Healing Trauma: We Are Not What Happens To Us

Healing Trauma:

Having a parent with alcoholism is traumatic to say the least. But we are not what happened to us.

She looked into my big brown eyes - her disease spoke words that broke me.

Her disease told me things daily for years like “you should never have been born” and “everything would be better if you weren’t alive” and “you’re ruining everything for everyone”.

Her disease took her away from me.

Her words tore into me and ripped out my sense of self, my inner trust, and my trust in others.

The disease of alcoholism create self-loathing, low self-esteem, and self-abandonment.

I abandoned myself.

I was fractured into a million pieces, but these parts were not broken forever.

For a large portion of my adult life I felt broken beyond repair - I couldn’t comprehend how alcoholism could create such a monster in the women I know and love today.

If you were to tell me the story of a little girl being told day after day that she shouldn’t exist and that her very existence is ruining everyone else’s lives I couldn’t imagine she could have survived it.

She did though - I did.

She overcame alcoholism, and I made it through the traumatic experience.

She survived it - she is a survivor - I am a survivor.

I may be talking about myself in this story, but I’m also talking about you as well.

We all experience trauma throughout our lifetime, “small t and big T” traumas that shape us.

Your experiences may have had different details, but the end result is the same - it may have even left you feeling broken like me.

I want you to know something, you are not your past, you are not what happened to you, and you are not broken.

How does one heal from a traumatic childhood?

Healing happens through the inner child.

One doesn’t heal from the adult conscious mind, but rather, by going inward to reconnect and reparent the younger parts of ourselves referred to as the inner child.

The inner child needs one thing more than anything else - to feel safe.

Healing occurs when we are able to reparent the parts of the child that didn’t feel safe (the security of met needs).

Secure safe attachments are foundational to confidence, inner peace, passion, joy, trust, and love.

Each and every one of us has an inner child; a part of us that holds subconscious beliefs from felt experiences.

In adulthood we GET TO heal those subconscious beliefs by giving our inner child parts what it needed in during the time of the traumatic experience.

I want to add that trauma can be a small event or a big event, it’s not the event itself that does the damage, it’s what we made it mean about us - about the world we existed in.

As a healing adult, we get to step in when our inner child is triggered and feeling suppressed emotions like fear, sadness, or anger. By letting her know that she is loved, that she is enough, and that she is safe and seen, the fractured pieces begin to reform , reconnect, and heal.

Each time we do this, the strong identification with the past softens and we become less and less connected to what “happened to us” (to the attachment) and more connected to what we have become from it - we become present in our bodies in this moment.

I was recently asked what I’m most grateful for in my life and my response was surprising, “I am most grateful for my mother’s disease and the journey through it, out of it, and into what I am today.”

Like a fractured bone that grows back stronger at the break, one becomes stronger and more powerful with every experience we endure and heal from.

We are not what happens to us, we are what we become as a result of rising up and healing from it.

Healing is possible.

My parts are not broken forever.

Your parts are not broken forever.

We are powerful beyond measure.

* If you, or someone you know, is in need of inner child healing work, please reach out to begin the work that can change everything. You can contact me through the ‘contact page’ on my website or emailing me at: tanya@tanyaouhrabka.com

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