Post-Traumatic Growth Journal

[TheBigBlue]

SO, I don't have suggestions either - just a lot of respect and care for what you're carrying. The way you name the knowing, the helplessness, the anger, and the love all at once feels very real. Being the one who sees clearly in a system that keeps repeating harm is an incredibly lonely place to stand.

I'm really glad you shared this here. You don't have to hold it alone in this space. 💛

[Chart]

Yeah all the responses!

Just because the oracle sees the future, does that mean they are responsible for it?

In many ways Cptsd gave us superpowers. But those powers only work on ourselves. We cannot save the world. Lord knows I've wanted and tried. It cannot be.

 

[NarcKiddo]

I am sorry you are dealing with this and I am familiar with the feeling of knowing what will happen and being powerless to prevent it. The Greek myth of Cassandra comes to mind.

It is horrible how trauma and damage flows down the generations and that our ability to stem the flow is limited however much we would like things to be otherwise.

[sanmagic7]

I'm still struggling to find my own words that I never spoke and need to speak, so many years later. How can I ever capture what has been done to me by my own mother in words?

SO, the first thing that came to my mind when i read this was poetry.  the poetry of yours i read here was so meaningful, so heartfelt, so brave.  it may be a stepping off point for you.  i don't know, but it's the first thing i thought of.

i wish i could do more to help you with all this.  you are carrying a load no one should have to carry.  love and hugs filled w/ strength.

[HannahOne]

SO, survivor's guilt is real.

It's a particular kind of pain to watch helplessly or to feel like a witness to pain you can do nothing to prevent.

And the choices of others affect us. It's one thing if people want to create chaos in their own lives but it spills over onto their children, and then onto you--and while you're on the Camino! (Sometime I must hear about that, I've always wanted to do it!). We are in a way traumatized again and again when those close to us suffer similar ways we did.

I have struggled to find words, too. I don't know if these thoughts will land, everyone is different and our stories are similar yet unique, particular. Something that helped me was to start by speaking to the particularity of my experience. The context, the specifics, the details, are where the devil is. With our kind of trauma it seems to me that the trauma is as much in the CONTEXT as it is in the CONTENT. It's not that our parent yelled at us once, it's how that related to our father, sibling, what happened before and after, the meaning the words had to us....And that context takes some words to describe. It's the context that delivers the emotional "punch" we received as much as the specific cruel words that were said to us.

The speechlessness is part of the trauma, we are struck dumb by their emotional abuse and manipulation just as much as if we were physically struck; a physical strike is often actually easier to take and manage as it has a beginning middle and end, whereas emotional abuse is the water we swim in. The relationship itself becomes a traumatizing environment, not just an incident of abuse. And how does a fish describe water? as the late great David Foster Wallace said.

Our words are part of what was taken, twisted, torn away from us. So it's a process to find the words. You're in that process now.

[TheBigBlue]

 

[SenseOrgan]

Thank you all!!!

Been so insanely busy lately. Community garden stuff, for a good part. Ever since the meeting, I've been up to my neck in it. It was a pivotal moment. Joined the whats-app group, and before I knew it, I took it upon me to arrange an extra compost delivery. I offered others to join, so we could share the huge delivery costs. That was a lot of back and forth between many people for many days. Intersecting with the regular, utterly chaotic and amateurish, annual compost delivery. It got very stressful, and I ended up terribly overwhelmed and irritable at some point. I was able to keep going with one thing at the time in the midst of it. Still am! I walked a shocking total distance with a wheelbarrow. There's 7 m3 of compost in my garden now. Some people are really puzzled. I get remarks, even. I am, on my part, puzzled by their lack of understanding of soil health and dealing with weeds. So I'm not taking it as a rejection or whatever. My anxiety is, for a good part, gone. I'm definitively a member of this community now. It's totally normal. I feel completely normal. And often I also realize where I came from, which makes walking around on the terrain carefree unreal. Cured? Healed? Yes and no. I don't think about life in these terms anymore. I'm not free from trauma. I'm getting strong doses of "Out of the Storm" though. 

[HannahOne]

SO, so happy to hear about the community garden and your growing (hehe) role in that community! The art of creating a healthy environment for new growth. You took on the role of chief coordinator of compost, a role which seems like a powerful metaphor. You know what keeps soil healthy, you know how to deal with weeds, you know what a garden needs. You offered others to join in this reparative preparation of the soil. Some may be puzzled, and you're equally puzzled back...and across the knowledge gap, you're experiencing being carefree. So thrilled for you! Yes, yes, and yes!