Two of the most difficult things for a trauma survivor to do are to sit in silence and to be alone. Silence can be very difficult because our minds are not always kind. In solitude, it becomes harder to escape the mind, the looping memories, the old stories, and the pain that resurfaces. We replay what happened, reinforcing beliefs that we’re unworthy, unlovable, or broken. So we avoid stillness. We keep ourselves busy, distracted, plugged into anything that helps us outrun the noise. Yet, paradoxically, it is in silence that true healing begins. It’s in solitude where the deep work of meeting ourselves happens.
For many of us, trauma has become the lens through which we define our entire existence. The fallout shows up as intrusive thoughts, nightmares, difficulty concentrating, and negative mood shifts. For queer or questioning souls, it’s often magnified by rejection, leaving us with layers of hopelessness and detachment. The pain of being unseen or unloved by the very people who should have embraced us can feel unbearable.
But here’s the truth: we walk a different path. A path most of the world doesn’t understand. We value truth, love, and respect over possessions, titles, or status. We may not always have words for it, but we sense there is more to life than this surface-level existence. Our values shine when we dare to voice who we are, when we choose vulnerability, when we honor our own worth by walking away from what dismisses us. And while our stories differ, we share trauma as a common bond.
So let me ask: if you took an honest inventory of the thoughts you entertain daily, the ways you avoid discomfort, the words you use to describe yourself — would they reflect kindness? Would you speak to someone you loved the way you speak to yourself? For most of us, the answer is no. Trauma distorts our inner dialogue. It creates loops of self-blame, shame, and hopelessness. We begin to live as if those beliefs are who we are. This is what I call the trauma loop: a cycle that tricks us into believing the pain is permanent, that survival is all we’ll ever know.
But the truth is different. This cycle is not the end of your story. It’s a pattern — and patterns can be rewired.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s leading trauma researchers, has spent over four decades studying survivors of war, abuse, neglect, and loss. His compassion is what makes his work so enduring. He reminds us: trauma is not weakness. Trauma is the natural human response to what overwhelms our ability to cope. In his book The Body Keeps the Score, he shows us that trauma is not just “in your head.” It embeds itself in your nervous system, in your muscles, in the way you breathe, in how safe you feel in your own skin. Trauma rewires the brain, it reshapes our stress responses, and often leaves us stuck between hypervigilance and numbness.
The good news? If trauma lives in the body, then healing must also involve the body. Talking alone is not enough. Healing means reclaiming your body as a safe home again — through breath, movement, grounding, and practices that reconnect you to your inner safety.
If you’ve ever thought panic attacks, loneliness, or feelings of worthlessness made you different, I want you to hear me: they don’t. These are not reflections of your value; they’re the imprints of trauma. When you feel cut off from Source, when you believe you are unlovable or defective, that isn’t truth — it’s the echo of what happened to you. And echoes can be interrupted.
This is why van der Kolk’s work is so powerful — it validates what so many of us have felt but couldn’t explain. That sense of being stuck? That’s not laziness or weakness. It’s your body holding the memory of what it went through.
Many of you have experienced unprecedented pain that has left an imprint on your soul. This isn’t just regular pain — it’s the kind that changes the course of your life. Maybe it was abuse, loss, religious trauma, or something else entirely. Over time, the experiences you had only validated your worst beliefs about yourself. So you rearranged your reality to reflect what was mirrored back to you. That to your family, you were a burden. To society, a problem. And to the world, unworthy.
You believed a certain thought about yourself. And every time, the world proved you right. So you smartened up, put up walls, hardened that exterior, and got prepared for more. But each time you came to the plate swinging, it wasn’t because you wanted to — it was because you had no choice. You did your best in a game you never learned the rules to.
As author and physician Dr. Gabor Maté reminds us, "Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you." Trauma changes the brain, the body, and the spirit. So ask yourself: how have you reacted to the circumstances of your life? Have you hidden? Retreated? Closed your heart? Or have you been transformed because of it?
Imagine being stripped of everything. Your name. Your family. Your freedom. Your identity. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist sent to a concentration camp during the Holocaust. He lost everything — except his will to find meaning. As he watched people die around him, he noticed something. Those who gave up, who saw no meaning in their suffering, faded quickly. But those who found purpose — even in the midst of hell — held on.
He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Frankl didn’t escape his circumstances — he moved through them with purpose. And when he survived, he built a new philosophy called Logotherapy. It teaches that meaning is not what we find after pain, but what we choose to make within it.
That’s your story, too. You’ve walked through fire. You’ve lost parts of yourself. But you are here. You are still breathing. You are finding meaning not despite your pain, but because of it.
Frankl said, “What is to give light must endure burning.” You, my friend, are the flame — and your story is the light.
The thing is, healing doesn’t happen in one grand leap. It happens in a thousand small, intentional choices — each one an act of courage. It’s in the moments you decide to stay instead of run. To breathe instead of react. To speak truth instead of swallowing it. Every choice rewires something in you. Every choice tells your body and spirit: “We are safe now. We are allowed to live.”
And here’s what I want you to remember: you are not your trauma. You are not your mistakes. You are not the way you’ve coped or survived. You are the one who lived. You are the one who is still here. You are the one who gets to choose what comes next.
Some of you may not believe me when I say this, but your story — the one you think is too heavy, too messy, too shameful — will be the very thing that sets someone else free. There is someone out there right now who is praying for proof that it gets better. You are that proof.
I know silence and solitude can feel like the loneliest places in the world. But in truth, they are where you meet yourself — not the version the world demanded, but the one who has been waiting for you all along. In that stillness, you hear the whispers of your own soul, the call back to who you’ve always been. That’s the beginning of the return.
If you take nothing else from this episode, let it be this: your life is not over. It is unfolding. The very things you thought disqualified you are what qualify you to rise. There is a place for your story. There is a purpose for your pain. And there is a life waiting for you that you haven’t yet imagined.
So, take the next step. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
Choose healing over hiding. Choose presence over avoidance. Choose love — especially for yourself — over fear.
Because you, my friend, are not just surviving anymore. You are rewriting the script and therefore creating a new reality.
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