Rewriting Your Reality: Living In Your Truth vs. Living From Your Trauma

As I sit and reflect on all that 2021 has brought while creating the future I want to see for myself and the world, my foundational question remains: Am I living in my truth or am I living from my trauma?

As much as most of us want to believe or hope we are living in our truth, whatever that may mean for us, we are often living in some form of a reaction (especially now more than ever). This is not a judgement by any means and at the same time it is more critical than ever before to have discernment for ourselves of whether we are living from a place of creation or reaction. If you take a quick glimpse at your social media, it’s safe to say many are living in a reactive state.

There is a difference between working from a settled nervous system, being in alignment with something bigger than ourselves / our egos and being in tune with our highest self vs. trying to create a life in reaction to our trauma(s).

When I say “trauma”, I am not always referring to “Big T'“ trauma. It can of course pertain to major and life altering events in our lives and trauma can also be very subtle and unassuming, yet just as impactful. We are all wired differently so how I respond to the world can be very different to how you respond to it. How I perceive a look, a comment, a conversation, an event can be very different than you as well as any story I might add to it based off of my experiences and history.

I said that to say, our bodies take in the world based off of our individual make-ups which means the triggers we build up over time are both different and plentiful. We literally build up thousands of triggers in our body over our lifetime and most of them we have no idea about. Those triggers are the “reality” or “truth” so many of us are living from. We believe we are consciously choosing our life and the actual reality is that most of us are usually in some sort of unconscious reaction to a personal trigger or a larger societal trauma (i.e white supremacy, colonization, patriarchy, sexism, racism…..).

This discernment can feel very tricky because that’s the thing about trauma, it feels so real and that’s because for our bodies, it is real. Again, this is not a judgement. It is completely and totally human. And yet, when we can slow down, take a Sacred Pause and reflect on whether our actions and choices are coming from a reaction that is running us or coming from a place of genuine creation, that is when the trajectory of our life can change and we can rewrite our reality.

As always, I include myself in this. For example, take Say Space - the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consultancy I co-founded a few years ago that came to an end earlier this year. I started that company when I myself was going through my own personal reckoning. Not only had I just left my corporate job and was embarking on entrepreneurship for the first time, my parents were also silently going through a divorce, I was in a new relationship, I was going through the next level of my racial trauma / awakening and I just cut off all my hair.

To say I was in a deep trauma response is an understatement and instead of allowing myself to take the time to appropriately metabolize that trauma in my body (which is where it lives), I jumped into action. This isn’t to say I wasn’t taking care of myself and trying to work through things, I just simply did not have the right tools, resources or information at the time……like most of us.

……And this is large and part where I created Say Space from. While completely well intended, it was still partially a channel for me to blow my trauma through (If you are unfamiliar with that language, please take a deep dive into Resmaa Menakem’s ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’); somewhere I could focus my own racial trauma on; a place where I felt my voice could be heard and the pain and anger I didn’t even know was there, let alone how to manage, could be expressed and healed.

Of course this was not conscious at the time and has come with the gift of both hindsight and very deep reflection and my own trauma work. As I have said before, this is not a judgement or even a “bad” thing. A lot of good came from it. Truly nothing is ever black and white or all good / bad and even though ultimately the company did come from a reactive place within myself, it ultimately created some good in the world. And if we are being honest here, that’s likely where a lot of organizations and other creations in the world come from as well.

This is all to say that as we are in this very pivotal time where the veil is thin on what “reality” is and isn’t. I invite us all to, when there is space to do so, to reflect on what parts of our life or the vision of our life that we hope to create is just that…..an actual creation? Or is it a reaction that may cause us to continue repeating scenarios we desperately want to change.

We all have the ability and the capacity to rewrite our reality but first we have to be clear around the question: What reality do I truly want to create (and is it my truth or my trauma)?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments your thoughts on truth vs. trauma and what reality you are creating for yourself and the world.