Education
Things won’t fall back nicely into place. But they can fall into a better place, and we have a say in what that will look like. That is the way of healing. In healing from the trauma of sex abuse, I have learned that I get the last say in my life. Not my father. Not the relationships I had afterwards. But who I am now, the present moment where I am rooted and the future I am helping to define. Everyone is affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who were not traumatized beforehand may be, and those who already were will struggle even more. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, don't apologize for what you're going through. Be honest with where you are and take care of yourself. ~ Demian ~ ~ ~ SHOWNOTES: Copyright 2020 Demian Yumei, All Rights Reserved. Written, narrated and produced by Demian Yumei Songs: For the Sake of Love and Look Inside You, by Demian Yumei and Stacey Young. Links: KeepingtheDream.com Patreon.com/keepingthedream ~ ~ ~ Body of Transcript: For the Sake of Love: Opening Music [Intro Omitted] Yesterday, I talked about people who are traumatized on top of trauma: 1) by the pandemic 2) by the personal trauma they already have going into the pandemic. It may vary in degree, but no one comes through this unscathed. And it’s not an all or nothing situation — like you’re either traumatized or you come out skipping. Regardless your background or your experience, you need to practice self-care. There’s no scorecard that says this counts and that doesn’t. People can get that way, judging either their experience or another’s as trivial. ~ ~ ~ I know I’ve performed before where afterwards someone will come up to me, and just because they didn’t suffer sex abuse as a child, they’ll preface whatever they want to share with me with “Well, I never went through what you went through but…” , almost apologetically, like somehow because they didn’t, they didn’t really have the right to share what did hurt them with me. I don’t look at it that way. Yeah, okay, a person with cancer has more suffering and challenges than a person with a splinter in their finger. But there’s a whole lot of in between, and on another very real level, every person has the responsibility to own what they feel and what they experience. In that regard, how your difficultly compares to another isn’t the issue as much as what you do to take care of it. ~ ~ ~ So, if you feel your world has turned upside down, no matter how that upside down compares to another, I want you to know that your feelings are valid. They’re yours, so own them and feel them. This pandemic, the manner in which it has been treated by our leadership, the lives that it’s costing and will cost will have an effect on us all. It’s normal to feel angry and fearful. It’s normal to feel grief, and to be disoriented and in a state of shock as we all face the unknown. There is real leadership arising from this … just not at the helm. But we’re going to make it. The world will right side up again. It may not look the same. Things rarely do after you’ve gone through such an upheaval like this. ~ ~ ~ When the truth of my family hit me in the face, I knew there was no way I could go back to “unknowing the truth”. This is a “Things were never the same again” state of our lives as individuals and a nation. There will be people who will try, and they may get really ugly if others don’t go along. But it’s too late. Things won’t fall back nicely into place. But they can fall into a better place, and we have a say in what that will look like. That is the way of healing. In healing from the trauma of sex abuse, I have learned that I get the last say in my life. Not my father. Not the relationships I had afterwards. But who I am now, the present moment where I am rooted and the future I am helping to define. ~ ~ ~ We’re all in this together. All of us impacted by what we’re experiencing and what we’re seeing.