Dear Writer,
My kids haven’t learned to drive. It was a double-whammy of my not having a lot of time, and them not wanting to learn. The result of this horrible oversight in my parenting was that I drove to and from Columbus, in a single day, twice in a week, to fetch and return my oldest for Thanksgiving.
It was exhausting.
But also, amazing.
Ideas are flowing. I have a new story I’m working with and it completely opened up for me, just from driving and listening to music. I had Spotify play random songs based on my taste, and when I liked one for the book, I hit the heart on Car Play and it was saved to my favorites, where I’ll pull it out later when I build the soundtrack I’ll use while doing the collage and writing.
I’m kind of excited. I haven’t had this much energy for writing in such a long time.
And the thing is… I’d kind of given up.
Trauma fucks with you, hard. I’d grown up experiencing a constant low-level IV drip of trauma without realizing it, but it wasn’t until this last tangle with the Trauma Bear…
…that I really understood what it does. And during this last bloody fight, I lost a lot. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t listen to music. It wasn’t just that it was hard; I couldn’t do it. I thought I was never going to write another book, ever again.
And let’s face it… I still might not. But I am feeling the connection to the work again. My brain was overflowing with ideas, so much so that I had to tell Siri to hit up the voice memos so I could talk out what I was thinking while I was driving.
I haven’t had to do that in a very, very long time.
It’s so strange, how I recognize Trauma Bear scars everywhere now. I see the scars in my marginalized friends, how their experiences in a society that treats them as lesser or broken create trauma, often generational, that lives in their bones. I see the scars in my co-workers who rush into meetings late, apologizing and seeming perplexed with themselves; they never used to be late to meetings. I see the scars in responses on social media, in strangers I don’t even know. I’m compassionate now in a way I never used to be, partially because I’ve healed enough to be compassionate with myself, and partially because it’s just so everywhere that my first response when someone is sad, angry or distant is to look for the familiar Trauma Bear scars and…
… yep. There they are.
So why am I talking about trauma? Again?
Because you have the scars, too. I know you do, without even hearing anything from you. I may not see you on social media, I may never hear from you in the comments or my inbox, but I know you have them because you live in a world full of global trauma and all of us have gotten swiped by Trauma Bear. Even those of us who have been unreasonably lucky, who haven’t gotten sick, who haven’t gotten long COVID, who haven’t lost anyone to this disease… we are living in a different, much scarier, world. And that’s where trauma comes from; when your sense of basic personal safety is threatened, that’s when Trauma Bear comes and takes a swipe at you. There is no one in this world who is aware of what’s happening that doesn’t bear the scars to some extent.
Even the lucky ones.
I’ve become the unofficial Trauma Whisperer at work. I’ll meet with someone on Zoom and they’ll say something… I’m so sorry I’m late/can’t remember what we talked about last time/fighting back tears and I don’t know why… and then I tell them all about Trauma Bear and what it means and that they should take breaks and naps and not expect to be at their best.
Box breathing. Small steps. Good enough is good enough.
I made peace with all of that a while ago, because my big tussle with Trauma Bear happened some years before the pandemic. For a long time, part of me has thought that Trauma Bear had swiped me too deeply and I would never get those parts of me back that he took. When the pandemic happened, I let him in to take his swipe. I knew there was no escaping him, but because I’d been in therapy for a long time before he came in, I knew how to handle him.
Box breathing. Small steps. Good enough is good enough.
But then, I took a long drive, the way I used to when I was going to give writing workshops or go to conferences. And I played music, the way I used to when I was in discovery for new stories. And the story sat down in the passenger seat and started chatting so furiously, I had to pull over to get it all down.
Just like old times.
Trauma Bear leaves scars, and he takes away some parts of you in his claws after he finally retreats. You will never be a person who hasn’t had a chunk taken out of them after a tangle.
But you are now, and always will be, you. That was my biggest fear, that I would never get myself back.
But I did.
So will you.
Everything,
L
".../fighting back tears and I don’t know why…" I find this happening at the oddest times. I had to put my sunglasses on to hide the spontaneous tears that were welling up while I waiting for my chai latte at my local coffee shop on Saturday morning. The trigger? The owner, who has three daughters - one my daughter's age - had told me that he'd put IOUs at the counter for each girl on my daughter's volleyball team (they won the state championship ... first time ever) so they could get a hot drink or an ice cream. It was such a simple act of kindness, generosity, and community ... and for some reason, it kind of broke me a little. Even now, thinking about it, I'm tearing up. <sigh>