Tag Archives: healing

ENTERING MY BROKENNESS

I have not written anything in my blog for several months, first of all after moving house I experienced ongoing difficulty with signals and of course my devises and it became easy to let things slip.

I am very aware , in my experience, that it is easy to do this, and then time goes by and the struggle to discipline oneself becomes harder and harder.

The second reason I have not written anything in my blog recently is because my eldest dear dear son was found dead in his home on the first of January 2025, and yet when my husband died at the beginning of the COVID I lived each day through the blog.

Recently I have been considering , and reflecting on brokenness. As you are probably aware people have various ways of giving there support during a bereavement, and the one that comes to mind at the moment is ‘the hush approach’. This approach is easily understood from the perspective of being present in another’s unbearable pain which, in turn touches our own pain and we need to get it shushed or hushed.

The hush approach has its value, but eventually, if we are to heal we need to enter into, and work through our brokenness. A useful metaphor for this purpose is of broken glass. I f you have ever broken glass, swept it up, and later discovered there are more chards which you missed, maybe even stand on one in your bare feet it makes a useful picture or container for our reflections.

In the end we have to enter the brokenness and deal with the pain if we are to recover and come to a place of acceptance of our loss. In a very real sense this is a task of mourning.

You may also notice that many people speak of grief and grieving and never or seldom speak of mourning. I want to suggest that no recovery is complete without ‘mourning the loss’. This process is to use the glass metaphor, entering into the brokenness clearing it gradually, taking breaks and making distractions, and then returning to find the bits you missed.

So lets be clear grieving is not mourning, it is going over the situation over and over and not going anywhere. I f you are strong enough to sit and listen to your own brokenness it is possible to come to the place of mourning but it is good to have a good friend to listen with respect and loving kindness because being heard really heard is a catalyst for change.

Mourning is the next step and is like a huge roar which is a release for the loss and pain. I will continue but am taking a break now.

IF YOU ARE IN BEREAVEMENT MY SINCERE SYMPATHY AND LOVING WISHES.

INTRODUCTION

COURAGE AND TRUST

TAGS STEPPING OUT TRAUMA RESILIENCE

Courage and trust are very important as we live and walk in recovery from trauma, we need courage to keep stepping out , rather than retiring back, and giving up, and we need trust to believe in ourselves and to engage with others who can help us on our journey.

Whilst the reflections in my blogs may fit situations in or for recovery from addiction, or other difficulties, they began as reflections on moving on from the affects of the pandemic brought about through COVID 19. I would like to finish off these reflections and move on to something new, and indeed many people are trying to do this, however the plain truth is that as I go about my daily life, I find, and observe that many people without being aware of it are still suffering from the effects of the insidious virus as above.

I can recognise them in myself having lost my husband in the very beginning of the pandemic, and I observe them also in others, who do not always admit to them, or even know that they have them.

What comes to mind this morning, as I return to writing following a two month absence due to house moving, and waiting on ‘services’ to move my broadband, not an easy matter as you may know!

It seems to me that when one stress builds on another, we actually can, at times, identify that we are still suffering, or dealing with previous stresses but I am still of the opinion that the affects, and effects of the pandemic, and indeed the stresses connected with the fall of global economies are insidious and imbued with denial.

It is from this stance that I bring forward again the need for courage to keep going in recovery, and to reach in for our own trust, and out for trust in others. It is interesting to observe that one can be helped by sitting with a number of people and not necessarily say or do anything but the essence, and presence of the others can have a healing effect.

I mention the above as it may encourage others to be content with small achievements of getting out and about both physically and mentally and indeed spiritually. Such movement links with trust in our selves and in others as we sense their presence in a positive light.

Those who have faith have even more support and holding to go forward and not allow ‘down days’ to overwhelm them trusting and reaching out with the knowledge and experience of having overcome fears and difficulties before.

If we think of it as rooms within our bodily house each of which has a purpose and contains different things we can use the metaphor to step into different sections of our being and connect with our healing resources.

It has been borne in on me recently that people have, since the pandemic, and the horrific traumas it caused, had to put their mourning on hold in order to survive, yes they grieved but could not engage in the process of mourning in order to move on.

I find it useful to think of how animals grieve and mourn, growing up on a dairy farm the cows would roar when their calves were taken away. It was a hideous heartrending sound, and my mother used to take us to the attic so we would not hear it as clearly.

It seems to mean that the animals were letting out the unbearable feelings in their roaring, they needed to roar so they could let go and move on, we are often too dignified to roar, and can be afraid we would completely break down and become totally mad, such as been our pain.

The complexity of the above situation has been the fact that everybody was affected by the pandemic in some way, and accordingly we could only hold another for short periods of time because no one , or few had completed their mourning and even as one event passed it just continued. Now there is space to see others , to offer them support, and to venture out from the madness to a new world we are all making.

In days of trouble we sometimes wish to hide and when we try and feel ineffective when helping others we are not necessarily back at the beginning but have the ability to trust ourselves by remembering how we handled the troublesome spot before.

During my lifetime I have found it important to return to basics when things get stuck and to examine and listen again for what I have missed, this process allows one to glean new information and knowledge of how to help oneself and others.

NOTHING IS MORE POWERFUL IN TRAUMA RECOVERY THAN BEING CLEARLY HEARD!