It holds me within its grip, like a vice. I often feel like play dough, pulled in all directions, comfortable in none. Some of the trauma is new and raw, some old and scarred.

At times it directs, and coerces me in ways that I can’t fathom. A picture enters my mind, of a puppet, jerking hither and fro.

I know that we all experience it, in some form, or another. It shapes us, like the wild lashings of the waves on the shore, or the insidious winds on the sand. Changing me in ways that move me in life.

What do I do ? Do I rail against it ? Do I push it away ? Do I shove it down ?  I have used all of these actions. They have left me bewildered, in a hopeless, painful state of affairs.

The action that has proven to be the most effective, albeit difficult, is the one I choose today. I look at it, I grasp it ,and I honour it. It has something to teach me. I will get angry. My tears will emerge from my sobbing chest. I will submerge for awhile, but after I have torn it apart, and grieved over it, I will come back with a capacity for love and empathy that connects me to you, and your trauma.

The way is hard, and though I sometimes walk in the shadow of the valley of death, I search for the Light of Love.  I see it when I look at you, the sky, and through the shadowy mists of pain, into me.