The Alchemy of Trauma - Part One - Learning to trust myself again

Hey.  Hello.

I am glad you found me.

Where do I start?  Well, where I am now I guess. It is almost 20 years since what I would call my big trauma.  THE Trauma.  The one where I forgot who I was. Though now I know that so much had happened already in my childhood and teens that were the foundations of the Big T. The Big T was the precursor for several other Big T's. 

Mmmm... that seems to be what happens a lot of the time.  The intervals between traumatic events get shorter and shorter.  What at the time seems like a mysterious acceleration of traumas and overwhelm. Now what and how it happened all seems to make so much sense. Weirdly. Sometimes I ask myself what if I had made different choices.  What then?  Catching myself thinking these thoughts, I remember being kind to myself and accepting all that is. It has been a slow and, yes, painful journey at times.  Delving deep into unfathomable darkness. Searching for safety. Remembering who I am. 

Being able to hold myself and make meaning. Transmuting the experiences and suffering and yes, reframing what happened to me whilst at the same time accepting that there are some things I don't know, will never know.  They will be the mysteries and that is OK. I can hold this space. 

I was shut down for so, so long.  Not knowing.  Not realising.  Not even aware that I was rigid, frozen.  In desperate need of thawing.  Mine has been a drip, drip, drip of a thaw.  No taking out of the freezer and putting myself on fast defrost.  Oh no!  My body knew.  It hasn't let me down. They don't you know. By 2008 it was screaming at me to pay attention and, sigh, finally I did.  I found people with whom I felt safe to explore my brokenness.  My denial.  My abandonment.  My distrust. My first experience was during transformational breath.  Through the caring facilitation, I made contact with something that felt so much bigger than me.  With an all encompassing light source that, at that very moment, shifted my perspective.  It was breathtakingly orgasmic energy in the truest sense.  I thought I wouldn't ever stop crying. Or howling.  Or screaming.  It felt like rage with no label. Shame with no name.  Anger - the healthy kind.  All the most intimate corners of my being were sparked into a state of aliveness I had not felt since I was a child.  I was deeply humbled and grateful. 

This was the start of my personal alchemy. Bringing that which was hidden or exiled back onto the dance floor of my life for a most gentle of waltzes.  Slowly titrated, deeply personal, individual rememberance and reverance for sacred embodiment.   I started a love affair with myself for the first time in my life.  My whole being started to feel alive again. I was releasing the contracted, armoured self, sensing again and getting radical realisations that can shake me to my very core. Of long-suppressed grief, shame, guilt, disgust. Other worldly disturbances. Visions. Starting to gain clarity over so much of my own story and that of others.  Loved ones. Family. Generations. An evolutionary narrative. My purpose was here all the time.  Embedded in my timestream.  My story is my purpose.  My story of the Alchemy of Trauma and how it has shaped my story.  My choices.  My life. Transmuted into wisdom to share, as an Elder, with others..