It’s funny because this is something I just realized…

I may always carry the ability to experience trauma response. It may never go away.

What fooled me was coming back into my body after years being away. I guess I thought, finally, I’ve been out of the deep and dark woods. I’m in the open pastures, rolling hills, and sunlit meadows now.

Little did I know the forest would never be far behind.

Sometimes I would still be pulled back into it by an invisible hand grabbing me from behind and pulling back into the darkness.

Sometimes I would walk in on my own- looking for something, desperate to integrate something once and for all.

I will go into the darkness for new growth and opportunity. I will sit with any and all shadow. It is hard to be afraid here after what I used to consider normal in my daily life- before I found the resources that showed me what I always deeply knew- I was in deep, dark, hot water and no one was pulling me out. The people around me at that point, despite having good intentions, kept pouring it in- boiling from their own reactivity, from the depths of their own wounding.

So when I found a way out and tended to my afflictions and wounds and life began to somewhat even resemble joy, structure and having a routine again instead of just being an endless stream of exhaustion and survival- I locked it in as much as I could.

I never stopped showing up for myself. My whole day became a ritual of self-betterment, of praise and of gratitude to experience the sensation of semi-solid ground after everything.

It’s not hard for me to exercise, write in my journal, practice mindfulness and get curious about the world and healing everyday. I don’t make myself do it any certain way or for any certain amount of time. I aim for growth in the long-run, but really show up because the structure grounds me down in the day to day. The fact that I’m now stronger, more balanced, kinder, softer and wiser, but also flexible, open and resilient is an amazing by-product of the love and safety I found within each thing that makes me a better version of me.

But no amount of mindfulness, meditation, nutrition, movement or medicine pulls the forest out from just past my peripheral vision.

There it sits, wherever I go, waiting to pull me in closer.

It doesn’t matter how good any day is going or really anything at all-

It’s possible for me to completely lose who I really am and WHERE I really am, any day at all.

No matter how much I can deny it or use it determine my worthiness as a leader of love and healing-

Nothing about it is true.

It’s not really open for interpretation, for me or anyone anymore.

It just is.

And allowing it let’s it be- the resistance against it only increases the cool winds that run through it to reach out and touch my face and remind me of a much darker place.

The resistance tugs at each end- pulling me deeper in, in my attempt to get out.

So I let it exist beside me, realizing now it really never planned to leave once it settled in one late summer night so many years ago. And as it built up- branch by branch for years and years of me crying hundreds of thousands of tears and praying for more from life.

The long nights and the non existent mornings. The unbearable afternoons, evenings- it all ran together all the time and I was just wading in the chaos the best I could.

You never know what’s happening in someone’s life. You also never know what has already happened. I wonder how many others are out there right now, walking around in the world-

Only really realizing that the forest will always follow them, too.