All the grace

My past sometimes feels like clouds. Not the white, billowing kind but the dark, blankety ones. These hang oppressively above me, blocking out the sun and making me feel like taking a long nap.

Of course, this is the kind of sky that no one can see. Not even me. They are the kind one sees in their minds eye. The kind one feels in their bones. It is a constant, quiet, invisible knowing.

Trauma follows me like cans made of tin, tied to string and then tied to me with knots unconquerable. These cans are not the celebrating-a-sweet-and-hopeful-union kind of tin cans tied to things rather, they are of a harder sort.

Oh, the places I would run to try to get away from my past. To bottles, and smoke, to risk, to Jesus, to other people’s stories, told in all the ways they could be told. But still the sun is blocked and the tin cans clang and my nerves are shot.

And even though they hang like clouds that cover my skies that makes me so very tired, and they clang a mean clang with every movement. I try now and have tried for so long to not be affected by it all even though it affects all of me.

I’ve tried so many different ways to hide from my shames. And they were my shames, not because they were my fault at all, but because they lived in me like scars. Like memories trapped in jars, set on shelves and closed up in closets inside of me.

When I move to eat, to walk, to pick a flower or to make my bed, if I take my husbands hand, or move to push hair behind a daughters ear or glance towards my sons— these cans, empty and loud they clamor and pull at me from behind and remind me that they are still there. The clouds come back into view and they press me flat to the ground. No matter how good I feel or how good I do. They are there.

So, now and again I pick a string and I follow it to its end. Pulling its length an inch at a time, into a jumble of string into the palm of my hand.

I do my best, and sometimes with help, to look closely at it. As I pull and my eyes start to make sense of what I am seeing the light is dimming. Part of my brain saying, “no, no, that’s not safe to look at.” I can’t see it, can almost see it, then darkness.

Sometimes though, I have seen enough to call it by its name. My eyes just about able to make out its sharp edges. I can see enough to understand the awful weight of it. Sometimes the thing speaks its awful tale to me, in a voice that I can just about recognize.

Me and my past are far from friends. But we can talk now. Sat at tables in my mind, in a safe place of my own creation. There is tea, always there is tea. Grass under bare feet and a warm sun in a sky that is that sweet sea-green-y nearly blue with slivers of white clouds and golden sunlight.

Healing takes time. My guess it that it takes all of the time we are allotted here, on this earth. It takes finding a way to a table and finding a way to give permissions to a voice and a story and to a history. It takes telling and hearing those stories that hurt us, over and over again in the safety of that place until a cloud shifts and light covers and the string snaps as the can disintegrates.

Doors have opened and hands that used to shake are bringing jars from dark places into sweet-sea-green-y-nearly-blue-with-slivers-of-white-clouds-and-golden-sunlight light. Lids are being turned and something that was something else is new and alive and fluttering out with brand new wings into the sky around me.

Jars have new jobs here and there, in this place, holding freshly cut flowers and other green things in the clearest water. Roots emerging.

And even though clouds dark and looming remain, and cans with strings are still pulling, and clanging (oh, the wretched clanging) this old lady has this place inside her, and her tea and she and her shames are finding permissions and making peace and new things are growing.

Ps. I can’t recall what page Dr. Perry said what I think he said about trauma above. It may have been in an interview. The gist was – that trauma is an unfinished business and that is why it can be so hard to get over. Below is a quote from the book that I found and liked to tie together my title and the post. I recommend the book x 100.

“Trauma leaves you shipwrecked. You are left to rebuild your inner world. Part of the rebuilding, the healing process, is revisiting the shattered hull of your old worldview; you sift through the wreckage looking for what remains, seeking your broken pieces…as you revisit the ship-wreck, piece by piece, you find a fragment and move it to your new, safer place in the now-altered landscape. You build a new worldview. That takes time. And many visits to the wreckage. And this process involves both unconscious and conscious repetitive “reenactment” behaviors, or writing, drawing, sculpting, or playing. Again and again, you revisit the site of the earthquake, look through the wreckage, take something, and move it to a safe haven. That’s part of the healing process.”

Bruce D. Perry, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing