If you are living with complex trauma, I want you to know that I see you and recognize the warriorship it takes to rise up within it and devote yourself to learning how to flourish while navigating all the crazy life things.

It’s hard right now.

In a world that creates so much trauma, and it does—this is a traumatic culture that we don’t need to be gaslit about—survivors and thrivers are not seen or respected, but rather, feared, diminished, and are often left alone to learn how to regulate for themselves, because “safe” spaces can end up being pathologizing spaces.

It takes a lot of power to overcome the complexities wired in our nervous systems and unravel into an opening of vitality and life, which can seem terrifying and untrustworthy if your system has never known love.

The energy that pulls you forward, that buoys you is love; it is carrying you into more whole states of you.

When we evolve out of the deep traumas in our systems and open to the loving, innately intelligent energy that is life itself, a love that wants to express itself through you, we enter the exact space where our deepest wound and our greatest gift coexist, rise and fall, emerge and merge into one another.

And, it’s intense.

It hurts like a mofo.

It stretches the heart in vast ways that call for surrender and trust that the divine nature of life, that very one that constructs a butterfly out of goo, can do this for you too—because it’s in these very spaces that those traumas, the deeper, primal ones that aren’t often welcome, arise. The places most in need of love.

Your grief is holy.

So is your rage.

We are meant to roam this earth with the same power as the mountain lion, bears, owls, and ravens. The wild in our world is seen as a threat, and the deeper our complex trauma runs, the more wild in our nature waits for its resurrection.

This wildness is our deepest protection in a world that is not actually safe. No matter how much we try to affirm this for ourselves, we cannot lie to our bodies.

It’s where we get to try on what it feels like to feel safe being safe. Where we learn the difference between triggers and discernment because the body never lies—at times, we are triggered, and sometimes, we are truly having a response to actual absence, neglect, lack of sensitivity, or an environment that is not truly trauma-sensitive, aware, or safe for us. Learning this protects us from a world that gaslights our trauma.

Navigating all of this while living life—running businesses; tending children; mothering and nurturing and serving; creating; birthing your purpose; growing and healing; navigating the world of adulting and relationships—is a lot and takes warriorship of the highest kind.

Remember this when you feel weak, because your true strength is not recognized.

This is the strength that is always there, pulling you forward, giving you nudges, pulling you to stop the things that don’t feel good, to add in the things that do—teaching you how to return to the wisdom of your body for care and grieving for all you have survived.

You are powerful.

And, yes, your gifts are as great as your wounds and strength.

It is true.

Be gentle with yourself. Because the safer you feel, the more you open, the more you care, and the more sensitivity you feel, and the more you feel the deeper layers of pain come up for clearing. It’s normal. That doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you or you have some belief you need to “work” on.

Pour all the care you give to the world around your heart and know that there is nothing wrong with you.

We are recovering in a broken world that is entering a death process and we are feeling it in our bones.

Grieve.

Grieve for yourself, for all you have survived, overcome, and manage on a daily basis while living your life.

This is love, the love for yourself honoring yourself as you step into flourishing because this grief, this releasing, this honoring, this acknowledging—is what makes space for more life that is sustainable, trustable, and real.

I see you.

More love.

Not less.

~