Yesterday, I had a hysterectomy. Eight months ago, precancerous cells were found in my cervix, but because I developed cervical stenosis—meaning the opening had narrowed—my doctor could no longer adequately examine the area. Now I wait for the pathology results.
Waiting is its own uncomfortable kind of helplessness.
While I was in the hospital, I was cared for by three lovely nurses. Both impressed me, but my night nurse—whom I will call Anna—was one of the most resilient women I have ever met.
We began with ordinary conversation, but we didn’t stay there long. There was something about her that made surface talk feel unnecessary. Maybe she sensed that I was genuinely interested. Maybe two strangers occasionally recognize something familiar in one another.
As I asked about her life, Anna trusted me with parts of her story that were anything but ordinary.
As a little girl, she was beaten by her father and sexually abused by her uncle. At fourteen, she gave birth to her first child after being raped. Even now, certain memories can return with such force that she can smell the person who violated her.
I listened to this woman as she cared for me with patience, competence and tenderness, and I wondered how someone who had been treated so cruelly could become a person who brought so much comfort to others.
Some people seem to “get” harder lives than others.
I use the word get deliberately, although I don’t believe trauma is a gift or that God deliberately hands a child abuse so she can become stronger. Some experiences are simply wrong. They should never happen, and we do not need to make them beautiful to acknowledge the strength of those who survive them.
But I have also seen how suffering—once faced and processed—can deepen a person. It can make us more compassionate, more understanding and less eager to judge lives we have never lived.
Trauma is especially devastating when it comes from the very people who were supposed to protect us. A child cannot understand why someone who claims to love her is also hurting her. She may blame herself, disconnect from what is happening or bury the memories deeply enough to keep functioning.
But what we push away does not always disappear.
It can show up later as anxiety, depression, addiction, anger, numbness, shame, difficulty trusting people or a desperate need to be loved. Sometimes a sound, smell, expression or touch can make the past feel as if it is happening all over again.
Most of Anna’s experiences were different from mine, but parts of her story touched places in me that I rarely expose outside my therapist’s office.
I have undergone EMDR therapy, which helped me work through some painful experiences. But much of my processing has happened while I was alone early in the morning, watching the sun rise over the mountains.
I would look at that mountain standing so firmly—so strong and unmoved—and watch the first gold light spread across an indigo sky. The sun kept rising, no matter what had happened the day before. In those moments, I felt the power and dependability of God.
I also began to understand that healing required more than admiring the sunrise. I had to become quiet enough to hear what I had spent years trying not to feel.
For a long time, I lived from my wounds. I interpreted the present through the pain of my past. I ruminated, reacted and sometimes expected the people around me to carry emotions they could not possibly resolve for me.
My pain was real, but so was the pain my behavior caused.
There were years when I pushed away my children, family and friends. Kevin—my boyfriend at the time—stayed beside me through seven years of severe alcohol addiction. He also experienced my depressive and manic episodes firsthand.
We broke up six times during our ten-year courtship. Our relationship was far from perfect, but somehow our love survived. I will always be grateful that he continued to see something in me when I had difficulty seeing it in myself.
Three weeks after Kevin and I married, my son decided to close our car dealership. I had worked six—and often seven—days a week helping him build it into a fifty-million-dollar enterprise. Within a year, it had crumbled.
At almost the same time, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Eleven short weeks later, she died, surrounded by my sister, two of my nieces and me.
I had spent most of my adult life working. Suddenly, I was unemployed for the first time since I was nineteen. The business that had consumed me was gone. My mother was gone. The identity I had built around being productive and needed was gone.
And yet, strangely, my mother’s death became the beginning of my healing.
Not because losing her hurt any less, but because grief stripped away my ability to keep running. Marrying Kevin and no longer working gave me something I had never allowed myself before: time.
Time to sit with my pain.
Time to grieve my mother and the other losses I had never fully mourned.
Time to recognize what had happened to me—and also to take responsibility for what I did with it.
That distinction matters.
We are not responsible for the abuse, betrayal, illness or loss inflicted upon us. A child is never responsible for what an adult does to her. A rape survivor is never responsible for the violence committed against her. A grieving person does not choose the loss that breaks her heart.
But as adults, we eventually become responsible for seeking help and deciding whether our wounds will continue directing our lives.
That does not mean we can simply “get over it.” Processing trauma is rarely a straight path, and it does not happen through positive thinking alone. Sometimes it looks like sitting in a therapist’s office and finally saying the thing you have never spoken aloud. It may involve trauma-informed therapy, EMDR, a support group, addiction treatment, medication or spiritual guidance.
It can also look quieter than that.
It may mean noticing what triggers you instead of immediately reacting. Writing down what happened and what you needed but did not receive. Letting yourself cry without apologizing. Learning to set boundaries. Allowing safe people to love you. Caring for your body through sleep, movement and nourishing food. Praying honestly—even when the only prayer you can manage is, “God, please help me.”
Healing may require forgiving yourself long before you are ready to think about forgiving anyone else.
And if you are living with trauma, please do not believe you must excavate your deepest memories alone. For some people, forcing open the past without support can be overwhelming. A qualified, trauma-informed therapist can help you approach it at a pace your mind and body can tolerate.
Facing the past does not mean living there. It means turning toward it long enough to understand how it has shaped you—then choosing, little by little, what you want to carry forward.
There is a difference between acknowledging that you were victimized and building your identity around permanent powerlessness. One tells the truth about what happened. The other allows the person or circumstance that hurt you to keep determining who you become.
I do not want the worst things that happened to me to have the final word.
I do not believe Anna does either.
There she was, gently caring for a frightened woman waiting for biopsy results. Anna could not change what had been done to her. But the little girl who had once been denied safety had grown into a woman who offered safety to others.
That is not a neat ending to her story. Healing is rarely neat.
But it is evidence that our wounds can become part of us without becoming all of us.
We cannot always choose the circumstances life places before us. We can choose to ask for help. We can learn to recognize our patterns. We can make amends when our pain spills onto other people. We can stop confusing survival habits with our permanent identity. We can refuse to surrender the rest of our lives to the worst days of our past.
Yesterday, I met a remarkable nurse.
Today, I am resting, healing and waiting for answers.
And once again, the sun rose.
