6 Ways Your Life Changes When You Find the Power in Your Trauma Story
What actually happens when you alchemize your abuse? How does your life change?
Here are 6 milestones you can expect to cross once you begin this journey:
Milestone #1: Nourish your self-love
When you alchemize your abuse, you remove the shame that has been blocking you from seeing and understanding the full picture.
By connecting with who you were at the time and seeing the violence that happened to you with new eyes, you can foster a new sense of self-compassion.
Milestone #2: Reconnect with your feelings without shame
You learn how to tell your story without excuses, denial, dismissal, or judgment.
You reconnect with the feelings of powerlessness and hurt that come up around your trauma, without shame.
You can’t feel your own pain unless something in you cares about that pain. Your pain won’t talk to you if you treat it like a problem to get rid of.
When you alchemize your abuse, you approach the pain inside with loving care.
Milestone #3: Liberate parts of your Self
Often when we experience abuse, there are reactions and impulses that get locked up in us.
Fight gets locked up when you feel powerless.
Boundaries, when your needs are neglected and run over.
Voice, when you are not heard or you are punished for speaking up.
Strength, when acting small is the only way you can access some level of protection.
Your divine life purpose, when healing your wounds becomes the center of your life.
Unless you learn how to free them, these responses will continue to live, unexpressed, inside you.
It’s easy to think of this as just part of your personality – “Oh, I don’t like to fight” / “I’m just shy” – when in reality they are lost parts of yourself. Parts of yourself that you could get back.
By alchemizing your abuse, you connect with those aspects of your Self.
Milestone #4: Feel powerful
Once you reclaim those lost parts of your Self, you naturally begin to identify as a powerful person as you move through the world.
You no longer feel powerless, and you finally know you have the capacity to protect yourself.
Milestone #5: Meet your medicine
The medicine you are here to bring to the world has been cooking within your trauma.
It’s really true: we are wounded healers.
By viewing your abuse without shame, your greatest gifts will reveal themselves.
Milestone #6: Eldership
If you’ve ever wondered why some of the most powerful people in the world always seem to feel attacked, it’s because they still identify as only victimized by others.
We need leaders within our communities who understand how powerful they are and use their deep understanding + compassion for a broader social good.
We need people who can genuinely see and bear witness to others and the human condition.
Great elders know who they are, and they’ve made something out of the suffering they’ve been through – something other than the “I hate the world” stance people take after spending years in shame and suppressed emotions.
Of course, we want to unshame and alchemize our own abuse. But by knowing this tool set, you also become a loving witness for other people.
Understanding your own story and trauma is a huge need in the world. Knowing your own power, limits, and humanity can prevent you from perpetuating shame and abuse against others as well.
As the great poet-activist Maya Angelou said to those who are struggling: “Do you know you’re the best we have? Do you know we don’t have anybody better than you? Do you know everyone that came before you paid for you to be here?”
You become an inspiration to others.
In this way, alchemizing abuse creates ripple effects that can change not only your own life, but society as a whole.
As you ponder this, I invite you to reflect on what parts of yourself you may be locking up because of trauma you’ve experienced.
Abuse & Trauma: The Unshaming Way is my new 6 week course on integrating your abuse and trauma, so that you can live your fullest and most authentic life.
Through this course, you will progress through the above milestones to create a life that feels radically authentic and expressive of your whole self.
