Breaking the Chains of Past Trauma: Choosing a Creative Path of Healing

The Unseen Weight: Why We Must Face Our Pain

Everywhere around me I see people whose pain has broken them. It has turned them into victims and villains. They are so blinded by their pain and the agony that life has put them through. They don’t want to willingly face that pain because it adds up and up and up until it's overwhelming and it feels like facing that pain will mean certain death. 

But not facing that pain does mean certain death, and not just once, but a trillion tiny deaths. Blinded by our pain we miss opportunities for love and connection. We miss opportunities for growth and healing. And we carry our pain forward into future generations where they bear our trauma and pain in addition to their own, going back however many generations that have built up these behaviors and patterns of victimization and dark thoughts with no outlet. 

The Legacy I Carry

I carry immense pain. 

I carry my mother's traumas, her mother's abuse at the hands of her alcoholic father, her physical abuse from her first husband and the abuse of my father, her second husband who never physically abused her, technically. I carry her unwillingness to face reality in the form of tension, fear and pain in my body. 

I carry my father’s traumas, his abuse at the hands of a family that enjoyed inflicting pain on each other, the trauma of being a part of that from birth and growing into that psychological torture as something normal. I carry his willingness to participate in inflicting emotional damage on others in the form of tension, fear and pain in my body.

I carry my own traumas, the abuse I faced at my parents’ hands when they could not provide me with a feeling of safety and when they turned their back on finding ways to comfort me as a child when I struggled to reach out for a hug, but asked my mother to brush my hair.

I carry my own traumas, of facing poverty, knowing that my house was not clean, that I could not ask for more without degrading myself and placing myself into a position of subservience. More comes at a cost. 

I carry my own traumas, of facing feelings of worthlessness, of suicidal ideation, of suicidal desire, of self destructive behaviors, all in an attempt to end my life without taking culpability. 

I carry my own traumas of hating my brother for committing suicide first and forcing me to face it all alone. Because how could I add to my mother’s traumas? How could I add to my niece’s traumas now? My nephews’? When I felt so keenly how that trauma destroyed me inside, flattened me, forced the air from my lungs and the pain into a horribly tangible thing…how I could I add to their trauma? 

I carry my own trauma of choosing to leave everything behind in a wild act of self-preservation. I carry the trauma of worrying about the people I love, and cutting them off in order to save myself. I carry the trauma of isolation for preservation.

I carry my own trauma of knowing that this is my way forward that lessens the burden for my children and for the world around me. 

I carry my mother’s trauma. I carry my father’s trauma. I carry my own trauma. I exercise my right to choose to carry and face this trauma so that I can begin to set it down, peace by piece and work on loving myself through it all.

Breaking the Cycle: Moving Beyond Victimhood

I know that I am more likely to lash out or self-destruct when I encounter things that are hard for me. But that’s why I have to face it and love myself, see the pain I am in so I can coach myself through those moments and leave the tension, fear and pain behind. 

No one deserves to live through this kind of trauma. No one deserves to be born into a world where they have to fight just to be seen as a person worthy of love, safety, and the ability to flourish as they grow. We can’t perpetuate that cycle by giving into the victim mindset that allows us to lash out at others and become villains who cause them pain. 

We will all have moments like that. We are going to hurt people. We are human. But the more we can face our own pain and admit that we did it because we are hurting, then we can say we’re sorry and truly mean it. We can witness their pain and help them through it instead of trying to pretend it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen to us, so how can we know? It happened to them. They get to decide their truth. And hopefully, they are also working on healing every day. In witnessing their pain and listening to it, you can validate them and help them heal.

It’s especially hard if you don’t have people to listen and validate your pain, or if those resources are few, or if you’ve spent years being gaslighted and it’s hard to tell what the truth is sometimes. (Inner critic comes out a bit too much because it’s repeating things you heard in the past.)

A Call for Connection: Healing Our Collective Pain

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of pain, everywhere. There are a lot of people right now who are not feeling valued, feeling seen, feeling heard, feeling connected, feeling loved or cared for at all. And there’s a lot of people who are acting like they don’t care. It’s causing a lot of hate and violent thoughts and feelings to come out in people who love so strongly. 

The intensity of feeling that hate and violence has a purpose, but it’s not to be violent in order to hurt people. It’s violence and hatred to shake us awake that we are not LOVING enough. We are not taking care of each other on a grand scale. We can feel each other’s pain and we know there needs to be a change, but it feels impossible to make and so we feel like we must lash out.

It has to start within each of us. We have to heal our own traumas enough to see with clearer eyes, the larger goal. We want a society that loves and takes care of its citizens, which is representative of all of those citizens. I don’t know exactly how we get there. There is bound to be violence because not everyone is able to come to the table from a place of love. I do know that those who end up in charge of any society, any community, any group of people, need to be people who come from places of love or violence will continue to get worse because we will continue to see our pain as a society grow.

Embark on Your Epic Journey: Become the Creative Hero

I am currently in the process of recording videos for The Epic Journey for the Creative Hero, a 37-Day course on becoming the Creative Hero within. We can all choose our path forward. We don’t have to be victims of our trauma and we don’t have to be villains. We can choose to embody the Hero that lives in each and every one of us if we are willing to do the work to get there. I built my course to help me heal through my trauma; to become and remain on the path of the Creative Hero. It features a daily lesson on one part of the Hero’s Journey with practical skills. I take a holistic creative healing approach with three prompts each day, a journal prompt for inner reflection, a creative expression prompt to be able to get our thoughts and feelings out into the world in a creative way, and an integration prompt to practice bringing the skills together. We have a private Facebook group called The Creative Hero’s Sanctuary where you and your fellow adventurers can hold space for each other on this epic journey.

If embodying the Creative Hero you know lives inside your soul interests you, you can join The Creative Hero’s Sanctuary now for updates and to start your journey.