It's never too late to start healing

I have heard so many people say things like, “It’s too late for me to heal what happened” and “There’s no one who could help me” or “I’m too old to get help for this.” These statements are some of what has motivated to write about trauma and to create a better understanding about healing from trauma.

I believe it is harder to heal from trauma the older you are—but not because you are old. As I have described in an earlier blog, repeated trauma or long term trauma is not one trauma. It is really 3 forms of trauma. The first form of trauma is the trauma that you experienced—the ‘what did happen.’ The second form of trauma are the protections –the defenses—the way of being that you created to survive the trauma. These protections become a part of your personality, your way of being, your habits and routines. And the third form of trauma, the unseen impact of trauma, is what didn’t happen- it is all the things you didn’t or couldn’t do or learn because you were living in trauma. It is the experience of peace and calm, it is where your attention could have gone if it weren’t focused on survival.

It is harder to heal from trauma when you are older not because you are old, and an old dog can’t learn new tricks, or there aren’t good people to work with you and your trauma, it is harder because you have lived for so much longer with the protections and defenses. You have lived so much longer behind your wall—and it feels impossible to imagine any other way of being. It feels impossible to imagine being outside of the prison with the wind on your face—in a world where you don’t know the rules. Healing from trauma means letting go of these protections—living without them—for moments at first, and then gradually for hours, days, months. And it means risking new behavior, risking experiencing the ‘what didn’t happen.’

And I describe it as a risk on purpose. Living with your old protections, living as if the trauma could happen at any time again—that feels safe.  There was Japanese Lieutenant Hiroo Onada who held out fighting on a Philippine Island from 1944 until he was finally found and relieved of his duties in 1974. 1974. The war had been over for decades. But continuing to fight the war sometimes feels more sane. It makes the war more worthwhile. It provides hope for a different outcome. It can be so hard to let go of the war knowing that when you do, it is really over. It happened and you can’t change the outcome. Surrender really is surrendering the hope for an outcome that can’t happen.

Leaving the world of trauma, of your protections, where you are always ready to go back, is a big move. And anyone’s hesitation about healing, about wondering whether it’s worth it, or whether they can handle it, is a valid worry. It isn’t easy. It involves a lot of hard work, and it involves a lot of grief. Only in the quiet after the war can you begin to remember and feel what it felt like during the war. When you finally start living without your protections, when you finally start risking the new experiences—really, only then, can you fully feel what it felt like to live through the trauma at all. And many people catch glimpses of this grief and think it would be impossible, think that they wouldn’t survive it, they catch a glimpse and they say, “No way.”. But they forget the most important thing: they already have survived it. The grief is old. It is painful, but it will go.

There’s no magic in healing. You won’t become someone else. But you will get to experience yourself without the emotions of survival running your life. You will get to see your life not just in a past-perfect tense of what happened and what might have been, but also in the present, and the future- of what might be. No, it’s not easy to surrender your island of trauma, the safety that you know, to risk a different safety, a peaceful safety decades later. No it’s not easy, but you were strong enough to survive—which means you are more than strong enough to heal.

© Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD 2014/2024

An Invitation to Change the World

You are hereby invited, encouraged—NEEDED—to change the world. Not the whole world, just a piece of it. Just the piece that you can reach. That you can see. That you can pick up and carry.

And maybe this isn’t so much an invitation to make change so much as it is a plea for you to value and honor the changes that you make in the world every day. Every time you share your love. Every time you experience joy. Every time you bring that bit of joy to your work or your relationships.

It always seems that someone bigger, or more important should be making the change. It seems like in order to make change, you would need status, or money, or power. But big voices have said important things in powerful places time and time again, and the mountains didn’t move at all. Because that’s not how change works.

We always look for big moves. Big changes. Events. This is not how change works.

What people call transformational change is really that moment of incremental change where there is a developmental shift. Where a perspective shifts. Where a capability emerges. You don’t get transformation without increments ---without the patience of putting one foot in front of the other. And you don’t get increments unless you are willing to believe that small acts matter.

I know that there are wrenching and painful and awful problems in the world right now. And I know that in the face of it all, it can feel like any act is too small. Or useless. Or pointless. I know that my small act today won’t change the course of a war, or homelessness, or poverty tomorrow.

But humanity and its changes aren’t linear. We humans move more like a murmuration than a machine. Someone shifts their course—inspires action in another and something shifts, slightly, but importantly.

This is an invitation to bring to the world ‘that thing you do.’ Whatever it is. With as much love and tender care as you can. With as much passion and fierceness as needed. With the quiet constancy that isn’t heard but is felt. It seems too small. But you have no idea how big it really is.

I know that when people bring their gifts to the world something changes. Somethings heals. Something grows. I know because I have seen it. I have felt it so deeply.

Just this week someone listened to me and helped me hold something old and hurt. Just this week someone took a risk and imagined a day where all of their employees got to have their experience validated—and with that validation and support, got to change the conversation. Just this week someone was brave enough to call a family member and share something that they had learned. Just this week someone shared their love and someone shared their stories of love. Just this wekk someone helped their child persist in their struggle. Every one of these moments moved someone else to listen, or to have compassion, or to try something new.

It's true that there are mountains big enough to create their own weather. But it is also true that butterflies fly thousands of miles to migrate. One flap of their wings at a time.

Emotions are contagious. Bravery is contagious. Inspiration is contagious. In the face of someone’s courage we are helpless not to be moved to be courageous ourselves. And when we are the recipients of someone bringing their love and passion to their day—we are changed—you know this to be true, you have felt yourself changed the way I have.   

It’s true that nothing that you or I will do on any given day will likely make the news or create an impact we can see. And even those who do make the news feel powerless and helpless much of the time to change the things that they want to change.

Our problem isn’t that we don’t have the power to make change. Our problem is that we don’t have faith in what actually creates change. We need to have a different faith about change. A faith that believes in the small act. A faith in human care and interest. A faith in human mistakes and moments of repair. We need a faith that believes that love transforms not because of what ‘it’ is, but because of its power to help you get every morning and be who you are, and bring the love you have to the world around you. We want the power of a waterfall, but forget that the power comes from infinite small drops.

© 2024 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

Oasis

It wasn’t any angel who hovered,

wings high, upright body,

head bowed, not in prayer,

so much as attention.

But really, any blessing

in a desert feels holy.

A small spark of energy

on a still hot morning

where all I can find are

fragments and pieces,

no threads to weave

them together.

Sometimes just enough has

healed to make the climb.

Sometimes the path through

the burning sand gives way

to water and a grove of palms.

Sometimes when it seems

you can’t take one more step

you realize that it’s breathing

and friendship that will always

save you—

and you remember to have faith

that the deep sacred well

that feeds the beating wings

of angels, (okay, hummingbirds)

and creeping lizards

and circling hawks

is also waiting for you,

just out of sight.

© 2024 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

Grow What You Can

A spring rain is falling on my garden this morning. It is lush and green, and it is a really different garden than the one I planned and created at the start of the pandemic.

For the three years of Covid my little urban garden was both sanctuary and therapy. When I moved in it was a scruffy backyard with some raised beds. I watched Gardener’s World on YouTube and sketched new perennial borders. I combed through seed catalogs buying too many seed packets, and then growing 1000’s of seedlings under lights in the winter. I planted hundreds of Spring bulbs. I planted native flowers and perennials. I had 4 raised beds of vegetables. I worked all day on Zoom, in a virtual world, and spent many evenings with my hands in dirt, reconnecting with something real, something that I could do, some way I could feel useful in a world that felt uncertain.

And then last Spring I broke both my legs and returned home in late summer to a wildly overgrown garden that I was still physically unable to tame. I hired a landscaper to cut back the overgrowth and reestablish order—with new borders and lawn put in where some of my old gardens were. I lost the plants at the edges, the hardy geraniums, the lady’s mantle. Landscapers are good at creating edges and putting in lawns, but they don’t know plants—so many of my perennials were ripped out in the process of ‘clean up.’ In the end it looked green and tidy. But it wasn’t the garden I planned, and it made me sad. I felt like I lost a friend. I had grown attached to the plants I grew from seed. I was attached to my daily work with them.

It's amazing how attached we can become to the things we do to cope—how our life rafts can become fortresses. Even when our life or context shifts. We miss our life raft, even though we are now on dry land.

This Spring my pre-covid work life has returned which means that I am once again working in person, far away, for long stretches of time. No more daily gardening time. I am lucky to get a few hours in my garden every two weeks. This winter I looked longingly at my seed catalogs and had to concede that I wasn’t going to be home to take care of something so tender. My lighted seedling shelves are storing canning supplies. This year my garden couldn’t start with seeds.

Yesterday I went to a local garden center and walked past all of the rows, looking at all the fabulous seedlings. Standing amongst all of the plants, I was hit with a wave of sadness—longing for all the plants that really aren’t possible this year. In years past I would have stocked up on tomato plants and varieties of different vegetables, but when you are gone for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, its nearly impossible to grow vegetables. I stood in the aisle, scanning the plants, seeing only what I couldn’t grow. Seeing only what I couldn’t do.

But fortunately, it’s hard to stay cheerless in a place that’s filled with color: petunias, marigolds, pansies, geraniums. I stared at all the color and heard myself say out loud: just grow what you can. So, I bought two flats of zinnias and snapdragons.  Zinnias and snapdragons are annuals and annuals don’t mind a little neglect. They will survive drought and rain.

When I got home from the garden center, I spent a rainy afternoon weeding and preparing the raised beds and tucking the zinnia and snapdragon seedlings into the ground. I put up my tripod poles and planted my sweet pea seeds in my eternal hope of having climbing flowers (ever hopeful). And I did plant three eggplants because even if I don’t get an eggplant this year, the pale purple flowers are worth growing for themselves.

Sometimes all you can do is grow what you can. Growing what you can means acknowledging and even grieving what you can’t. Growing what you can usually means growing something smaller than you wanted—or slower than you wanted. Or growing something entirely different. Growing what you can is a compromise—between what you want and where you want to go. Between the present and the future.

Growing what you can allows you to connect with, and even enjoy an in-between place. To spend an afternoon with my hands in dirt with flats of hopeful seedlings. To imagine the color in July. To imagine the jelly jars of flowers that I will give away.  To repair or grow as needed, at a pace that allows it. Growing what you can means above all—that there is still growth. It may not be what you want. But it may be just what you need.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD