Trauma is not the traumatic event.

Trauma is the aftermath of self-sacrifice. It consists of beliefs, confusions and tension patterns that unfold after traumatic circumstances interrupt love’s natural earnest. Patterns that can take a lifetime to discern and dissolve.

Healing from childhood paternal sexual abuse has asked me to repeatedly tell my story in an effort to find the gift within the hardship. And there was a gift. The experience inspired a mind body approach to physical alignment—BodyLogos.

BodyLogos means, the body’s Divine wisdom; and, the BodyLogos practice dissolves tension patterns that plague a traumatized body.

BodyLogos has offered me (and others) a way to exorcise trauma held in my body as I exercise. Utilizing my body as my therapist, I’m able to recognize habitual tension patterns, discern the lost-self that fear created, and restore alignment in mind and body.

This restoration of self has not included forgiving my perpetrators: my father’s repeated assaults and my mother’s inability to protect me.

Instead, recognizing trauma’s wake within my own being has helped me see that the person I need to forgive is me.

The process of forgiving is like dismantling a bird’s nest, one stick at a time. In my case, each stick represents the places I fell short. The places I sacrificed myself, and as a result, live dishonestly.

Why couldn’t I just scream, “get out dad!” Loud enough for the world to hear?
Why couldn’t I value my body’s cry? And, silence my mind’s fears.
Why couldn’t I stand up to his misjudgment, so it wouldn’t have continued for 3-years!

If I had stood up at 10-years old for what I needed to love myself, rather than what was needed to gain his love, I wouldn’t have continually questioned if I’m lovable? And, I wouldn’t continually struggle with feeling irrelevant and dispensable.

Many of you will relate to this struggle, and live in a similar trauma, even though your traumatic events are different than mine. Living in trauma is living in the shadows of your story without knowing it.

Instead of feeling empowered by choosing ourselves earnestly and honestly, we fear being punished: losing a job or client, losing a friend, losing a lover.

When I state my own needs the stick I’m trying to pull out of the nest gets snagged on the lack of love and protection I suffered as a kid. The same love and protection I still crave.

The forgiveness I need to embody now reflects this snag.

To forgive myself is to recognize that the fear-based decisions of my youth were, in fact, based in love and protection. Love and protection for my parents. Not the lack of love and protection for myself.

I wasn’t motivated by self-loathing or being unworthy of love and protection. I was simply navigating through a high-stacks game where saving-face for my parents was a matter of survival.

I have the capacity for love and the instincts to protect in spades. It’s now just a matter of directing it toward the life I want.

I’m not the irrelevant dispensable child who was sacrificed to save-face.
I’m a passionate woman who loves deeply and fiercely protects her world.
And for this, I am proud.

May we find compassion for our shadows and restore the light in our world.