the past

I have an old friend from long ago who went on to become a doula and builds her whole life around pregnancy and childbirth.  She is getting more involved in still birth, infant loss and miscarriage and introduced me to a website which honors the BIRTHDAY of babies who didn't survive.  It's really intense stuff, and I visit these thoughts and emotions when I can, but I cannot breathe it all in daily.  The poignancy of that particular website is that it honors and remembers lost lives, when the general population dismisses these lives and tends to say, 'Don't Worry, You'll Have Another...'

Many of the therapeutic approaches I've been thrown into involved shedding the past, forgetting about it, and just move forward from this point on.  Doctors had been quick to diagnose me and medicate me, telling me it was all biological brain chemistry.

But trauma is different.  I read this quote yesterday from one of the docs at the center I go to:

"...if the events have been recurrent or we are young and vulnerable or have inadequate support, we can be left with a host of intense responses and symptoms that 'tell the story' without words and without knowledge that we are remembering events and feelings from long ago.'

I grew up with violence, had a terribly violent high school boyfriend, and while I've risen above it and try not to live in the past, it happened.  I have come a looooooong way.  I remember fear stifling me any time I ever encountered aggression in the workplace.  All kinds of scenarios would trigger responses.

Now that I'm getting a better handle on my 'responses,' I feel like I'm on a more, hmmmm, what's the word....'steady' path.  But I still have a long way to go.