From the time I started writing about my journey, first on Facebook then through these blogs, I have been struck by the comments about how brave I am or the guts it takes to share my story. To me, this part isn’t nearly as hard as living my life each day for decades wishing I would die. That was tough, that was brave, that took guts.
Sharing my story of hope and healing is worthwhile to me because I hear it helps people know they aren’t alone in their struggle. While we can never fully know, understand or feel the depth of pain of another human being because we can never fully be inside that person’s heart, brain and soul, we can be real ourselves feeling and showing compassion.
I share these pieces of myself to give others a glimpse of how a regular person, not an expert, but just a regular person asked for help and sought out additional resources, to figure out why my brain worked the way it did and eventually to learn how to stop it from tormenting me far beyond the damage of any traumatic situation of my past.
I believe this is the key to slowing the tragic things happening every day in this country. We hear and read about some of the tragedies, but others we don’t. And honestly, there are days I want to hide from those tragedies or painful things that happen in my own life. But I continue to be reminded that hiding from them only prolongs my own and our society’s suffering.
Having worked in healthcare for years myself and now having a daughter who is a nurse and a son-in-law who is a police officer, I am aware of so much pain. Each day they work they directly see the results of so many people who have had brain and body altering experiences as they deal with adult addictions, self-harm, disease and/or assaults. Their work is terribly difficult because they can only treat the results of the behaviors that are used by these individuals to cope with the real pain that lies beneath.
But the question is not, what’s wrong with these people, the question is, what happened to these people. I highly recommend this book to learn more on the subject which can help uncover compassion and perhaps even help you learn more about yourself. What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, and Oprah Winfrey
If we took more time to inquire and listen, to encourage people to understand their past and how it shaped them, but also how to take ownership for their present behaviors, we could begin to shape a society where we could be who we really are instead of keeping up the facade of who we wish we were. That is an exhausting life. Simply being flawed humans living life with kindness and love, that’s life that allows one to relax and breathe into.
There are countless examples of the types of things we want to hide from, not believe are true, shut down from when people do talk about them because they are so scary to us. Our fear of the reality that living is messy, and painful and just plain tough keeps things like suicide and murder rates climbing because we refuse to face the reality that life…is…hard. Much of life is out of our control. And yet, when we are brave enough to accept this reality and begin to control our minds by tapping into our souls and leading with our hearts, we can begin to be the human beings we were created to be who can show true compassion, who can give freely of ourselves and our resources, and who can simply love one another.
People are hurting. People feel alone. People need help and grace and love. Not judgement of pain we may not even be able to fathom.
I believe we could benefit from the guidance of Mr. Rogers who said, “Whatever is mentionable is manageable,” and learning the true skill of listening to understand ourselves and others. His words are so simple, and yet so profound and they can truly be life changing on an individual basis and then one person at a time they can begin to heal our society.
Being real is hard, but not nearly as hard as living life scared of everything and not talking about it. How can you take one step to become more real today?
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