The slow practice of recovery

I hope, you hope

Our brains have a tendency to hold onto things til it thinks we’re ready for them. This is often, annoyingly, much later than we think we’re actually prepared to receive them.

I have trouble trusting my own reality after so heavily denying it to keep the peace and survive the moment. Things that were so highly normalized at the time feel absurd/outlandish to look back on now. As we know, this is all part of the manipulation.

Reflecting on times of abuse may bring up feelings of shame, self-doubt, distrust, and isolation. Feeling like the only witness to those painful memories can be an overwhelming realization in itself.

We should be nicer to ourselves, of course. Although we do our best, sometimes we need some assistance. A lil backup love generator when the self love power grid experiences a temporary outage.

It’s impossible to overstate how much of an injury trauma is on your body. Recovery takes time, practice, and energy. It is, in a word: annoying.

As you gradually get to where you can take a breath (one day, I promise) and your brain feels safe enough, whatever that may mean for your particular injuries; you may realize you’re remembering things a little more clearly.

Normalize feelings and triggers coming up when they do, even if that means some things showing up again and again as you begin to heal. Acknowledging trauma doesn’t make it go away immediately, but it does help significantly in managing its ongoing effects.

I hope you get to have a good, hard cry soon. The kind of cry that releases stress and floods you with endorphins.

I hope you drink a tall glass of cold water, then take time for a hot shower and a long nap. I hope you wake up so refreshed that you call a friend about it.

I hope you still hope it will get better, a few moments at a time.