Trauma Bonds & Other Ditty's on Healing

The people who hurt you, aren't the same people who will heal you.

I used to sit (in wait) at the doorstep of people who hurt me the most. Pining.

When people told me to RUN away, not walk & DEFINITELY don't sit there, staying - I'd tell them they "didn't understand."

Problem is - THEY UNDERSTOOD more than I did. Because they knew what it took to muster the muscles to gooooooooo.

Trauma bonds are not connection. Trauma bonds are you, bound - to an exposed pipe on tornado alley, where someone sometimes brings you food and hand feeds you and you think their food is saving your life while the knife to cut your ropes is in their back pocket.

Where THEY are happy to run or walk away to save themselves, but happily leave you there and watch you get destroyed for entertainment.

Trauma bonds aren't formed by TALKING with others who have space to sit with you in your experiences.

They're created by repeatedly recreating traumatic experiences you're never allowed to TALK about with the person whose creating them but telling you if only you could break free of their ties, you'd be worthy of being walked with.

RUN. ANYWHERE.

Don't sit on their doorstep after time and time again you prove you can get loose, begging for them to let you in or at least, to tie you back up to keep you "grounded" to a reality where you exist together. NO! NO! NO!

Real connection doesn't require "proof" of deserving it. The second you need to prove...prove to yourself you've got legs and RUN!

Even a cave finding you is better than a person who only "pretends" to offer you shelter. RUN!

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People who keep you in the dark, don't deserve you searching for their inner light!

If people don't care about how you feel, while they ACTIVELY try to make you FEEL bad, they DO care how you feel and they get what's called NEGATIVE EXCITEMENT out of it.

It's probably the rush a lioness gets in its body the moment she feels the release of the gazelle's final breath. Except the lion has enough couth to only do it once, ensure a clean kill and let you rest in peace. People, are a different animal. The only animal that we can say on earth has only one real predator, and its ourselves against ourselves.

You, my love, must make people earn their right to your great big heart.

You can choose where you put your care, instead of gift it everywhere.

I told this to my 8 year old who has a very confusing frien-emy situation at school with a girl who very often intentionally excludes her but will intermittently burst into Hayven's play and insist on playing. Hayven doesn't want to hurt her feelings by saying she doesn't want to play.

I teared up as she divulged this to me by her bedside, wanting to save her 3 decades of a painful lesson I'm just now learning.

It's often the people who care the least about us, that we care the most about as children and as codependents.

It's a primal survival strategy to stay together even in the toughest times. But when there ARE others who DO care about us or want to play and all we can see is those who don't because we NEED to get them to care to feel safe; we need to care about ourselves first so we can feel safe enough to look up and see there ARE other kids on the playground who in time, may earn their luck in the value of our care.

Explaining to my 8 year old that her energy is expensive to give to unappreciative people, and free to keep among appreciative ones, was one of the greatest bedside lessons I ever got to teach.

It's a beautiful gift to have an intact survival mechanism of togetherness, but when the switch is faulty, it turns in on itself and we can't see what we DO have, looking at what we don't.

You're entitled to reserve your care for people who ACTUALLY reciprocally care about you. It doesn't make you selfish. It makes you SANE!

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I'm happy with MY choices, and that's all I can rely on.

For my whole life, I found it unreasonable to be TRULY happy if other people's choices were hurtful to me or to them.

I'd stay up at night wanting everyone I love to have the intestinal fortitude and alignment to protect themselves in the day and if they didn't, I couldn't be happy.

But I am happy with my choices. I don't do people dirty. I come pretty clean. And if I can't stay clean, I go hide in my shower, sometimes for months at a time.

I don't confetti my dirt onto others. But I used to sit with people in their dirt when they were happy to smear it in my face and laugh while I couldn't see because it was in my eyes. I came bearing gifts of a towel, water, and wait, but what they really wanted was me to have their fate, and they'd blind me with it when I was there to help them see.

I'm not gonna do that anymore. My choices make me clean. I cannot control for and will not hang my hat on the self worth of being able to clean everyone around me who isn't asking for water.

The only choices that have weight on my heart or in my mind anymore, will be MINE.

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There is NOT TWO sides to every story!

There is ONE story with many strings attached in its web.

In Heaven, perception is as unnecessary as forgiveness, but "there" holds true sight.

I've always said "the truth always finds itself out. It doesn't need defense." But I was silenced and a doormat when I said it.

I still stand by that truth but am at a place where I think it's healthier to offend everyone I know with my scars, they've never had to tend. As I'm happy to see others battle marks.

Because if you see me and don't see the layers of scar tissue holding me up, you see a mask and you likely like that I'm hiding behind it so my wounds don't ruin your appetite for life.

So OFFEND as many people as possible with your "side of the story" because the truth WILL always find itself out but when it does, those who stuck around and watched you change your bloody dressings will also be those who privilege you with moonlit dance parties once the pain is gone. Those who want you for REAL, not for your fake.

Tell your truth. It'll weed out those offended by it.

Which likely feels like the relief of being on the titanic with thousands of people you didn't know but inadvertently relied on and then making it to an exotic island shore bruised and tired with two people who stayed during the sink and the swim and now will relax with you before you build on shore.

TWO is better than 2,000 if 1,998 would rather see you drown in the truth, than keep up with you, sharks and all while you swim to Truth's shore.

THOSE are your people. The ones who aren't offended by your right to defend yourself. The ones who won't offend you more, when your current truth is wildly offensive to your reality.

Offend them all. See who stays. Those are those, worth staying for.

On that note....

I no longer give a fuck who I lose (in life). (Even if I love them.)

My friends.

A following.

My siblings.

My parents.

My children.

My partner.

My clients.

I don't give a fuck who turns their back on me, AS long as, it's no longer MYSELF I lose trying to keep them.

I don't care who I lose, as long as it's not me!

Took me 40 years and a lot of painstaking lessons to get here...but I'm here.

Be gone with your bull shit! Bull shit, be gone!

I. AM. STAYING.

With me.

Without you.

Just the tip of the iceberg of what the last few months have taught me.

Hopefully soon enough, I can create a masterpiece out of this mess of paint and hold it high so you can feel, and learn, and grow, like how I wish to teach my 8 year old to save her decades of learning the hard way. To a life of abundant ease, where the only thing lacking in it, is bull shit.

I wish this for you, and me, now, and always.