Wait, not everyone has childhood trauma? It’s not normal to permanently be in fight of flight mode? My need to be a people pleaser is the result of my parents constant arguing?

Can we double it and give it to the next person?

Well, considering the next person would be my son I’m gonna have to say no.

One of the things that is remarkable to me is the human mind. Somehow, it knows things you need to pack away for later when you have the tools to handle it. Okay but imagine you never get the toolbox out or even go into the hardware store.

Weird analogy but I had locked so much of my upbringing in the back of my mind that I often didn’t feel the need to invest in therapy to heal from it. I just kept it moving with the notion of that some have it worse than others and since mine isn’t the worst, I’m okay. There would be moments when I would have a flashback hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember feeling like I was hit by a ton of a bricks by a memory and wondering if I would just always carry this.

The thing is, life continues. You still need to go to work, pay your bills, pull the weeds and so forth. Life doesn’t stop just because you have unhealed trauma. It wasn’t until I had my son that I began to really feel the magnitude of what I had lived through and continued carrying. The more I cared for him, the more I didn’t understand how the ones who were suppose to love me the most could have treated me so horribly with their actions, words and balant neglect.

Lacking resources to see a professional, I tried to talk to some friends about it but very obviously they aren’t professionals either and didn’t have much other to say than, ‘I’m sorry you went through that’ and understandably so. I was just out there trauma dumping hoping SOMEONE would have the profound words that would be the key to unlocking this pain and allowing me to finally take a deep breath again.

I tried some workbooks off Amazon, listening to some blogs but I still didn’t understand how to unpack this alone. The wildest part was I genuinely did not realize how significant my childhood trauma was until I really sat with it. I had always said my Mother was awful but my Dad was great. Then I realized that it’s not normal to survive off of goldfish and soda on the weekends until he finally sobers up for the drive to Wendy’s. It may seem trivial but the magnitude of it rocked me. It was like the snowglobe you held so tightly finally breaking, everything came flooding out.

At this same point in my life, I knew if I did not want to repeat the cycle with my son that I needed to extreme changes to my life immediately. At this point, I was a stay at home mom earning no personal income and really having limited contact with the outside world aside from going to other kids birthday parties and keeping up to date with my friends on social media.

Needing significant change, I began my own business virtually assisting business owners. As the stars would align it, I would begin working with a Spiritually based healer to finally begin unpacking what felt like a boulder that I had been carrying on my back. I’m not going to bullshit you, there were times I wanted to run from it. I wanted to quit and put my hands over my ears to block it all out.

But I didn’t.

I kept pushing through.

One of the hardest parts was realizing the Tiffany I was at the beginning was an entirely different person and now I needed to start from ground zero. One of the things that meant was cutting a lot of people out of my circle. Some fell on their own and others needed tough conversations. Including one with my Father that led me to cutting off contact with him two years ago.

I will be sharing more of my healing moving forward. If I can help one person realize they are not their trauma, it was not their fault and begin to heal then it will be worth it.

You are so much more loved than you think you are.