Living with trauma, is a trauma– and survival is only the beginning of your recovery story.

You survived. Against all odds, you survived. 

I know— your experience growing up may or may not have seemed that desperate. You may or may not be surprised at your own survival. You may or may not consider what happened to you “trauma.” 

But you survived. 

Some people will consider that fact— your survival— as basically the end of the story. 

They will tell you that the fact that you survived, the fact that you’re reading these words, means that the danger and pain is all in the past. 

That you’re “safe now.” 

But survivors— and I call us survivors, because, well, I have to call us something, don’t I?— know that it’s not that simple. 

The fact that we survived might be the prologue to our real story. 

The real trauma you’re struggling with right now might be the fact that you did survive— and what you’ve had to live with since. 

That’s something “they” often don’t get. 

“They” very frequently want to know why we’re even thinking about trauma that happened n the past. 

The danger’s over, right? We survived, didn’t we? What are we looking backward for? 

What “they” don’t get is that what we endured, whether we’re willing to cal it “abuse” or “neglect” or “trauma” or not, left marks. 

Sometimes those marks are physical. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re both. 

Living with trauma— and I am going to call it “trauma,” for the sake of calling it something— is a trauma. 

And it’s often a more confusing trauma than what we initially went through. 

Many people don’t understand how frustrating it is to be responding in the present, to something that happened in the past. 

Many don’t understand what it’s like to hear voices from the past as if they’re in the room with us. Hell, right next to our ear. 

It’s like being haunted. 

Not your house being haunted— it’s like you being haunted. 

It’s also like being hijacked. 

Not your car or a plane being hijacked— like your nervous system, your literal brain, being hijacked. 

Living with that, year after year, never really being able to describe it to another human— whether or not you think what happened to you was a trauma, THAT is traumatic. That’s traumatic for almost anyone. 

Trauma recovery is not about trauma. It is about recovery. 

Surviving trauma is not about trauma. It is about the survivor. 

Trauma work— n therapy or not— is not about trauma, and it is only peripherally about the people  or institutions that hurt us. It is about your life; your safety; your stability; your future. 

 I don’t care what anybody does or doesn’t call their experience. Call it pineapple on pizza. Call yourself a purple people eater. It’s not important. 

What is important is that you have realistic access to the skills, tools, and philosophies that will get you through this alive, and support you in creating a future you choose. 

I’m glad you survived. 

I’m glad you’re reading this. 

And I know, for a stone cold certain fact, that this is the beginning, not the end, of your trauma survival story.