I have previously shared that I have almost finished reading Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy. I have about 50 pages left to read in the third book, Mockingjay. One of the minor characters is a woman named Johanna Mason, who won one of the previous Hunger Games. She is the tragic character who has both the strength and the weakness of having nobody left to lose.
Johanna makes a comment to Katniss (the lead character) that the one thing she thinks her shrink is right about is that you can never go back to being the person you were before the trauma (in her case, before the Hunger Games). For this reason, she must let go of trying to become that innocent girl again and, instead, find a way to live with being the person she is today.
It’s just a small part of the book, but it was one of the most meaningful conversations for me as a trauma survivor. Because my child abuse started at such a young age, I don’t really have a “before” to go back to, which I guess is a blessing in some respects. I don’t grieve the loss of the innocent girl I was because I don’t remember ever being that person. Still, I do grieve the innocent girl I should have been. I don’t think it’s the same thing, though. I grieve a concept while those whose trauma started later grieve a version of themselves that ceased to exist after the trauma.
I think this dialogue in the book resonated so deeply with me because it is part of the process of “letting go” that I am work through right now. Another thing I need to let go of is any hope of being someone who has never experienced trauma. That ship has sailed and isn’t coming back. It is unrealistic for me to strive to act and react as someone who has never been traumatized acts and reacts.
If I can accept this truth at a heart level, I can let go of my definition of “normal.” I used to tell my therapist that I just want to be a “normal” person. What I meant by this is I want to be like someone who has not endured trauma. That simply is not possible.
This reality does not have to be a “bad” thing. I have many strengths that were honed because I have survived trauma. I need to let go of the labels of “good” or “bad” and, instead, recognize and accept what “is” and “isn’t” without judgment.
Image credit: Amazon.com
Blooming Lotus 
That I have no where to go back to that does not include trauma and this includes the womb was hard to take and is now liberating.I no longer have to look for that.
I still have issues with the what might have been. Who knows I might have become a functioning member of society and not much else.
I saw an interview with Eric Clapton and he said that there are riffs that he can not longer do. The interviewer was distraught and said say it isn’t so. Clapton said I can still play with the same passion.
I once played golf with a 82 year old man who used to score very well. He and I has as much fun as anyone on the course that day.
I can still be child like which is different than childish.
Picasso said I spent my life learning how to paint and then I understood I needed to unlearn and paint what I saw.
I can never not have been traumatized I can have a body that is not PTS. My only worry is I will lose the physical strength that I have from the trauma.
Many things that are considered symptoms are involuntary. Take the startled response. I no longer have a startled response and yet in real danger I still have the same ability.
For me it is about not framing ME as a survivor or a person who has experienced extreme trauma. I do still frame myself as one who is processing trauma much of the time. Sometimes I am starting to rebuild. I do not yet have the passion to rebuild as my energy is still on healing and processing.
One of the biggest issues in my life right now is everyone is going old on me. I tell people I can not go there with them.
I had a friend who just went through a huge operation and almost died twice. I talked to him on the phone and he was out in the woods hunting. Not shooting anything just hunting. I could tell by his voice that he was on the way back.
I am not going to discover what I want to do and what I want to be I am going to discover who I really am.
One of the effects of my trauma is that I am young for my age physically. I am 57 and most people do not believe me.
I don’t remember much of childhood. I think if anything, I feel cheated for what I didn’t have. All I have to compare my growing up years to was that of my friends. I always envied their home life. But now that I am grown, and healing, I do not want to go back to the person I was. I was abused, mistreated, harmed in the worst ways imagineable. Now that I am an adult, and physically free from all that, I am finding freedom from the past. It’s a long process but one that as I look back, is getting better. I am thankful for the healing.
Faith,
I get wanting to be different internally. I used to wish I was other people all the time. Hell, sometimes I wished I was a blade of grass, or someone’s kitty or something.
The older I get the more I realize there is no real normal. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. I think that humans are destined to be at least a bit neurotic because we are conscious of the fact that we are going to some day die. So, given that, I have sort of given up on normal. I do still go for balance though. I think it’s a good target and I even sometimes feel as thought I achieve it! Not often, but often enough to keep trying.
Peace and good luck with the letting go.
m
I also had to let go of the fairy tale image that I had in my mind of what my family of origin would some day become when I was healed enough or good enough or something magical that changed everything including my dysfunctional family. I had hopes of my dysfunctional family becoming functional and normal. I thought if I could change that they would too. It doesn’t happen that way. For many years as I changed, my family and a few friends from that time period refused to see or continued to be blind to the changes I was making in myself. They would get angry if I reacted in a different way around them. They would do their best to drag me back into the family dysfunction because they didn’t know how to act around the new and improved me. I had to grieve for that dream of a functional family that would love me in the ways that I needed to be loved. Instead I had to learn to love myself as I needed to be loved.
I have learned in therapy that i must grieve the person . . Child. . I never got to be. I too never got a childhood like it should have been. Ive learned so much. I look bck at the ” me” of then in photos. Some moments i remember exactly. Some not at sll as if i wasnt that person. But in all the photos i see such a profound sadness in my expression. Even when im smiling.
. . When my child was little i had to remind myself to ” not be my mother”. I had to observe and intensely eatch ithers to realize how ‘normal’parenting was done. As she became a teenager i read books and asked people. I used my intuition. My gut. I asked my own therapist.
So. I have to learn to grieve the person i didnt get to be and appreciate who i am. This is very hard. I have figured out the 3 things that continue to haunt me the most and i need to find a way to forgive my own self even tho i know it was not my own fault ‘logically’ . . It hurts in my heart.
Time to try to heal.
. . I made mistakes.but not so many. The one thing i did mostly right was be a good mother and a good example of a kind person.
. . Why i am exceedingly kind never ceases to confound and amaze me. I do not understand it.
A very good and thought inspiring post, as well as equally good and thought inspiring comments. I am reminded of Robert Frost’s “The Path Not Taken”. Perhaps in our case it is the fact that we had no choice; we were shoved down the path of abuse whether we wanted it or not. Such are children’s fates; such was our own. We can be no better about it, we cannot change what was done – we can only hope to listen and learn from it, and make ourselves a better person.
I have not done my grieving for what could have been; nor for what was done. I have, however, forgiven them – all of them – for what they did for me. Anger is not an issue anymore, not greatly – just over the normal things, and due to my anger issues (lack of controls, frustrations – the normal ‘stuff’ to which I am learning to control my anger). LOL, didn’t used to be that way; wasn’t until I got 1013’d coming back from Puerto Rico. I really had no problem then! (Before the 1013. Afterwards – problems. Due to society and what they did. Really hate them on some levels for that thing. Revictimizing the victim.)
And here’s the funny thing: if I could go back and change it – just change ONE thing – would I be? After all, once you choose a different fork, your whole life can change. And that goes for survivin’ and thrivin’ as well. Once you make the decisions . . . the path before you changes . . . to the road less traveled.
“Feel, heal, and move on.” That’s what they say. All I can say is give it a try. Maybe it’ll work for you.
In my opinion…
Depending on the perspective, you are normal. For someone who has experienced what you have, you have been affected by it in the way most people with that experience are affected, and you have the ‘normal’ injuries and effects for someone with those experiences. It’s the experiences that aren’t normal, not you. Your responses to those experiences are perfectly normal, even healthy, given the situations. If anything you are exceptional in that you are healing so successfully, which is nothing to be ashamed of either.
SDW
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just responding to one point- seeing some benefit in early trauma. Having just read Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, your post has reminded me that the ‘benefit’ of late trauma is that you have a sense of reality about what you’ve lost. My abuse started 2 weeks before I turned 4, so in my attempts to grieve what’s been lost is fundamentally compromised by a belief that I’ve lost the ‘fairytale’ Patricia refers to; a notion of how the ideal life -untempered by the fact that ordinary lives are full of mistakes. I’m having a great deal of trouble knowing *what* to grieve- at least an adult trauma survivor knows that they weren’t as assertive, well-connected, etc, that the ‘fantasy me’ was going to be.
I read Hermann’s Trauma and Recovery. Was a very good read. When I did my research paper on Dissociative Identity Disorder, I used quite a bit of her material. I think her book is not only good for DID related issues but also other trauma related issues as well.
Thank you. So well put. I agree that there is no going back, and that is a grieving process in iteself. No recovery, nothing to recover. Only to discover. Big love, Underground.
That is what I have such a hard time dealing with. I still wish that somehow, magically, miraculously, my family would be normal and love me. My family would apologize. That’s never, ever going to happen. No matter what, I cannot have a loving childhood. They took that away from me. I can move on, I can find people who love and support me–I can find a “new family” so to speak. But my biological family, the ones who were *supposed* to love and support me no matter what…well, they never, ever have. They never will.
I wish I could know what I would have been like without trauma. It started so very young I can’t remember what I was like before then. I know I liked the Maya the Bee cartoon. That I was very rambunctious, very flamboyant. That I professed myself to be a woman, not a baby, at 2 years old. And that’s…well, that’s about it.
I hear you. there is so much to grieve, especially with so many reminders in our society of what our family is SUPPOSED to be, and so many families PRETENDING to be that way (the “Leave It To Beaver” family), and so many people hiding the reality of living, which is so far from what commercial society image of normal portrays. The more people I meet who are also in this grieving / discovery process, the less alone I feel, and the more sense of belonging and fitting in (family) I feel. But it will probably always be my trigger — feeling alone, like I have no place in this world, there is no place for me to go, no person for me to call, and everyone but me is “at the ball” and I am hopelessly and indefinitely flawed. My friend with PTSD said to me today that she will probably always deal with bouts of feeling at her wits end with life and have to spend days in recovery after triggers of stress. While we were talking on the phone, she had a wave of sadness come over her in another layer of accepting this reality, again surrendering to having to slow down, and not be able to do as much as ‘everyone’ else. She said that the only 2 things that have changed in her 6 years of therapy, not working and several stays in the ward, is that she is gentler with herself for being this way, and takes less time to come out of it. I think the trade off is that maybe we have the capacity to feel more alive on our better days because we feel so much sorrow. Maybe we feel more joy to make up for it all. I’m looking at the picture of the lotus flower here on this blog, and it is chiming in nicely. i feel so much love and compassion for all of us.