I’ve felt frustrated the past few weeks over plans not unfolding as I expected they should, but yesterday, I received the precious gift of understanding why for once. I’ve learned to not ask why as often as I used to ask it, because often it’s not for me to know, but sometimes it is and I am grateful.

I spent yesterday afternoon helping a friend solve a couple of problems that were causing her a lot of tears and the problems got fixed. As she drove me home (I fixed her truck), she poured out her heart about trauma and pain she has carried for years that I never understood until yesterday, when I realized it was the same kind of pain I carried for so many years, although from different causes. Still, she described her soul battles in almost the same words I have used to describe my own PTSD symptoms, because while the causes are different, the trauma feels the same. That numbing, grinding, gut wrenching 2 a.m. at night phone call feeling that sometimes lasts for weeks and turns every day into an exhausting battle. The darkness so painful that too often it’s simply not worth getting up to face the world, stacking a pile of pillows on one’s face to keep out the light and the world as one day after another goes by with nothing worth doing, no food, no nothing. And people who mean well asking us to just get over it, because isn’t it about time? I sensed her loneliness that causes one to give up on anyone in the world ever understanding, a lonliness that causes one to turn inward to block out the world because of the risk of being vulnerable to anything that might rip open the wounds that are still so raw. She cried as she told me of cruel words people used to cut her again and again because they think she fit their particular description of a that kind of person in their minds.

I told her that she is not alone in what she is suffering and I am so grateful I can tell her it is possible for her to get to another, so much better place where all the trauma will still be there, but it will change from something dark and awful that extinguishes any hope into a different thing that is still there in the past but which can no longer hurt us as it gives us an understanding of life that can only be called wisdom. All that trauma can transform into a thing that makes our hearts full of tenderness and empathy. All that trauma will be back in a place where it can no longer hurt us and we can finally rest, because we are safe.

I told her about hacks I learned by trial and error, by trusting a caring counselor, by overcoming my terror at even the thought of certain things that could reopen the trauma, by facing it all without turning away from the hard work of healing even if it means sometimes wincing and wanting to shrink back, and by shear force of will to believe that those who love us really do love us and to exert the courage to let their love trickle back in. Please, please be patient with us as the love transfusion slowly transforms us. I told her I know for certain there is another, better place and she can get there. It is hard work and painful, but it can change everything. I now know everything can change, not magically, not perfectly all at once, not without two steps forward and one step back, but it can change.

I could see that she believed me. I felt frustrated yesterday morning that I am not back on the trail as soon as I hoped, but this morning I think I understand why. I had to go back and resolve some unfinished pain of my own this week ( K.D. @ A.I. in MD, if you read this, I hope it helps you understand where I was at this week and why I said what I said. I am sorry you were the target, because you have done everything possible. You did not deserve to be a target.) The frustration and the taking care of my own unfinished business left me perfectly situated to help another precious, overwhelmed soul. Is this just purely chance? I do not think so, because unexpectedly, at this very moment, I am grateful that I experienced and came to understand the pain of my own trauma, because it helped me to understand and soothe the pain of a friend.

Thank you, Elizabeth, my Substack friend who writes

for perfectly preparing my thinking to be ready to do what I needed to do yesterday and thank you for sharing this poem:Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I'm Hanging On by a thread. And so are you and him and her and them. But what if we tied our threads together. What if we stitch something strong enough to withstand the weight of it all. Of us all. Big enough to make sure there's always a place to hold onto even when parts of the fabric are threadbare. I'm hanging on by a thread. But I'm trying to learn how to weave. -Poem by Fara Tucker 

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