The phrase “post traumatic growth” immediately feels dangerous to me. It’s way too easy for us to fall into toxic positivity and emotional bypassing, which are the deadly enemies of actual growth.
Post traumatic growth is going to mean facing reality and all of its discomfort. The only way through it is through, which many days feels impossible.
But then I think about seeds, and how they are made to grow. Under the right conditions, they will just grow. For me, some of the right conditions are beauty and nature and connection and reality, holding the pain and the peace together. When I allow myself to be there, growth happens.
A seed won’t grow if it’s under a rock, and sometimes we need to move obstacles to our own growth.
With grief comes clarity about what is right for us, and what is not. Allow the right, and release what’s not right. Slowly, with understanding and self compassion, we move toward congruence and the reclamation of our Self.
We often think of how to make meaning after a terrible loss. People do such wonderful things in honor of lost loved ones: foundations, charities, discovering a life’s work. Those can be wonderful paths of post traumatic growth.
I’ve just found that, for myself, most days I can wake up and breathe until lunch time, and then I need a nap. But through love and care and self compassion, that’s okay. This life I’m discovering is beautiful and congruent for me. More than any time in my life, I feel that I am myself. And that is meaning enough for me, for now. I don’t have to make any more work for myself to conform with anybody else’s idea of meaning.
I wear a necklace that says, “She is light,” gifted to me by a friend just after Libby’s death. And it’s about Libby, because she was full of light. But it’s also about me, finding my own light again.
And so, we end with Mary Oliver, When I am Amont the Trees.
“When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
“I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
“Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, ‘Stay awhile.’
The light flows from their branches.
“And they call again, ‘It's simple,’ they say,
‘and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.’”
Journaling Questions
Where’s your seed right now? Needing to stay buried? Ready to sprout?
Does anything need to be removed to create more favorable conditions for growth?
Do you need more rest, rain, sunlight?
What feels congruent and good and right to you, right now?
Self Compassion by Kristen Neff
The Grieving Brain by Mary O’Connor
It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay by Megan Devine
Resilient Grieving by Lucy Hone