“Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creating, of belonging, of love.”

— Brene Brown

There was a time after the accident that I felt different. As though my body was dealing with the trauma in an abnormal way. That I was not dealing with it properly. It took me a long time to get to a place where I understood. When I had processed enough. When I had enough hindsight to see it. That I was. I am. Normal. I am not strange. I am not weak. I am not lesser. I am not broken. I am human. For a long time I did not realize this. I thought I was. Strange. Weak. Lesser. When someone judged me. My shock. My processing. My healing. When someone saw me as less than perfect. When they showed me disapproval. There was a part of me that believed them. A part of me that did not fight back. A part of me that felt completely alone. A part of me that felt like “other”.

Where there is trauma, there is always judgement. I am not sure why. Maybe it comes down to fear. The need to believe we would do it differently. But, until we have lived through a trauma, we do not know how it will affect us. How it will change us. How it will break us. How it will build us back up. How we will grow. So, we are afraid. Of the unknown. Where there is fear, there is judgement. So, instead of coming from a place of understanding, we judge. Instead of being kind, we are cruel. Unfeeling. We blame the victim for being a victim in the first place. We blame the victim for how they react to their victimization. We blame them for being normal. Because sometimes normal is scary. Because normal after trauma is not pretty. It is not graceful. It is not inspirational. It is dark and it is dirty. It is life on the bottom. It is going into ourselves and finding where the monsters live. It is finding where the secrets are hidden. It is a place so real it scares the crap out of us. It is looking into ourselves and seeing a mirror.

When I was judged for being a” victim” it hit a nerve. I felt like I should stop. Stop acting like a victim. Because being called a victim is a judgment, right? No one wants to be called a victim. No one wants to “act like a victim”. There is shame attached to that label. Imposed upon it. But what if we are? What if we are in that moment a victim? What if we are struggling? What if life feels too hard? Too much to manage? What if being strong is not always possible? What if people take advantage of our vulnerability? What if we don’t have the power to fight back? What if getting through the day is all we have?

In the beginning. In the early days. I tried to be what everyone wanted me to be. I tried to be inspirational. To always be positive. Optimistic. Grateful. To hide my weaknesses. To project only positivity. To reassure those who asked that we were going to be only okay. It was expected. We took some of the energy we needed to heal. We stole from our reserves. While we worried about how people would judge us. If we were not “strong.” Fighting against the label of “victim.” Projecting the image of what we thought a survivor looked like. What we thought a survivor should be.

It has taken me a very long time. It has taken years on this road to see the truth. To see the world differently. To see ourselves differently. To be proud of who we are. To be proud of what we have accomplished. To not feel shame for reacting in a real way. For being authentic. To not feel shame for allowing ourselves the space we needed. The space to allow the processing. The space to allow the healing. The space to allow the growth. Growing pains and all. The space to be exactly who we needed to be at that time. The space to be normal. The space to be human.

The first year in some way feels like the clearest of all the years that have followed the accident. It feels pure in a way. Beautiful. Real. Don’t get me wrong. It was full of pain. Chris was literally in pain daily. Moment to moment. For months he could not see properly. Dealing with the reality of double vision. There was uncertainty. So much uncertainty. For most people uncertainty is uncomfortable. That was no different for us. We were deeply uncomfortable. We had no idea what the future held for us. We lived on faith. On the belief that we would be okay.

Pain felt like pain. No buffer. No shields. Just raw and real. Pain. But I would say the same thing for joy. Joy felt like joy. No buffer. No shields. Just raw and real. Joy. We understood the meaning of life. We knew that our children were everything. That most of all, they needed to be protected. To not be buried in the aftermath of trauma, but instead lifted up by it. So we could not let it bury us. We had to learn to be lifted by it. If I was ever inspirational it was for that reason. For my kids. It is the same for Chris. We knew we had to get through it. Go through it. Because on the other side they would be waiting there for us. They were walking with us on this journey. There is nothing we could do to change this. There is still nothing we can do. But we have always known that. That we had to find a way to be positive. That we had to focus on surviving.

Still, we were incredibly naive in so many ways. I don’t like to think of it as naive though. Maybe more like hopeful. We believed in the goodness of the world. We looked at things from the bright side. Through rose coloured glasses. We saw the world as it should be seen. As it really is. Or how we wanted it to be. Underneath all of the stuff that doesn’t really matter. There was a glow to the world. A peace to it. We understood what needed to be understood.

But then slowly. Ever so slowly. It started to sink in. Shock held the world at bay for a little while. But, it could not keep it out forever. Real life seeped in. Little by little. It was not going to be an easy journey. It took us a long time to realize this. Somehow we thought sheer will power could will the world into what we wanted it to be. This was not to be. Because when it came down to it. We were the ones who were changing. We were the ones who would keep changing. More and more as each day passed. But, growth can be painful. Believe me. I know this from first hand experience. Growth can be incredibly painful. And lonely. It stretches us in ways we did not know we could stretch. It presses our buttons. It seeks out our weaknesses. It forces our strength. It shows us who we are. What we are made of.

That first year we grew so much. We grew, but we did not really know we were growing. Like children before they are aware of themselves. Before they know what life is about. That it will be hard in ways they cannot even imagine. Beautiful in ways they can only dream. Shock created a space for us. A space for us to start growing into who we would become. A space to prepare us for what was coming. To gather our strength. To heal enough so that we could start processing what was before us. What was behind us. What we had seen and felt. What we had learned. It helped us to survive, both the accident and the aftermath of it.

What amazing beings humans are. The way our bodies work. The way our minds work. Always protecting. Always there for us. Reminding us. Guiding us. And if we listen. If we accept. We will realize we are in fact normal. The same. Our bodies reacting as they should. As they always do. Showing us we can survive. We can grow. We can overcome. If we give ourselves the space to be. To exist as we are. To feel as we do. To be as human as we need to be.