The gift of trauma: The power to heal

Take 6 years and throw in pain, gaslighting, betrayal and suffering enough to have torn others apart, curdled individuals into fragility, bitterness, and the desire for revenge, turned vulnerable children into themselves to attempt to shield themselves from the volatility, the incomprehension and the hurt, and left wounds raw and unhealed enough to weep for decades after, even lifetimes…

I look at these pictures from exactly 6 years ago and from last week.

And I see my reward of a lifetime -

I see health.

Wellness.

Thriving.

An inextricable tightness and togetherness.

Strength.

Radiance.

Undauntedness.

Resilience.

Wholeness.

Power.

Beauty.

I see the evidence of my ability to facilitate healing and growth - for as creatures of Nature we each too have that unbelievably powerful, miraculous, magnificent ability, to heal by ourselves when given the right conditions and guidance.

To take just one concrete illustration of this -

consider the fact that these pics from last week were taken just two days after discovering that my daughter had been groomed online by a paedophile.

Yes.

Nonetheless, look closely.

Do you see the health in her face, regardless…?

You see right.

That health is true.

We have cultivated such strength within our family system, that even something as shocking and traumatic as that discovery could be folded in and taken into our stride without breaking our flow as a family.

And be healed and moved on from, lessons learnt, caution taught, ignorance redressed, distress dissolved, fear and shame and guilt and the risk of lasting damage to her healthy sense of sexuality, ease and delight in her own body and womanliness, skilfully and compassionately sidestepped.

Because I took the crack presented to me this way to tell them the truth anyway.

Both boys and girl needed to learn that 8 out of 10 women aged 18-24 in this country have been sexually harassed in public.

5 out of 10, at work.

Something like this is therefore overwhelmingly more likely than not, to happen personally to them or the people they love.

The boys needed to see that it could be their friends and coworkers and fellow men who would be among those who would behave like this.

I told them these include fathers of children themselves, lawyers, professionals, other men who may seem like the most regular blokes on the street. 850 people, mostly men, are arrested in England and Wales every month for offences like this. "The knock is a uniquely awful experience, hitting every unsuspecting family differently, but a pattern is discernible. A sudden arrest, a husband or father removed, phones and devices taken away for evidence, little information given about the nature or scale of the crime, and then silence. A mother is left to comfort her children and is often advised to conceal the truth for the sake of her family...“We believe there are around 300 families with children going through it each month in England and Wales. That’s 10 every day.”"

So what IS going wrong?

And, most importantly -

For my sons, as men themselves, what is THEIR role, THEIR duty, THEIR power, to be allies - to play their part in ensuring their fellow men around them do NOT engage in such behaviour - that it needs to be called out, spoken up against, stopped?

—-

It would be parental neglect for me to try and avoid these uncomfortable and unpleasant topics and to not educate my children about the truth.

Yet I know these sobering stories with sharp edges can and must be told alongside lesser-heard, lesser-known stories of HEALTH.

So I took it as an opportunity to teach them the basic ideas and mental practices of healing and protection of self and others.

While telling them that statistically speaking this is not likely to be the last time we encounter scenarios like these that jar and upset us, these are also brilliant learning experiences that carry the profound and mind-bogglingly powerful hidden gift of forcing us to realise just how much power we possess to heal ourselves, make things right for ourselves.

(And for others. It allowed me to articulate more clearly to the boys what sort of respectful, robust, supportive and protective behaviour they as men are required to display in society.)

And I explained to them, having lived through multiple rounds in the ring myself in terms of difficult challenges in these past years, these past decades -

That without these challenges, these tests, we would have no way of truly experiencing and finding out just how formidable we actually are. Actually have been all along. These qualities can’t be uncovered by theory or analysis. We can only find out through being in the ring getting boxed.

—-

So you see a little more deeply why these pictures are so extraordinarily beautiful, and pride-inducing, for me.

They would to any mother of these children under ordinary circumstances. But we have lived through extraordinary circumstances.

And we have proven, I have proven, that there ARE ways in which these slaps and bites from the universe can be used to prove exactly how much they DON’T get to us, DON’T stick to us… once we have learnt HOW to not let them lodge inside us, and we cling onto them, and retraumatise ourselves with them, over and over again, like I see so very many people do, without realising how much they themselves are the source of their own continued suffering in this way.

No.

We can learn how to own our own happiness, to walk down that path of our own happiness, again and again, because it’s OURS. That wellbeing. To open the door of our hearts to. And let that in. And use that power.

And when we stop making ourselves feel bad and feeding ourselves negativity and fear and tension, thinking that’s somehow normal and good and healthy (it’s NOT!!)…

Then life is rightfully restored, to being fully lived in the present which is full of freshness and promise, and not bogged down in the sticky traumas of the past.

Then beauty and joy and passion and love can flow back in, and reestablish their rightful place at the core of our lives.

Like you see in these wonderful pictures.

PS. The "HAPPINESS LIVES HERE" sign? My son insisted I buy that to display at home. Yes, after everything that's happened. Because it's true.

#resilience #recovery #healing #nature #lifelessons #mentalhealth #wellbeing #allyship #parenting #themindfulhedonist