Turning Post Traumatic Stress into Post Traumatic Growth

My inspiration to turn my Post Traumatic Stress into Post Traumatic Growth, has been a large part of my life’s purpose. Healing has not been all sunshine and roses as I naively anticipated as a teenager, when I first embarked on this path. Throughout my journey I have encountered many dark nights of the soul, and on reflection they were all significant parts of me reclaiming my authentic self.

For many years it seemed if I was to heal and live a great life that would fuel the narrative that abuse did not actually harm me, and some people may see my ‘great’ life as being evidence of the trauma I experienced – not actually being that bad.. To me that was giving abusers credit for how I turned out.

I pondered that concept for many years, feeling like I had been punished and I really did not want abusers getting any credit, for anything positive in my life. At some point I began to wonder, what if on a higher soul growth level – my traumatic experiences were not to punish me as it seemed, but to give me lived experiences, to truly understand how trauma impacts humans and our lives (this is not to excuse or minimise the impact of abuse on a human level – more to empower myself)
Many times the impact of trauma has dulled my will to live, it seemed no matter what I tried trauma would come back up and fuck up my life. I needed a bigger purpose to help me though those dark times and I decided that my purpose would be to discover how to heal from trauma, reclaim my authentic self and then to share that knowledge with others.

That way my painful experiences were not all for nothing. I realised while I continued to suffer – the people who abused would continue to win.
I decided working towards creating my best life , the best life that I could imagine, one which is authentic and joyful to me, without my abuser/s being part of that life, was the best ‘revenge’ I could get.