YOU DONT HAVE TO DO THIS FOREVER…

“You don’t have to do this forever.”

It came like the gentle whisper of the breeze. Like the quiet exhale of my daughters saying “mama,” as I rocked them to sleep as babies. Like the tenderness of my mother’s voice that I’d washed away because it hurt too much to remember.

I opened my eyes to sunlight pouring over my face and looked down to find my daughters' limbs draped over my body as they slept peacefully beside me.

Was I dreaming?

The room was silent. Still. Peaceful. And for one tiny magical moment, I was present. Safe. At peace—the three things I’d spent my entire life yearning, chasing, gripping, and fighting for with every ounce of my life force.

But the battle had always been more like a game of whack-a-mole because anytime I got my hands around one of them, one would be ripped away from me no matter how hard I fought to hang on.

And like some kind of magical treasure chest that only opens once you find three missing keys, touching all three of those things at the same time broke open something inside of me that had been locked away almost my entire existence…

My Truth.

I had just recently come to a place of acceptance that my life had always been, and would likely always be a series of tragedies and traumas—and when my mother passed away the year before, I made a promise to myself that I would stop holding onto it all with white-knuckled fists at the expense of myself—that I would set it down with love and grace—that I would surrender my need for control…but I was still no closer to putting any of that into practice.

I could only get my hands around the peace within that magical moment for a few minutes before it all slipped through my fingers like quicksand—because the truth was, my life was a fucking mess.

Ever since my mother passed away, nothing in my life made sense anymore—my feelings had changed, my needs had changed, I had changed—yet everything around me was the same.

I was living inside a world I had dreamed of and fought for my entire life—a world I had built with my own two hands, but lately, I felt like an alien who spoke a different language trapped inside of it—and I didn't know what the fuck I was supposed to do with that. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I somehow got it all wrong—that I needed to light a match and set the whole thing on fire and burn it down—and hated myself so much for feeling that way that I was paralyzed by fear and shame.

And then the words came again—but louder, clearer this time…

“You don’t have to do this forever, Christina.”

It was my mother's voice coming from somewhere deep inside of me, and I swear she was sitting right next to me.

But what was THIS?

You see, the thing about complex grief and complex trauma is that it is, above all things, complex. It tangles all of our emotions, experiences, wants, needs, traumas, losses, adaptations, and coping mechanisms in a web so complex that it becomes impossible for us to feel anything with any amount of clarity.

While the complexities of every trauma are different, three universal elements exist at the root of every trauma—one: a human who was forced to relinquish all choice, control, and agency over their life circumstances; two: the false belief that gets burned inside of trauma survivors' souls that “it’s their fault”; and three: the kind of pain that cuts so deep, it severs the innate human capacity for one to trust themselves.

And because I never had any control—any choice—any agency over my mother's pain and suffering, nor the impact it had on my emotions and life circumstances, and because I had proverbially lost her so many times, and because the fear of her death took up so much space in the background of my psyche for so long, when finally she passed away, so much of my grief was overshadowed by my relief to finally be free of it—to finally have some agency over my own life—and I didn't even realize how much I wanted and needed to BE FREE of it until I was given that choice.

And yet, here I was one year later, overcome with grief.

Not relief.

Clear. Simple. Grief.

And that grief terrified me more than anything else in this life.

You see, grief is the real Achilles' heel for complex trauma survivors, and they will do almost anything to avoid feeling it—anything.

My grief over my mother's death was intertwined with numerous other traumas and losses I had never allowed myself to grieve—so much pain I had dissociated from, numbed, and fled from—so much sadness, helplessness, and powerlessness I had locked away since I was just a little girl. And so anytime I felt it begin to bubble up inside of me, I would instantaneously shut it down because it was all too fucking much to handle.

But this grief felt different… I was touching something I had never touched before and for the first time in my life, I surrendered to it.

“I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE.”

The words pierced through the silence like a lightning bolt, and it took me a few minutes to recognize that they had come from my mouth.

They hung in the air as I closed my eyes, pulled my daughters closer, and took a breath that released every ounce of anxiety from my body.

I don't want to do this anymore.

It was the truth, and touching that truth felt like some kind of miracle.

But what was this?

What was this?

What was this?