When Our Bodies Keep Score
Let’s talk about healing from trauma…
“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”
- Bessel van der Kolk
How do you win a war when it’s against yourself? Ultimately a part of you will have to lose. Die. For the war to be won.
May 4, 2017 I went into labor with the triplets. I was 22 weeks and 3 days. They weren’t viable. It would have been considered a miscarriage that early. Ryan and I signed everything possible (without fully understanding) to save our babies.
They were born on May 15th, 24 weeks and 1 day gestation. The delivery room was silent. No crying. No confirmation from anyone that our babies were alive. Ryan looked at me as I laid on the operating table and asked, “Do you want me to stay with you in the delivery room or go down to the NICU with the babies?” I quickly responded, “Go with the babies.” My entire body was screaming…
I don’t want them to die alone.
The past five-ish years have been filled with “I-don’t-want-them-to-die-alone” moments more than I can count. Trying to navigate motherhood and bond with your child when you are terrified for their life. Don’t know the outcome. Watching them on life support, saying goodbye, signing for all protocols to be done. Being told, “all irons are in the fire,” there is nothing left to do but wait…and not for one of your children, but all three. At the same time. Managing multiple life altering conversations at one time. It’s too much for ANY human to handle. To process. To work through. Especially when you are in fight mode. I wasn’t safe to process the trauma and grief my body was screaming. So now I find myself years later finally starting to process and work through the past trauma. Why?
Because I finally feel safe.
With the 5th anniversary this past May, I still can feel the day physically. How do I heal from something I don’t fully understand? How do I allow my body to communicate to my mind the pain, shock, horror, anxiety, anger, and confusion, hurt, and grief that I felt…and am still feeling five years later.
And then come up for air and claim victory over my body and mind?
I don’t have a good answer other than I’m trying. Im trying to let my body heal. I’m trying to slow down enough to listen. I’m trying to have the courage it takes to heal.
Their 5th birthday (2022) also fell on Mother’s Day this year. I woke up in a bad mood and my body physically feeling stiff from my body keeping score of what was our babies’ birthday. How can it be year five and I still am able to feel and smell the anxiety and fear from the past, but at the same time not being able to hold the memories long enough? It’s too painful to sit and allow those feelings to surface, but yet it’s what is required to heal. Suppressing emotions and memories will only lead me back to the Spring of 2020 (you can read that hear).
I am stronger than my emotions.
I am stronger than my trauma.
I am stronger than the grief and fear that try to pull me down.
I am stronger than my worst day, because I now know that I am safe.
I am, because He IS.
I went to church on their birthday and the pastor said something that seeped into my heart and bones that Sunday. “If Jesus’ worse day was called good, then our worst day would and could eventually be called good.” I closed my eyes as I sat there and repeated those words to myself over the next couple of minutes.
My worst days will one day be called good.
Please hear me, nothing in my life or circumstance or the triplet’s birth story changed in that moment. Jesus revealing truth to you is not a magic balm or spell that wipes everything clean. But, what it did allow me to finally believe is that one day (I don’t know when), I will have my worst days called good.
And I know this to be true, because God is good.
Friend, this is what we are called to do. To find safe places and heal. To truly believe that our worst days (yes, yours too) can and will be called good. This, my friends, is how we Love Our Story.
What work are you being called to do to Love Your Story?