Living With Trauma 6

It isn't all as horrible as I might seem to be making it. Life is a gift. I believe this even more strongly than a lot of the other garbage you've been reading lately that I've written on these pages. But if life is traumatic, as I say that it is, and if it is by extension so full of trauma as to make barely tolerable even the most mundane transactions, then how could it possibly be seen also as a gift? What makes life a gift is the simple fact that we do not give ourselves life. We do not make ourselves alive. This comes from powers much greater than our own puny little selves, Gentle Reader. Life is a gift from God, for the simple reason that we do not give it to ourselves. It comes from God. Therefore life, to be properly understood and appreciated, first has to be received and accepted as a gift. This does not minimize the trauma, which comes not from God but from us. We are the ones who chronically make ugly messes of the beautiful gifts that we are given, over and over again. Trauma first entered the picture when the very first humans decided to abuse this gift of life and, well, the beat goes on. Trauma is the gift that goes on giving. But so is life, itself. In order to live with trauma I have had to learn and cultivate gratitude, because gratitude is the clearest evidence that God is being acknowledged for his gifts. Even when I was homeless and quite profoundly ill from PTSD back in 1998 and 1999, I still felt grateful, and for many reasons. For one thing, I still had friends, some of whom were taking great care to shelter me in their homes. I still enjoyed good health. While staying with my father part time in Robert's Creek on the Sunshine Coast I was grateful for the chance to get to know him better, even though he turned out to be a churlish toad to live with, and for the beautiful hikes I was enjoying in the surrounding countryside and wilderness. I was grateful that I was still able to paint and show my art and that people were still buying some of my work, thus making it easier to survive under the circumstances. I was also grateful for the sense of adventure and for never knowing what direction the road would be taking me in next. When I finally found a place to live I was constantly giving thanks that now I had the same bed I could sleep in every night and the same room to come home to. Even though my sleep was poor because of my mental health concerns I was grateful for waking up at five in the morning so I could enjoy the blood-copper intensity of the first light of the sun as it coloured like bold stains of paint my bedroom wall. Then I began to seriously learn Spanish, and I expressed gratitude that I was already rapidly learning and improving. Even though I was still frightened of people and needing lots of rest I decided to adopt joy as my ongoing motif, discovering for the first time in my life that joy is the very essence of my being, of the person who I am. This happened shortly after I found myself weeping with gratitude while seated in the back of a café reading books from the library about the UN human rights charters and covenants, realizing for the first time in my life, at the age of forty-three, that I actually had fundamental, inalienable human rights. Life still was difficult. I still suffered. But I got through it okay. I heard on the CBC Radio One religious and spirituality program, this afternoon, Tapestry, someone mention that we cannot have joy without suffering and that suffering has to be accepted and embraced first before we can come into and appreciate joy. This morning, during the Quaker meeting I attended, one of the members shared that trust is the fulcrum between fear and love. Wellness, in the face of trauma, is very much found in this process of learning to trust as our means of escaping from fear into love, as it is also found when we face and embrace suffering as an essential part of our journey towards joy. Each day brings its challenges and difficulties; but in the very heart of those difficulties we can find the seeds of hope and joy that will bring forth such abundant life as to nourish us and help us on our pilgrimage of life.