Map Your Healing Journey

This is from a Facebook post about peace and hope that showed up in my memories. November 30, 2018. At that point in my life, I was in the middle of a divorce. And like many divorce experiences, it was messy. But clearly I was in a bigger transition – a transition of healing. A huge shift in my life, both external and internal.

There is often a point when I work with a person and they say, “I have some hope now.” And I think to myself, I can tell you that there will be peace. Because I’ve lived it.

It doesn’t have to be a lot. You don’t need an entire room in your house. Just a sliver of space.

This is a good reminder, especially right now.

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I remember the end of my first counseling appointment with Hannah in July 2006. She held open the door and said, “I can’t promise much, but I can tell you that there will be peace. So hang on. And come back.”

My face streaked with tears, limbs and heart heavy, I trudged through the door and out to my car. I did not believe her.

One of the most important consequences of grief and trauma is the disconnect that can happen between the heart and brain and body. A complete turning-off of emotions.

A poster with a series of faces that show different kinds of emotions and the emotions labeled underneath each face. — I can’t find the one I have, this poster will have to do!

If you know me at all, then you have heard how I (still) have a poster called, “How Do I Feel Today?” A 2’x3′ gray background with illustrated cat faces, each with a different expression and the emotion written underneath. I bought it when my oldest child was four, so 16 years ago. I said it was for him, but really it was for me.

At that point, I was 32 years old, and if I felt an emotion, I could not identify, name, process, or communicate – verbally or otherwise – what I was feeling. I was also sick a lot – in Chinese medicine, emotions and the physical body are the same, and emotions will make themselves known one way or another.

I bought that poster shortly after starting to work with Hannah (whom I still see on a regular basis to this day). At the time, I thought a lot about what she had said at the end of the that counseling appointment: “…there will be peace.”

Frankly, I didn’t want it. I was angry about her words, not that I could identify that emotion at the time.

I didn’t want peace. I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to “be done” with grief and trauma. I wanted to be “all better.”

However, I felt more than one way about her words – this has become a theme in my life, the confluence of several emotions at once about something. She wasn’t promising that I would be fixed or done or all better. But she was promising me something in addition to peace, a lifeline when I felt like I was drowning. A place to float when I was exhausted.

And that, my friends, was hope.

Hope. There’s always space for hope.

Almost every morning, a few friends and I checked in with each other using three simple words via text: “How are you.” Sometimes with a question mark, depending on the laziness quotient on any particular day. On this day in 2018, I received the question, “How are you?” and I automatically replied, “I’m good.”

About 10 minutes later, I circled my way back to my answer. What does “I’m good” really mean? I thought about my cat faces and turned inward and asked myself, “How *do* I feel today?”

I had to think about it for several minutes, because the emotion/state of being felt new and unfamiliar, and not unpleasant at all, and it took time to identify.

“You know,” I finally typed to my friend, “mostly, I feel peaceful. It took me awhile to figure it out.”

“That’s priceless,” she answered.

I thought about Hannah and her words in 2006 and my anger. I thought about all of the work and resilience and hope.

I thought about the sheer determination and will and all of the tears of the last 16 years.

The emotional investment of more than a decade, with only faith that it would yield…something – anything – better than what I had experienced up to that point.

It turns out that Hannah was right. Hope is awesome.

And eventually, there will be peace.

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