Hope Chest
Healing is the only way to hope
Hope Chest
Listen to me read this to you here.
After decades of stashing away heartache, disappointment, abandonment, and every trauma my younger body experienced into the full chest of drawers, each one being slammed shut, I began to take each particular item out.
One by one, I looked deeply at them for the first time in my life. Before, I knew that in any weak, confused moment all the things could burst out of those drawers at once. I lived on edge for decades with this real fear, as I continued to stuff away my feelings.
As I became stronger, or perhaps I felt more afraid of not examining what was inside, I looked with eyes full of tears at the precious young girl who didn’t know a better way, until I did.
As I transformed, I could now see how trauma taught me I could survive anything. The sexual abuse that happened when I was a pre-teen was a source of shame that got jammed into the drawer and closed for years.
I didn’t see it as abuse then, exactly. I knew it was wrong, but mostly blamed myself. By looking deeper into all the trauma I experienced with clear eyes, I can transform the shame to grace for the young girl just trying to survive.
Having been in a house of abuse for three long years, I managed to avoid recreating this in my adult life. I know how generational trauma patterns work now, but I didn’t then. I can’t explain how I avoided repeating the patterns. I just did.
I built a life full of peace and beauty in my own home. I created joy for my children. They didn’t have to worry about survival.
These days, the drawers are overflowing with tattered cloths of hope and sorrow, joy wiping the drippy nose of sadness. I add a sprinkle of love like frosting on shit. Not to be eaten, exactly, but to see the hope in it.
If I am to carry on, the secret drawers need to be opened, examined, forgiven. I must emerge without judgement for who I’ve been. I am not defined by any one moment over the course of my lifetime, nor is anyone else who wronged me. I release the weight, open the blinds, freeing myself to fly in all the skies, azure or inky with storms.
I can be the lightning.
Sometimes it looks like one conversation. An essay that is raw and real that transforms us both. Stopping mid-walk to hug a mother tree, or to splash some paint onto a canvas.
Hurts happen even still, because life is not meant to be easy. Healing is the only way to hope. Forgiveness is the bumpy, stone filled path.
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