Homing Hope

“Most survivors are cope-aholics, people who cope with whatever is thrown at them without reliance on others. They do not seek sympathy for their pain and feel undeserving if it is offered. They are especially adverse to sympathy from others.” Someone smarter than me said that. Truth bombs man, get thee behind me. I mean, not really but researching and reading about an injury I refused to embrace I had and wondering if every article and study was written directly about my life has me feeling like a narcissist, too. I mean. Also, just kidding. But you know what I mean. In the attic of my childhood is this old trunk. Sometimes I couldn’t shut it, sometimes I couldn’t find the right combination, and sometimes I couldn’t even pry it open. Still, the still silence coming from inside of the trunk spoke. She told the tales in more detail than you cared to feel. You are not broken. You were conditioned to believe you were by people who didn’t love you. You are not crazy. You didn’t define your reality for years... decades. Now you can. Write, speak, it out. Everything that you have been through. You’ll probably even have to make up words. Sometimes there isn’t a word that exists that can shed the light of understanding in the minds of those who have never seen true darkness. 

It’s so weird. I had this epiphany. In order to forgive, I have to remove hope from forgiveness. Forgiving takes away the hope that it could have been different or that you can go back and change it. The betrayals of the bystanders. In order to heal, I have to take that hope and put it into the healing. Being brutally broken can be gracefully gentle. I have hope that through this healing season I will have the hope, the courage, to still rise, to still speak, to still give, to still encourage, to still look for the best, to still look inward to see the beauty of the outward. However long it takes is how long it takes. Accepting that our past had made a substantial impact on our now and future is not giving into being a victim. Denying its existence only treats the symptoms, or the superficial wounds of the mind, body, soul, and spirit. The influential impact of full on embracing the darkness brings healing on a deeper level, freedom.