Trauma: ” … A deeply distressing or disturbing experience…”
Rejection: ” … the dismissing or refusing of a proposal, idea, etc…. the action of spurning a person’s affections.”
Trauma visits most of us at some point in life. Often, by it’s very nature, it arrives out of the blue, taking us unawares, leaving us rocked, shocked and quaking in it’s wake. The physical, emotional, psychological and often practical impact on us can be long lasting.
I’ve often pondered on the fact that some people seem to suffer more trauma than others.
Or, more truthfully, that my life seems to have experienced more trauma than others.
In Part 1 of my How To Survive in a Spiritual Wilderness When Life Has Fallen Apart. Part 1. , I briefly outlined the time following my breakdown, specifically the immediate aftermath of waking up one evening and discovering that something within me had broken so irresolutely that I was scared to breath for fear that the fragility within would bring me to a final, deathly breakage.
It’s now several years since that fateful night yet I’ve never forgotten how, once I began my slow crawl to recovery, there were two questions that kept turning over in my mind:
Why had this happened to me?
How was I ever going to recover?
I found myself focussing, inevitably, on the first question:
Why had this happened to me?
What a journey that questioning was to lead me on.
A Journey Into The Caves of the Past.
A journey in to the caves of my past where all my hidden hurts and sorrows, losses and grief were hidden. A journey back in time, uprooting pretty much every pain I had gathered along the way. A journey in to the depths and breadths of my core wounds.
Is, however, it right to drag up the past?
Many people might wonder if that was the right thing to do. When life was already in such a difficult place, why drag up pain from the past? Wouldn’t that be detrimental, keeping me stuck in a state of un-wellness, prolonging my journey back to wellness?
I’m sure others might feel that to be true and there does come a time to release the past and welcome in the future but, at that point, for me, it was the only way. I had to try and make sense of all that had happened to bring my life crashing down. My healing instinct left me in know doubt:
the past was the road to the future.
Although this journey was to eventually take me back many years to when I was just a tiny child, it was to the life of another child that my journey initially led me. A more recent traumatising event. An event that had taken place just three years before my breakdown.
To the birth of my own child.
The clear blue line gently came to life, resting strongly in parallel synchronicity with the model line to it’s left.
A new life growing inside me.
I’d just left the security of my teaching job and opened a restaurant, working long days often finishing in the early hours of the morning. I’d also just relocated from the South of England to the Midlands, buying a new home in a small and isolated rural village, leaving behind friends and community. Ready to begin afresh.
My life was on the cusp of so many new uncertainties that had felt, at the time of the change to be big adventures yet now here was the biggest cusp of all.
I instantly loved this unborn child with every fibre of my being. I had no doubt:
This child coming to life was heaven sent, my soul purpose in life, my reason for living.
Knowing what I now know of what was to come, it was good that I felt so strong and positive.
The Father Receives the News.
I spent a few days taking in the news in my own personal way, quietly sitting by myself. Not speaking, just being and feeling. Connecting with my child. I wanted this sacred time with my child before bringing the news of my pregnancy out in to the world. I had no idea how anyone would react, most of all the child’s father whom I’d only been dating for just a short while.
One afternoon a few days later, sitting on the floor of my dining room with a shaft of bright afternoon sun streaming on to the floor in front of me, I called him.
He answered in a nonchalant manner. It was hard to know what to say, so I thought it best just to get on with it:
“ I have something to tell you.” Deep breath. “I’m pregnant.”
Without a pause, he replied:
“ Well, that’s fucked everything up. I was going to tell you that I’ve been seeing someone else and I want to marry her.”
I hadn’t really known what to expect but, as you can imagine, I wasn’t expecting exactly that as a response.
Numb with shock, I don’t remember too much about the ensuing conversation. It was clear that he wasn’t interested in becoming a father. He decided to take some time to explore what kind of a role he wanted to play in the child’s life agreeing to ” … get back to me …”
Needless to say, he didn’t ‘get back to me’. Several weeks later, I called him again where, once more, he made it clear that he wanted nothing further to do with me or his child:
“ I don’t want to know when it’s born or what it is. I don’t want any photos. I don’t want to know anything.”
I held the receiver to my ear taking in this rejection, my hand placed protectively over
my stomach shielding my child’s ears from these harsh words from it’s cruel father, aware of only one sensation:
The overwhelming awareness that I was now solely responsible for this precious unborn child growing within me.
No words will ever describe the awareness that such a responsibility brings with it.
But there was something else too.
Washed in with this terror was a resoluteness, a silent promise to my child:
I will never let you down. I will do everything in my power to bring you in to this world safely and to provide you with everything you need. You will never go without and that includes sufficient love. I will love you with the love of a mother and a father. I will never allow you to feel anything other than what you are:
the most precious gift to this world and the most precious gift to my life.
Little did I know, however,that my life was about to spiral further out of control. Little did I know that in a just a few short months, three months too early in fact, my child was about to make an early and traumatic arrival in to this world.
Whilst I kept my promise about love, I was soon to learn, as I’ll share with you in my next blog, that a fragile young premature baby needs a whole lot more than love.
And so does her mother.
Sending You All My Love,
Karen is a #1 Best Selling Author & Spiritual Healer who runs on-line and live wilderness retreats for adults who are in the midst of their own spiritual wilderness so that that they can re-claim their joy and purpose in life.
She is currently writing the book: The Love Millionaire – Cultivating the Art of Inner Richness.
To find out more about Karen, visit: About Karen!
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Karen would like to thank her daughter for giving permission to publish the story of her birth within this blog series.