Healing takes time. The act of addressing trauma from your childhood, escaping from survival mode and overcoming your trauma response is not a sudden stroke of good fortune like winning the lottery or having a life-saving operation. One is not transformed, fixed, all set forever overnight. Healing is a slow and steady journey on a bumpy, vaguely uphill road. You take one step. You stop. You take another step, remaining ever sensitive (although less than before) to certain triggers—people, gestures, places, words and things. You take another step. You learn. You take another step. You stop, fall, and freak out. You get up. Take a step forward. You breathe steady.
It takes time because we had a problem but did not know what it was. Had you asked me ten years ago “What is your problem? ”
I would have said...
“My problem is that I am selfish, incompetent and undeserving of my parent's love.”
“I am always one mistake away from complete ruin.”
“If I am not being productive, I am worthless.”
“I am defective.”
“I have no skills or talents.”
“If I disagree, I will be hated and exiled.”
Some of us have spent our whole lives committing suicide passively through self-abandonment and people pleasing. And only some of us survived.
Here we are: almost all the way out of people pleasing, self-loathing and self-abandonment. We now understand that our aspiration for martyrdom was a massive red flag and a warning sign for the burning out we were experiencing from years of running on empty. We prided ourselves on loving the undeserving a little too hard because we thought our strength, resilience, blind loyalty and unconditional love was all we had to offer the world, but how wrong we were. A mistake that nearly cost us our lives.
To get this far, you went back into your own past to meet yourself again as you were then. In therapy, you reached back to seize your younger self's hand, you resisted your urge to turn and run. In your your journal pages and in the therapy sessions, you made yourself watch yourself almost die ten thousand times, learning and unlearning. You sat back there as your own witness, seeing what was, grasping the truth with which you set yourself free. Which is, if you think about it, quite an achievement. Don't you think?
Work hard at anything—completing a complex project, cleaning house, buying your first piece of furniture—and you might justifiably believe that you deserve a prize, a celebration, a reward. Work hard at understanding why we hated ourselves and what happens? Well, in a best-case scenario, we stop hating ourselves. Done. You can close that chapter and begin to have some fun, right? That's not always the case because things rarely go as planned.
We have healed from childhood trauma and are now aware of our trauma responses. Okay. Now what? Because at this point you might be thinking, “If I have discovered so much, if I’m now so smart and self-aware, why does it still hurt?”
“Why do I feel guilt for setting boundaries and not self-abandoning?”
“Why am I anxious about the future?”
“Why am I still ashamed of what I put up with in the past?”
“Why am I lonely?”
“Why do I feel guilt for putting distance between me and people that don't mean me well?”
“Why am I not financially stable yet?”
“Why I am overwhelmed by now knowing the ones who harmed me on purpose or accidentally, and the ones who watched and did nothing at all?”
Let's talk about it!
Leaving the prison of self-loathing, self-abandonment, people pleasing and seeking outside validation feels, at first, a lot like losing our minds because we finally see what we put up with for so long and it's shocking. Unfortunately, awareness can't cure us instantly because habits are hard to break. It takes time because we have been harming ourselves so fervently and in so many places for so long. And just because you still experience fear, shame, guilt, anger, jealousy or any other unwelcome emotions, doesn't mean you are not doing the right thing.
My interest in healing originally began well over five years ago when I was newly unemployed, in the middle of an identity crisis, while struggling with a couple of pesky psychological conditions. This challenged me learn more about healing if I didn't want to become a victim of them. It has taken years, but all of those different approaches I have tried have left me with an assortment of techniques and reminders that keep me sane, healthy, and optimistic. This victory aroused my interest in helping other firstborn daughters overcome the same problems. It also led to the birth of Hai, my coaching practice, and a safe space where women raise some of the rawest questions, ones that have gone unanswered for far too long.
Over the course of my healing journey and career as a wellness coach in the personal growth field, I have had the privilege of speaking to and for firstborn daughters on healing, transformation and wellness. While telling my story, I have spoken on behalf of myself, in defense of other firstborn daughters, and on the part of women who, however incorrectly, perceived that I have a voice greater than their own.
Through Hai, I have followed my fascination with wellness into content creation, blogging, and thoughtfully designing wellness products and services, making the healing, journal therapy and the gentle guidance I always needed, accessible to everyone.
There are days when I still experience fear, guilt, shame, e.t.c but despite that I have achieved a lot more than I would have, had I said nothing, done nothing to save myself.
Would it be better never to have gained self-awareness or begun my healing and self-discovery journey? One never wishes one could wear cashmere if one has never heard of it. One never regrets never having swum the turquoise waters off Oahu if one has never heard of Oahu. Are those who never heard of Oahu better off or worse than those who know the name Oahu yet have never been? Which ones are cursed, which blessed? We will never know because we have already awakened to our own trauma, so we must face the reality before us.
By intentionally pursing your own healing and recovery, you will learn how to…
💚 Find and feel more connected to people who treat you well.
💚 Feel energized to pursue your own goals in life
💚 Make self-care a top priority.
💚 Radically lower your tolerance for being mistreated.
💚 Be able to give yourself credit for who you are and what you have done.
💚 Feel and express anger without fear of being abandoned.
💚 Enjoy your solitude.
💚 Feel safer in acknowledging and promoting your self-worth.
💚 Develop patience with yourself.
💚 Use your breath to find the calm inside
💚 Cultivate your own self-respect.
💚 Eat as an act of self-care.
And so much more...
Can you handle it?
You can. It’s not too late. Remember the expression “He who laughs last, laughs longest?” That’s us—the ones who laugh last. In which case, we win. Those who never hated themselves or experienced childhood trauma have laughed and laughed. Lucky them. We who laugh last are just learning how. But with the incandescent wonder that surrounds the new. It’s our turn. Laugh.
(If you liked this article, you might also enjoy Start The Journey of Finding Yourself, “Nyatichi, Why Do You Often Talk About Pain & Suffering?” and Rage, Resentment & All Things Anger)
Girl!!!, though it feels very new and scary, healing is awesome. Its like learning to walk, you keep falling and getting up till its not hard anymore. Let me continue laughing. Thank you.