You are not your trauma.

For those of you that are just now joining me, I want to explain my background so that I can better tell you why this is an important message.

When I was thirteen years old, my father committed suicide and took my five younger siblings along with him in a house fire about a month after my parents separated. There have been moments when I have contemplated taking my own life because the grief was just too much for me. There have been moments where life was so damning and painful that nothing seemed enough to bring me joy again. I will tell you this: a year after my father and siblings passed, I traveled to France and met the most loving and beautiful host family that anyone could ask for. In a way, they saved me with their gracious hearts. My host mother taught me some of her family recipes and we would often cook and chat together. My host father would have motivational talks with me, and he would encourage me to keep going. My host sisters were like my actual sisters, and I went to the same classes as one of them, and despite her being a year younger than me, I felt that she always looked out for me in school and would always help me when I needed to. She also gave me a surprise going away party for me, which I wish I had been more grateful for at the time, but I still appreciated her thoughtful gesture. I left France early because I had demons within myself that had nothing to do with this beautiful family. It was simply that I had not dealt with my family’s death properly and did not know how to ask for help. When I went home, I spent a summer going to libraries and coffee shops, reading and recovering and meeting my new little sister, and remembering what it was like to move on with life. I then went to a boarding school in California, and my, was that an experience. In a typical high school fashion, I met with goofy, loyal friends, but also heartbreak, gossip, and petty grudges. In my senior year of high school, however, I experienced what it meant to forgive and forget, and how to treasure the spare moments you have with amazing people from around the world with very different backgrounds than myself. To this day, we are still friends. Invaluable.

When I went to college, I was ready to become an adult. Or so I thought. I met friends that weren’t really my friends. I met friends that would always be my friends. I met more heartbreak. I was assaulted by a random man while taking out the trash. I crumpled and thought I would never recover again. I found myself more paranoid than ever to go past a certain part of campus. I had nightmares for weeks. For the first few days, I flinched when people came up suddenly from behind me. But I had friends that comforted me and would walk with me when I needed. My mother flew out all the way from California just to make sure I was okay, and of course, to buy as much food for me as possible. Food is really a love language, especially for mothers. I think, for a long time, darkness seeped slowly back into my life. And when I tried to take my life the next summer, I did not think about all of the good moments I had had in my life. I did not remember the times I was in France, or acting like an idiot with my high school friends. All I could see was blood and tears and suffering.

But that is not all there is in my life. Or yours, for that matter. Because you are not just your trauma. You are the good moments in your life––you are the laughter, the kisses, the hugs, the love of the people that love you, the love that is in you for yourself. You are all of these things and so much more.

Maybe your trauma shaped you, changed you, crushed you, crippled you so much so that you felt you would never breathe the same again, but it does not define you. It does not, it will not, consume your whole life. And that is a good thing. Because it means that you have time to make those good memories so that it doesn’t define you. You are alive now, so count the little good things.

1) You are breathing.

2) You are likely reading this from some sort of technological device, so you have enough money for that. That’s pretty nice, right?

I don’t know what your list looks like, but I would say when you start counting the good things that build up with every day you live on, all that darkness within you starts to seem a little smaller every day.

With love,

Alena