Changing My Relationship to Trauma

    So as I've been on this journey and as I've catalogued it, I have been working towards healing my relationship to my trauma. I have consistently viewed it and the effects it has had on me as one would a source of evil. How could I not? No kind hearted person would be capable of injuring or traumatizing someone in the way that my biological father had done to me...which leads us to the conclusion that only someone evil could perpetrate such violence. But as I've been reminding myself throughout this journey, my father treated me that way because his father treated him that way. My biological father was never given a way out of the abuse, so he created his own twisted way out. As long as he was the victimizer, he would never again be the victim. Perpetrating violence against his own family was a way for him to feel in control. In his world, there were only victims and victimizers, only sharks and minnows...and he had to show everyone he was a shark so that he would not be violated again.

    The lesson I am learning from my trauma is how to turn something horrendous into something that can bless me and the world around me. So far, I have been so focused on making sure other people benefit from my writing that I haven't completely accepted the potential healing that it would also offer to me. But I can't fully help others heal until I view myself as deserving of healing and deserving of the power to create my greatest good. I can't help others fully until I release the roadblocks of self-judgement and self-reproach that have caused me to believe that I am only here to open the door for others to walk through and not to walk through with them.

I am learning that my trauma can be turned into a blessing for myself and others through the infinite and powerful grace of God.
I am learning that I am so much more than my trauma, so much bigger than it.
I am learning that I am capable of overcoming immense obstacles.
I am learning to let go of what my trauma appeared to teach me; to let go of the idea that I must be worthless, that I must be despicable and unlovable. My father was passing on to me what he believed about himself because his father had passed on to him what my grandfather believed about himself. And all of us were mistaken.