We are in month 20 of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think. It’s hard to gauge how many months have passed or even when to start tracking the months. Is it the first case we became aware of? The first death in the US? Or do we start tracking it on when our world got shut down? The way in which we track the impact of the pandemic on our lives is going to be individual. Individual because trauma is individual.
The way the COVID-19 pandemic intersects with our personal narrative is going to bring past traumas into the present. There is going to be a remembering of what we so long to forget. Trauma is stored in our bodies, what does that mean? It means that our bodies hold our stories even when our minds have no desire or capacity to remember. It is why certain smells can take you back to earlier days. It is why we equate songs, places, foods, sights, and experiences to being either good or bad. It is because our body remembers. With the pandemic we find ourselves still living in, we are all called to remember our “before.” Where we were before everything changed. The last day of kids being in class, the last dinner party, the last birthday celebration, the last vacation, etc. There is heartache in remembering the before. There is heartache in longing to return to what was. And there is freedom in facing where our current trauma is recalling pain from the past. Pain and fear shape how we act and how we react.
Trauma is also collective. Undoubtedly, the world is suffering a collective trauma right now and has been during this pandemic. The places we have constructed for ourselves to make sense of the world, no longer work. The routines and plans we create to keep a sense of control on our lives have been upended. Turning on the news we are faced with increasing devastation and loss. To have been offered a lifeline, the vaccine, the cure to the shutdown and to have it be taken as easily as it was offered is devastating. It is also demoralizing, as humans we are made for community. We are made to share meals, celebrate together, grieve together. Our longing to be back together is real and it is good. The desire to share a smile, a handshake and/or a hug are good desires. The pandemic has tainted those desires with fear.
We are still in the pandemic, the uncertainty of life has been exposed in a way that it has not before, why engage our personal trauma? It is through engaging our trauma and our individual experiences that create a familiar sense to the chaos and harm we are currently experiencing that brings healing. Without healing, anxiety and depression, isolation and fear and pain take precedent. Beginning the brave journey of naming where we are reacting from our past stories in our present, brings healing. And that healing changes our trajectory. We need not live a life protecting our wounds from the past and turning a blind eye to the chaos they are creating in the present. Facing our wounds with kindness, acknowledging that harm was done and is being done, we find freedom and goodness. We begin to feel fully alive, maybe for the first time, maybe it’s been years since you have felt alive. You are worth feeling alive and being free.
We are all exhausted from living through the pandemic. What if instead of being powerless, we used the experience we have for healing? Feeling powerless is a familiar feeling for many, and it’s a feeling that many have vowed to never experience again. Where has that vow to not be powerless and the current pandemic intersecting for you? What wounded places are crying out for care and attention?
You do not have to face the past and the present alone. We are here and available to walk with you as you bravely press forward and declare that you want something more. That you are wanting a life that is alive and connected.
