It's official! Today the book I wrote with my mom is here!!!
+ why healing trauma can be freeing for generations to come
Trauma has a tendency to do this: solidify things.
Like a piece of pottery in a kiln that’s been shaped and formed and now the heat and fire is cementing the glaze so that the colors and textures last. It’s a long process or a slow undoing to change the piece of art that comes from the kiln. Sometimes, in fact, the only way to change it is to smash it to bits.
What are some of the ways that trauma has manifested itself in your life or is present today? Do you recognize the patterns passed down from generations before you? Do you have things, like my mother and me, that you share in common with your own mother or father or grandparent? Have you heard stories about the great uncles who had alcoholism or gambled a lot or the great great grandma who was single and died young, unexplained?
It can be sad when we look closer into the branches of our family trees and get honest about ourselves and our family histories. Yet, we can be sad and grateful. That’s the thing about pain and suffering—it can not only bring you to a place of healing, but a place of tremendous thankfulness.
Community has allowed me to open myself to vulnerability.
Open myself to hurt.
Open myself to sharing in the sufferings of others to see that I am not alone in my experience.
Open myself up to confession, to getting real.
When I was able to let go of the cloak of shame that wrapped me tight into the labels of “damaged” and “crazy” and “bad” then I could start to move a little more freely. Think changing from boa-constricting yoga pants to comfy joggers (praise the Lord). Hugging the ankle, letting thighs breathe.
After learning how to share—or confess—I began to move a little more freely in my experience and not be bound to it any longer. When something is out in the open, what was once hidden turns into something else. It is no longer an experience to cause shame, but an experience that creates connection.
Let’s give it a try now.
I’ll go first.
When I was fourteen years old, I stole liquor from the woman I babysat for (my step mom’s good friend), invited a whole hoard of soon-to-be high schoolers over and mixed everything I could find in the cupboards with diet Mt. Dew in a gas station slurpy cup. Two hours later, I was puking out the side of a Senior boy’s Camaro, fluorescent orange chunks flying through the air, hitting the door, my hair, and rolling fields of corn right before harvest.
When I was in college, I was so poor (buying cannabis was way more important than buying personal care items) that I’d bring an extra big backpack to campus and stuff it with rolls of toilet paper that I’d steal from gray-tiled bathrooms between classes. Trust me, it is no fun wiping your butt with a coffee filter. Though I recognize now I’m making excuses.
As a young woman, I spent thousands of hours with men (boys) that I didn’t like because I was lonely and afraid of silence and aching for love.
And that’s just a start. Thankfully, I’ve been able to get so much out, share with sponsors and mentors and friends and family and complete strangers on my blog. It’s cathartic like spring rain. Freeing like love. Comforting like a cat’s purr.
Manda Carpenter in Soul Care to Save Your Life, says:
Radical honesty leads to radical healing. Radical honesty is exactly that: radical. It’s not just telling the truth when it’s easy; it’s about searching for the truth and going out of our way to dig up anything that is untrue.[1]
Ok, your turn.
And let me remind you: this isn’t an exercise in futility. It is an exercise in freedom.
Radical honesty can lean us into seasons of greater healing and also become the salve of generational wounds.
We can “smash to bits” the lies that we will always be identified with our trauma, with what has been done or undone around us. We can learn to live the truth that we are more. We can embrace the love of a community of folks like us who are imperfect sojourners and ragamuffins along the way.
Are you ready?
Learn more and read on in my latest book, co-written with my mom, Diana.
Get your copy officially today, wherever you buy books and help us spread the word by sharing this message with your friends.
[1] Carpenter, Manda, Soul Care to Save Your Life: How Radical Honesty Leads to Radical Healing, (Baker Publishing Group: Grand Rapids, MI) 2022, p. 20.
Yes, friend!
Woo hoo! Congratulations!!!