Sometimes your trauma healing journey is happening right now.

I was caught off guard yesterday as I sat staring out the window, watching the rain pour and trickle down the glass. The smell of fresh laundry and the tobacco candle burning in the kitchen is beyond calming. The sound of Killswitch Engage softly echoed in the background from my desktop speakers; I recognize the irony even typing this. And at that moment, I had an overwhelming sense of emotion run over me. For the first time, I realized that I am in it; I am on my vision quest.

Historically a vision quest is a Native American rite of passage for boys via intense self-torture through starvation or being in the woods alone for weeks waiting for a spirit animal to come and guide them back home. For many of us, our journey is through exhaustive therapy, coaching, mentorship, reframing, journaling, meditating, and all of the other modalities. At times I would much prefer the idea of surviving the woods. I’d take a bear eating me over having to have another zoom therapy appointment at this point.

Not much unlike the journey of young native boys, I find myself as I head into my late thirties sitting at this place of understanding that this journey that I am on in healing my childhood trauma is a rite of passage from the hurt, sad, angry, lonely boy that I was to the strong, capable, lovable and loved man that I am today…