It’s time to acknowledge the lasting impact of grief and trauma

We truly have no idea about many things until we have lived those things. Like grief. We can talk about loss until the cows come home, but until we’ve experienced the irreconcilable stuckness of grief that cannot be changed or impacted we really don’t know what we’re talking about—indeed, what we’re talking about is a departure from one life into the entrance of another, and it is stark the contrast.

Any “grief” that is a temporary sojourn before normality arrives soon enough isn’t grief in the way many of us have come to know it.

Loss occurs for many reasons. It’s not just the death of a loved one. It’s divorce. It’s being scapegoated. It’s career loss or redirection. It’s relocation against one’s will. It’s anything we didn’t choose that has a lasting impact.

Trauma has a lasting impact. It’s like the lady I rendered first aid to nearly ten years ago, where I gave expired air resuscitation. I breathed for her for twenty minutes before sprinting half a mile for a defibrillator in office shoes. Little did I know it at the time, but that kind of action, with adrenalin coursing through my arteries and veins, caused me to react physically for two full weeks after, including a constant headache, stiffness in the neck, blurred vision, muscular spasms, etc.

I did not know this woman (who later died) and yet the act of trying to save her caused a lingering trauma, that thankfully only lasted a few weeks. This is not the kind of lasting impact that true PTSD and C-PTSD survivors face constantly or intermittently through their lives—the effects of their trauma manifests in a way that changes their lives from those moments of trauma forth.

If you’ve been changed by grief or trauma—or by whatever you’d choose to call it—and that change has lingered long enough for you now to know there is no going back, you know what I’m saying is true.

Let me validate your experience. You’re not weak, nor are you less than Christian. 

If you’ve been so hurt that full forgiveness still seems so far off, even when it was a long time ago, don’t assume you lack grace. The gift of a different perspective is still on its way. Don’t stress.

If you struggle to trust, there are reasons you struggle to trust, and God doesn’t condemn you one iota—God understands your struggle, your effort, your journey, your pain. Your struggle to trust is based in the strength of logical reason. It’s not a simple fix.

If you cannot control the tears, the pain within you is real, it is valid, it hurts like hell, and all the more it shows you as an empathic lover of goodness who grieves what is lost because anyone with a heart would. Those with big hearts feel pain all the more acutely. Your inability to control your sorrow is because you are so full of loving tenderness, which is such a godly trait.

If you struggle with the cycles of anger, sadness and guilt, and still cannot reconcile all the myriad fractures in your relationships, this is for reasons of reality. Let’s not fob you off as being less-than. You’re amazing that you try so hard to integrate love and relationships so perfectly you’re bound to fail because you’re human.

What all of this has taught you is this. There are few simple answers to the complex questions of life. You’ve become guarded around clichés for good reason. Your wisdom has been sharpened, and your discernment piqued. You’re not the same, and even though you’d have what you had back in a heartbeat, you are somehow a person better equipped for now and future, but that isn’t in terms that the world would see.

Through you enduring your pain, you’ve been prepared for something out of this world. That reality is coming to all of us sooner or later. In the meantime, empathy and compassion are the gifts of lasting relevance you’ve received as compensation for what you went through and continue to endure.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash