By Beryl Adhiambo Ooko

Have you ever wondered who you would have been without the pain? Or better yet how fulfilling life would be if you were not a byproduct of your pain?

Well, the natural human instinct after a traumatic experience is to block all situations that have the potential to cause more pain, and therefore that results in blocking relationships, love, and blessings; good blessings in fact. See, what people call ‘personality’ and even go online to take about 16 personality tests to understand why they are acting up is actually, educated behaviors and habits that develop to cope with trauma. Often we hear the mantra of self-care and ‘doing you’ after going through pain but if that idea is engulfed in bitterness then ‘doing you’ is useless.

Self-care is a deceitful tactic of convincing your sub-conscious that you can live alone, you are the baddest, you don’t need help to pick yourself up and heal. Healing only happens when you open yourself up to learn during that process so that you catch trauma early when it shapeshifts next time. I have come to understand that the process of living requires a little bit of giving to the world so that the world can give of you. Give the world 10% and receive 10%; haha you thought the world will give you 90%? From where? It’s a give and take game.

Bitterness births trauma and trauma exhausts your body like a running stomach. Have a cup of coffee with your traumatic demons and ask them what’s up; will they leave you quietly or should an exorcism of awareness be organized. Guess what that’s Realization right there. Do not preserve pain, do not shelter it in the disguise of healing… it’s a SCAM! Nothing good is born out of hiding pain.

My trauma hid in me for 13 years, and it came out like some new invention and I was not ready to receive it like that. It caused me many days of pain, bitterness and sadly suicidal thoughts that I didn’t realize I had. Well I am healing, I am ‘doing me’ but not from a place of bitterness, but from a place of forgiveness and learning that a higher power exists-God, where I cry to Him on my lapse days and let Him carry my burden. Guess what, that’s actually true self-care.

You do need help dear and that help comes from God, mother nature and others who are willing to support you but only if you ask for that help.