Landslide

Good morning, my Lovelies! You're getting a bonus blog. Don't you feel special?

Before I begin, let me take a moment to give a shout-out to my reader(s) in Portugal. I'm not sure how you found me, but your continued support is much appreciated! Stand up and take a bow, pat yourself on the back, and know that it brings a smile to my face to see that you've taken the time to endure my ramblings.

This morning I woke up with an overwhelming urge to discuss trauma. It is my firm belief that we all experience trauma, to some degree, at one point or another in our lives. Physical, mental, spiritual, it happens. Our trauma is unique to each of us, just as the results of that trauma are unique to each of us.

My earliest traumatic memory is from a camping trip that we were on when I was about eight years old. I was swimming in the lake, relaxing and enjoying some summer fun, floating along and daydreaming as the sun beat down on me while I cooled off from the unrelenting heat and humidity. At some point, odd noises broke through my musings and I raised my head from the water to find a crowd had gathered on the beach and they were all screaming at me to get out of the water. I looked behind me to try to figure out what was going on and realized that a Water Moccasin was gliding toward me and was less than three feet away.

To this day I'm not exactly sure how I managed to get out of that situation unscathed, but I can tell you that I've never looked at a snake the same way again. Then there was that time I was a newly licensed 16-year-old driver and managed to single-handedly jackknife a semi. Not much scarier than looking in your rearview mirror and seeing the grill of one of those big-ass trucks barreling down on you. Thank goodness the driver suddenly realized that I was there waiting to make a turn. He wrecked his truck, took out an electric pole, and caused mass panic for the people who were waiting for me, but I survived physically unharmed.

The age of 16 was rough for me. Not only did I have that incident, but I was also awakened one morning by my mother with her passing along the news that a friend of mine had been in an accident overnight and drowned. The mental anguish and heartbreak this caused still haunts me and there are times that I find I put myself in the scenario that he faced and wonder what that horror was like for him.

Then there was the self-induced trauma of taking a pregnancy test in the bathroom of a restaurant in an effort to hide my misdeeds from my parents. Okay, so that might have been scarier than facing that tractor-trailer. No 16-year-old should have to feel the need to hide when they've made a mistake. And while I'm certainly not saying that my actions were a mistake, because it was an experience I was ready for, it was, however, a mistake not to take necessary precautions.

So why am I talking about trauma? Reactions. How do we react when faced with difficult and traumatic situations? We all handle things differently. Some are able to push that trauma down and go on as if nothing has happened. Some have a constant reel of what and why that plays in our heads. Some of us break down and deal with our thoughts and emotions, eventually moving on. 

Some of us close ourselves off, afraid of being hurt, afraid of taking chances. And just as every trauma is different, with different reactions, our healing from that trauma is different, as well. 

Life can be a beautiful but fucked up mess. The older I get the more I realize that, and the more I realize that, no matter our trauma, we have to move forward, we have to take chances, we have to keep trying. We have to live. 

Otherwise, we might miss out on the moments that make life worthwhile.

As always,

Much love from me to you!

Shelly (a/k/a Dawn Love)