Evolving with Trauma: A Spiral Instead of a Line

Oct 1

It's been a while, friend!

We've been so busy this summer that our newsletters got sent to that back burner. This is our first Letter of Embodiment since shifting to House Nine! We're so excited! If you're new to our email list, welcome! Letters of Embodiment is our monthly newsletter written to stay in touch and inspire connection.

This time around, we're focusing on the many faces of healing. I think there is a preconceived notion that healing, specifically healing trauma, is this heavy, big, cathartic, and maybe even a little dramatic process that requires years and years of therapy. Sometimes, it is those things. For sure. Many people need that and that is completely valid. Healing also shows up in the minutiae. It can show up as a shift into lightness, joy, freedom, and pleasure. It's gaining a new perspective. It's a shifting of daily habits or revisiting an old experience in a new way. There isn't one way or one kind of way. Trauma can be healed through laughter and comedy. It can be healed through experiencing pleasure.

A second common notion of healing is that it works like a timeline. The trauma happened, we are now traumatized, we do healing work, and now we are free from said trauma. I don't really see it like that. I view all of life's experiences like a spiral. The event(s) is at the center point. We take steps around it over and over and over again, creating distance and continually seeing it from new angles. It's always with us, but our relationship to the trauma changes, grows, and the intensity lessens as we integrate it. It stays and maybe shapes our future, but in whatever way, we decide it does. It's an event that you are liberated from, but have most definitely learned from and likely always will.

SOME THINGS TO PONDER

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How has your relationship

to a traumatic event changed over the years?

Give an example of when humor

helped you integrate a serious topic.

How have you experienced a

pleasure as a healing tool?