Self-Acceptance After Trauma: 3 Foundational Steps to Healing

Recently, someone told me my writing is "a little dark." I write upmarket women's fiction with a romantic subplot, usually focused on female characters overcoming trauma. Sometimes it's big stuff like body issues or sexual assault, sometimes it's smaller...the pervasive but unrecognized trauma of realizing nothing you do will erase the fact that time steals as much as it heals.

My characters are intended to be relatable, understandable, lovable. They're your mother, sister, brother, friend. They're the support you always wanted, the people who "get it" because they've been there. I hope they motivate and inspire, that they pull compassion from reader's hearts and understanding from commonalities. Above all, I hope they teach. I hope they show people that healing is possible, even when we're healing from something no human should have to experience or heal from.

I believe solidarity breeds community, but the fact is, sometimes you've been through things other people just can't relate to. When I was seven or eight years old, I witnessed a real-life scene straight out of a horror movie. Have you ever seen one of those scenes where the bad guy's chasing the dumb girl, and she's so terrified she runs in the worst possible direction? The bad guy catches her and the camera shows his hands closing on her throat, then skips to her feet hanging just above the floor. It's such powerful imagery. You know she's being strangled; you can hear it in the gurgling. You know the force of it because the victim is literally hanging from the hand that entraps her.

I don't know if my mother put too much Miracle Whip on my step-father's sandwich, or if she didn't put enough; what I know is that he wasn't happy about it. He slapped her with the sandwich. Backhanded her with a white-bread bologna sandwich. And strangled her on the front porch of our backwoods doublewide trailer. Her back was to the wall, her feet weren't touching the ground, and I saw it all.

Someone once told me the opening scene in FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM is too much, too graphic, too triggering. Unrealistic. No way an abusive husband would come home from work already furious, no way he'd beat his wife half to death for having an innocent conversation with the mailman. I can assure you that while it is a lot, and it is graphic and could be triggering...for many of us, it's entirely realistic. Perhaps too much so, but the best art imitates life, and life is not always beautiful.

Thankfully, the rest of the Freedom Series sees Christine Matthews getting help my mother didn't have access to. Christine wakes up in the hospital, then finds herself in the Safe House, a holistic shelter program I made up because there are no programs like the one I wanted Christine to benefit from. She's given intensive therapy, targeted life training, safety, and security without deadlines and time limits. Perhaps more importantly, the greatest gift Christine receives is self-acceptance and relief from shame and blame. She learns self-compassion and self-forgiveness, and she's supported through the complicated processes of freeing herself from her marriage.

Today, I'd like to share some of the general techniques used in the writing of the Freedom Series. These are concepts my mother didn't know, practices she was never offered - but they were integral parts of the work as I began to heal from the trauma of my childhood. (Actually, the sandwich is one of the lesser traumas, which I say only to show you that I'm sharing from a certain level of personal experience.) In terms of abuse, these concepts are best integrated with care for safety first, and I won't pretend this is a recipe for rescue. Instead, they are the most basic ingredients of strength and hope. In post-trauma recovery, these three steps to healing are the very beginning - the foundation upon which you build your most authentic self.

1. Learn to be Your Own Best Friend: If you wouldn't treat another person that way, stop treating yourself that way. If you'd lose your self-control over someone talking to your best friend, your sibling, or your child like that, stop talking to yourself like that. It's easier said than done, I know, but it's worth it. The fact that it's hard to do should show you exactly how much you haven't been doing it.
2. Practice Mindfulness: At its core, this concept means, "Be in the moment. This moment." Take a break from being saddened by the past or fearful of the future to just be right now. Ask yourself, as your own best friend, "What do I need most right now?" And then, as your own best friend, give yourself what you need right now. Do you need to take steps toward finding professional help? Do you need rest? Do you need the wind in your hair or gardening tools in your hands or sand under your feet? Do you need soft music and low light, or a dance party, or a journaling session? Do you need patient understanding? Someone to hear you - really hear you - without saying, "You deserved it," or, "You brought it on yourself," or "You should have known better?"
3. Foster and Ask for Support: Choose what you listen to. If there's even one person in your life who hears you, believes you, validates your experience, and believes you deserve good things in your life, listen to that person. Hear and internalize what they say. Bite your tongue and silence the impulse to naysay compliments. (If you read this and truly believe you don't have even one person, go back and read that first item again.)

I hope these strategies give you somewhere to start. They seem simple, but they carry incredible impact when you put them into practice; they lead to self-compassion and healthy boundaries. They ground you and give you strength, energy, and permission to grow. You don't have to be where you came from. You can choose so much more.

There's no tada list this week because my personal tada is taking the time to open up in this way, to share more of why this story is so important to me.

Maybe I should have held this post, kept it until we're closer to the release of the expanded second edition of FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM (Thirty-four more weeks! We're getting so close now!). Maybe the reason I felt compelled to post it now is because someone needed it today. Either way, I hope it touched you somehow - and that if it did, you'll share it and allow it to touch someone else. Until next week, I pray that whatever comes your way, you have the support and the courage to always...