry shadow, (which I think I need to write more about) a by-product of my pain body, absolutely no doubt about that. Beneath that shadow was depression, insecurity, worthlessness, lonliness, grief, sadness and broken-heartedness. I was depressed for much of my 20’s although I didn’t like to admit it. Thinking about it now, it was a shadow that kept me in a very low vibrational state for years, that’s if we’re talking vibe and emotional guidance, law of attraction and metaphysical stuff. Is it any wonder that I wound up on roads to nowhere and dead-end lanes with the choices I made, locked in that low vibe state? With base emotions of depression, grief, anger, rage and bitterness, I was only going to get more of that wasn’t I? Needless to say the polar opposite to the all consuming shadow is to be calm, compassionate, peaceful and loving, secure, content, optimistic and whole-hearted. Is that what I need to become? Is that the real me? There’s a caveat here: I have to say that the shadow is not inherently ‘bad’. Just a deeply and severely emotionally wounded part of me that didn’t know how to heal and manifested as a low-vibe beast. Perhaps Thinking about it, I shouldn’t have put ‘bad’ in the title of this post but that’s how it came out and so that’s how it’s going to stay.
That shadow, although now much smaller in size has never quite disspated although it’s hold over me has waned considerably and I no longer act impulsive on it, learning the art of patience. A good friend of mine taught me patience earlier this year (when that ugly legal battle ensued) and his advice was not to jump the gun in a fit of rage and patiently see things play out. I took his advice and fortunately for me, things worked out. Patience is something I’ve never, ever had, rather the opposite: uncontrollable haste with one ultra-fast speed setting. I think that is just a symptom of living on your nerves in survival mode – the itchy need to get ‘somewhere’.
So what is the gift in my pain? What was it meant to show me or teach me? Am I supposed to help other’s heal through my own pain? But that would make me a wounded healer. There’s plenty of those about I’m sure you’ve met some too. Maybe it’s to learn forgiveness? Perhaps it’s learning acceptance and letting go? Or maybe it’s to learn how to genuinely thrive in the face of abject emotional suffering.
I don’t have any answers yet.
What I am doing is learning to accept the pain from the traumatised girl in me; I’m no longer berating her, suppressing her or pushing her away as a self-protection mechanism but acknowledging why she is the way she is and sitting with the pain. I know I became a product of the pain for decades; it consumed me and moulded a version out if its black bile and spat me out. She is a part of me but not all of me. The shadow was just too big, almighty and powerful and I allowed it to control me in a uninhibited way. But I am learning kindess, forgiveness and gentleness whenever she shows up and when a memory pops up. Which happened last night…
…when I went to bed, a memory came up out of nowehere, and surprised me like a jack-in-the-box. It was a memory I’d forgotten about but I think the pain body wanted to be witnessed which is why it surfaced. The child part of me in pain nudged me to remember something that was stuffed somewhere in my psyche. I do believe memories come up for a reason not to be pushed away but to be witnessed again, to hold space for it to be processed…
….I was 15 years old, and it was approximately a year following the familial abandonment. I recall coming home from school that day and my key not turning in the lock of the front door. I didn’t know why, didn’t think anything untoward had happened so I went to the local shopkeeper to tell her as I didn’t know where to go or what to do – mum was at work. She kindly lent me 10 pence so I could phone my mum at her workplace from a public phone box. These were the days before mobile phones. What I recall vividly when mum and I returned home wondering why I couldn’t get in the front door, was peering through the front window, my hands cupping my face as I looked through the net curtains to see the kitchen door wide open and noticed that the TV was missing. It’s one of those surreal gut wrenching moments when my heart sank with the shock and horror that we’d been broken into and burgled. We lived in a shed of a council house; we had nothing. It was moment you don’t want to accept as real and you want to flee but you can’t, adding to my already traumatised body. Once we got in the place was a mess – totally ramsacked. The back door was left wide open; the thieves had come in via a back window, glass all over the floor and then left via the back door – we only had wooden windows back then, not double glazing, easy to smash and get into. They had locked the inside of the front door (hence me not being able to get in) and helped themsevles to anything they thought was valuable which there wasn’t as mum didn’t have much. The TV was probably the most expensive item in the house. I cannot describe the feeling of grief, sadness and utter violation which I felt all over again as the memory played out. Two of the unholy trinity did come over that evening, the ones who’d conspired and left us surreptitously; disgustingly one of them was trying to hide a smirk, as though mum and I probably deserved it.
Following that incident the home became a shed of a Fort Knox with locks on every door and window, like living in a self-made prison. The memory felt chilling and haunting and I felt the pain of the child, in fact I feel it now in my chest writing this. I cried for her last night. And I comforted her with loving care and tenderness. Maybe that is what the pain body needed, not to shut the memory down and repress it, but to feel it. Healing is feeling as the saying goes and I think that is true to a degree – I say to a degree because it’s important not to get stuck in that place of replaying memories and getting addicted to the emotion but to replay and give the love, tenderness and compassion to the parts of you that still bleed. I guess it’s called holding space. Anything repressed just festers, in my opinion, and the feelings intensify, grow bigger roots and ultimately prolongs the healing process. Those parts want to be witnessed and seen and held, understood and accepted, they are living parts of me that are still hurting, locked in space and time. I hope I’ve released part of that wound although the memory still feels raw. Sitting with the pain may release it, part of it anyway…
I still need to find the gift and beauty in my trauma. What does that pain body become when it’s healed and transformed? What is alchemised pain? Was my trauma an oracle, some sort of messenger, a gift that I needed to transmute somehow? Maybe there’s lessons I needed to learn, lessons that can be shared and passed on.
Perhaps in the process of sharing my journey like this I am the alchemist of my pain. Maybe these writings are the gift to myself and to the world. Maybe we’re all here as teachers, to go through pain, to writhe with it, to bleed enough and scream enough to then one day when the scar is all that remains, with no pain at all and just a memory, is to step back in truth and honesty, and fully understand that the pain was in fact a gift…the beautifully bad gift…
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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