Your Healing Is Your Responsibility
Your trauma may not be your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.
Healing. Such a beautiful word but an even more beautiful process, with very ugly moments. Moments of trauma and triumph, regret and acceptance, resentment and forgiveness, pain and restoration. We experienced moments in childhood in which our parents believed that as children, we didn’t necessarily understand the totality of what was happening. In actuality, we internalized those circumstances more than they knew. We experienced hurtful things at the hands of our parents, teachers, friends, grandparents, family-friends, relatives, and more that we still haven’t had a conversation about still till this very day. We harbored these experiences and planted them deep within our innocent, yet youthful, understanding. Our understanding of these experiences grew into our adult truth and our adult understanding of ourselves and others. It grew into what our adult lives are and what we believe our adult lives will potentially become. We live our adult lives on the truth that grew from a wounded and fearful childhood experience. Even if you had a pretty good childhood, the moments that hurt the most -- matter more than you think. Going through life with our trauma response habits as our norm, we never acknowledged or healed that inner child. Therefore, our inner child began to battle our adult challenges, coping as children do.
For me, I never realized how much I needed healing until I began to heal. I knew I needed healing when I kept doing things that harmed me, even when I didn’t want to. Things like impulsively and repetitively going back to guys who broke my heart and my spirit. Abusing alcohol and disguising it as being the turn up queen and needing two days to recover. And even neglecting myself to become someone else’s inner child healer. My final straw was when I almost risked my health to feel loved for one night. I almost ruined my entire life to participate in an activity that I convinced myself was love, when it was anything but. At that moment, I knew that I had to heal before the ignorance of my inner child coping mechanisms internally killed me and cursed my seeds. I finally realized that I didn’t have to live in the bondage of my inner child pain, and that I could live a whole and healed life.
There were several steps that I took to begin living in a life of healing. My top 5 will be listed below. I hope that one day, you can begin living in healing and abundance because healing is the only way to live in the full capacity of who and what God has called you to be. Hear me clearly, I am not saying that you have to be perfect and fully healed, but to begin healing, you must make the conscious decision to do all you can do to be all you can be. The goal is to become a healthier and happier version of yourself, daily. One thing to always remember: your trauma may not be your fault, but your healing is your responsibility, and you owe it to yourself to take on that responsibility with pride, courage, and grace. More importantly, with power because little do you know – there is power in your trauma but there is even more power in your healing.
For Healing:
1. Turning to a power greater than yourself.
Simply put, you cannot do it alone. Have a higher power to call on for peace, clarity , and guidance in this process of healing your deeply rooted pain. You will need it.
2. Accept yourself and what you’ve been through, fully.
One of the hardest things to do is to accept that you’re damaged and not perfect. This is especially true when you feel unfairly gifted with these injuries. However, acceptance is one of the first things you must do to move forward. You have to accept that whether fair or not, things simply are what they are. This allows you to be open to truth and healing. You are able to see yourself for who you are, and you are more empowered and motivated to get to where you need to be.
3. Forgive others.
One of my favorite quotes is “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die” (Saint Augustine). Not forgiving others, hurts you more than it hurts them. Forgive. When you hold onto unforgiveness, you also hold onto the things that a person has intentionally and unintentionally done to you. Take back your power by forgiving those who have wronged you even if they haven’t apologized and even if they aren’t sorry. It is for you and your healing.
4. Understand that healing is a marathon, not a race.
Healing is a lifelong process. When you begin to do the work, you begin to see that pain has layers. You cannot undo decades of trauma in a matter of months or days or a few years. New connections and revelations will always come up, and each time they do – they give you even more power to rise. So, don’t be weary or frustrated, be patient and be encouraged as you heal and grow.
5. Apologizing to others.
Hurt people, hurt people. So, as a more selfless task of healing yourself, apologize to those whom you have damaged as a result of your pain. Not only is this the mature thing to do, it is also freeing for you on this journey. You are going to need the least amount of baggage in your life during this process of healing. As you unpack bags that were given to you by others, help someone else to unpack the bags you've given, by owning your mess and extending the olive branch of forgiveness.
Comentarios