[Trace14]

I found and interesting article on healing trauma. Makes me wonder why more T's are not trained more in this area. Because it seems most just don't get it.
Why the Journey Through Trauma is a Winding Path - Signature Reads

[Open Eyes]

Each person is a "product" of what that person experienced from their early childhood to whatever age the person is in the present.

About maybe 5 years ago approx. we had a hurricane hit the shores of the Northeast Coast that ended up causing a lot of damage. Well, just as it was approaching my older sister called my father only to hear him say to her, "I can't talk now, I am driving home through the hurricane". This made my sister furious and so much so that she began to go on and on about writing a book titled "Not now, I am busy driving in the hurricane". After that took place my sister was convinced that my father was crazy and she needed to work on starting to get his right to drive away. My father was older around mid-eighties. YET, that book would only be based on my sister's opinions and what SHE considers crazy and it would not reflect who my father really was and WHY he would not see what he was doing as all that "crazy".

In order to really understand how my father made the decision he had made one would have to actually LISTEN to his history, not their own history but HIS. As a young boy my father spent a lot of time on the water and he was no stranger to witnessing hurricanes and severe weather that pounded the shoreline. My father also joined the service before he was eighteen and when he was only a young teenager was exposed to things my older sister could not even imagine being exposed to at such a young age. My father saw things in WWII that are way more significant than that hurricane he drove in and drove in to make sure his boat was tied down as secure as possible so he would not lose it. Well, being that my father was in the Navy, his training consisted of being responsible for the boat/ship in all kinds of conditions even when out to sea which is even worse when it comes to storms. My father saw torn up islands, ravaged from war and he saw bodies that were being removed and buried in a mass grave with bulldozers. Also, my father was on a big ship and at one point when the ship changed captains after returning to port the new captain decided not to take my father when he went back out to sea on this ship. This ship was torpedoed and all the men my father had gotten to know that slept in the compartment he had slept in were killed. Also, my father ran a landing craft that HE was responsible for and he made many trips with men to the shores of Okinawa so these men could get to the shores and go into battle. Hmmm, do you think he waited for a nice sunny day? Also, this landing craft was HIS responsibility and he keep is ready in all kinds of weather.

So, if my sister did write a book, her book would NOT be about my father at all, instead it would be about herself along with her having no personal experiences even remotely close to what my father lived through in his life. To my father who made a trip when a hurricane was approaching to make sure his boat was secure at that dock he kept it was not nearly as dangerous as things he lived through in HIS life along with all the training he had where he learned how important it was to make sure his ship was secured properly.

When I think of my father and my own experience with him, there was always a part of him that pulled him away from being connected to the "now". In making it a point to sit and talk to him about his experiences when it came to being involved in that war, one of the things he talked about is all these different men he met as they rode in his landing craft and often had to wait until this craft could get close enough to these shores so these men could get off and head out to fight. One of his constant thoughts was "what happened to these men, did they make it, or were they killed?". He was so young and he met other men in a way MOST never meet other people in that the men he met were really involved in something so dangerous that survival was always a MAJOR question.

I think about how hard it must have been for him to spend time with all these shipmates and then learn "suddenly" that all of them were killed. One day when I went to visit him and take him for a ride and I took him to the shores of the harbor he spent so much time in as a boy, he told me that when he died he wanted to be creamated and have half of his ashes put in these waters he grew up spending so much time on and the other half near where that ship he was on was bombed. That said SO MUCH to me about him in the nature of how a big part of him remained on that ship with all these shipmates that were lost and how that remained such a big part of him throughout his life.

My sister's book would be about "her" in the nature of "how could he do that to me" when he decided to drive in that hurricane. But that's not REALLY what he was doing that day.

Trace, for you especially, perhaps what I just wrote can contribute to YOUR healing. From what you have shared, you are still struggling with what you had wanted to accomplish and how you had wanted to "fix" and "understand" and love despite of and yet a choice was made that ended up really traumatizing you. You have struggled so much with "how could he do this to me", and yet the truth is people make choices based on their OWN life experiences and personal challenges that are often something within that individual that really has nothing to do with what "our life is about and how we see things". My older sister will talk about what that day meant to her, how SHE viewed it, but her idea of crazy or selfish is not how my father saw it at all.

I think about the dream you talked about having and how you were trying to find a home for your father and what you found was so big, much too big for him and then that part of your dream moved on to others that you were trying to find homes for. What is really "too big for him"? It could be more about what is too big for you and that is what your dream is really trying to help you understand. From what you have shared of YOUR history, one of the things you did in your life was to be the first on the scene when something bad took place and you made it your job to keep "what was too difficult, too big for others to handle and see". I think that is what your mind is trying to help YOU realize and find your way of finally accepting what is too big for you to try to place in a home somewhere and that maybe you are trying too hard based on how you think which is different than what he thought based on his life experience.

This article is also talking about this kind of "healing" journey too in that as we experience life we learn to survive and navigate the best we can in order to survive. As we face big challenges we don't know what to do about, YES, often we find ways to "numb" ourselves or disassociate from. We may choose to run away, or to hide someplace or to react to that others may consider is not "normal" or "healthy". This article is discussing how to learn to evaluate whatever way we did or do react that we can begin to see in a different light than what we are currently seeing. So, when my sister thinks about how "crazy" my father was when he was driving in that hurricane, her healing journey would be how to look at that experience in a very different light instead of how "she" continues to see that experience.

[Fuzzybear]

[HD7970GHZ]

Thank you for this!