One Lamb: Grief, Loss, Trauma

Trauma is seminal to the discussion of emotional well-being. Often, we associate trauma with a life altering, cataclysmic experience, like fighting in a war or surviving a life-threatening event like a house fire or shooting. While not everyone will fight in a war or survive a fire, every one of us will experience some type of trauma throughout our lives, either personally or through the lenses of someone we love. For instance, our humanity doesn't allow us to escape being diagnosed or having someone we love dearly diagnosed with a devastating, life-threatening illness. Further, we will all know someone or of someone who dies by suicide, buries a child and/or loses her or his job and faces financial turmoil and insecurity. All of these are traumatic events which affect us emotionally. Importantly, albeit common, these sad, disruptive, scary, upsetting life events still affect our emotional well-being.

When the unimaginable happens to us or someone we love, our world for is inextricably altered. From this shift, promulgates questions of identity, worth, trust, hope, optimism and even the providence of God. Fortunately, the human story is mostly one of resilience in the midst of despair, hope emerging from tragedy. We, humans, persevere. We adjust and adapt. Hopefully, we learn to take the unimaginable trauma and use it for a greater purpose. So, the question is how to we garner the inner strength to take our anguish and find light at the end of the tunnel; how do we take something so horrific and hurtful and make something positive and beautiful?

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” - Laurell K. Hamilton