Trauma survivor, you are more courageous than you know

Let this be a letter to anyone who has had things happen to them that were unbelievably hard, which have left indelible effects, and that were not in any way their fault.

You are more courageous than you know.

To wake up of a morning with a whole day—or even a terrifying moment—bearing down on you. To envisage not just the enormity of a whole day before you, but the calamity that the next hour brings. To manage the tyranny of one’s thoughts, besides the physical symptoms and signs that bear witness to pain, tension, bloatedness, exhaustion, etc.

To constantly feel out of control, that others are controlling you, to feel utterly dependent on therapy and meds even though you hate it, yet to continue to do the best you can, that’s humility and courage.

To reconcile hunger without being able to keep anything down. To take a chance to eat something and then to have an adverse reaction. To never be able to fully control how the body will cope. And then there’s the thoughts—whether they circle like sharks or cower like mice. With all of that and more, just know:

You are more courageous than you know.

Without getting into how life came to be this way, to accept what cannot be accepted yet can only be lived—that’s courage.

To give someone the gift of a smile when everything in you wants to cry—that’s love; that’s sacrifice. That willingness to pour the self out because, in your conception of things, the other person deserves care; that’s love, and that love is sponsored by courage. And yet, to not be enough in these situations when there’s nothing to give; that’s humility. To say, “I don’t have it in me right now,” is the courage of calling a boundary for your own survival. This is not weakness; it’s strength to know when to bow out, and doubly, it’s wisdom. It’s being gentle with yourself. And every time the choice is made to go the other way, to continue to battle on in all conviction, that, again, is courage.

You are more courageous than you know.

When I say you’re more courageous than you know, it is truthful to this degree. It may be acceptable to agree with this statement for a short time. But you may not be able to perpetually live with the truth that you’re courageous beyond measure, to keep bearing the effects of trauma each and every day, knowing that you’re brave in just being conscious.

To manage the dimension of time, and accommodate the intrusions of past, present and future, and to juggle these complexities with the compounding effect of the dimensions of space in this physical world, with relationships and situations and circumstances, many of which are unpredictable; that, can be overwhelming. To be in a state of overwhelm is, of itself, in that moment, courage.

Courage beyond measure. Humility beyond question. Honesty beyond denial. These are what the trauma survivor exemplifies.

And anyone who reads this knows I’m just scratching the surface. Just know, you are more courageous than you can know. Keep it up!

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash