Friends, Happy Sunday! I want to share this wonderful podcast dialogue with you. In my conversation with singer Sheena Grobb, we get into some really deep material that I believe is fundamental to the human experience. Both the question of when a physical ailment may be a response to a traumatic event—particularly when the emotions related to it were repressed—and the equally as important question about the personal and subjective nature of trauma. Sheena bravely shares a very personal story about something that occurred in her life at the age of 14, and while it may not fit into the typical categories of trauma… it clearly was for her. Sharing this is part of her personal ReBraving journey, a journey that I believe is essential, one way or another, for most of us on this planet.
It’s a wonderful thing that we are beginning to normalize the conversation about trauma and to craft a safer cultural container around it. But one of the essential next steps is to really understand that trauma is a uniquely personal, subjective experience. It is not limited to familiar cultural categories. Anything can be a trauma, depending on how the person having the experience is internally organized. This quote from my upcoming book, Humanifestations: On Trauma, Truth, and Transformation, speaks to this issue:
“If someone says that they were traumatized, they were traumatized. It’s that simple. Trauma is a subjective experience. It makes no difference if you can relate to their experience, or if it fits into culturally approved trauma categories. What matters is that the person identified their experience as a trauma. That’s all we need to know. If we can move our compassion needle in this direction, we will truly change the world. “
Below are some links to the show, if it calls to you. And if it does, please follow, rate, and review, wherever you are listening:
Blessings, Jeff
I was touched by this in a way that I was not expecting to be. Because I have worked with people who have disabilities, I was delightfully amazed at her ability to navigate her illness in a non-traditionally medical way. And then, as the podcast unfolded her story regarding her traumatic event, I felt almost as if I had been punched in the stomach; I began to get nauseous. Having attended 9 schools in 12 years, I remember the tremendously unsavory pull of peer pressure to belong, of having to survive the appeasement of the school rights of passage.
As an adult with my own two sons, it was inherent in my advocacy for them as their mom, to listen deeply to who they were becoming not only in their life interests and academic development, but also in their individual development of a healthy ego and sense of true Self. I truly believed, from my own life experience, that this was the single most important ingredient to living a successful experience of one’s life., that no matter what challenge or disturbance might come their way, if they lived truly their authentic self and walked the path of their deepest callings, that they would overcome any obstacles and be ok. This is what held me together through all of the traumas of my own life, and I wanted to impress this wisdom upon them as well.
There were many times in their twenties, when their impatience to be all they attempted to be right now caused me to worry that perhaps my formula for their success, though consistently administered in my parenting “skills”, was just pie-in-the-sky wishful ideation, and just because it was good for me, was it my place to color their psychic-social-spiritual views as such? I had no vested interest in what careers they would choose, just that they followed the unique design of their own callings. And they began to question the choice of their paths at a crossroad… to follow their hearts or give into the dictates of capitalistic cultural definitions and the conditioning of their peers.
So, what struck me most about this podcast with Sheena Grobb was the ache of the courage it takes to follow our true callings and live our true authenticity. Authenticity is not something that is carved from the outside, but it is grown from the inside depths of who we are. And it doesn’t come with courage; courage is what grows when making the hard life decisions to bravely choose the inner voice of authenticity over the outside voices that choose power over us. And, if we do not choose to listen to our own authentic inner voice, there is a price to be paid. We can actually get sick; our physical body-mind-spirit truth will suffer the consequences of illness.
As my sons are now living in their late thirties, their lives are bearing the fruit of the courage it has taken over these lifetime of years to come into the successes of their callings. Somehow, the seeds planted and nourished through the years of my sharing my own truth, have come to grow deeply and have held honor within their own hearts. They have become strong in their own inner drive, fueled by their own authentic callings, and their expressions have come back to me in words of thanksgiving. For this, I am thankful.