The Emotional Graves We Keep Visiting

Many people aren’t living in the present. They’re emotionally revisiting old betrayals, old wounds, old identities, old grief, or old conditioning—every single day.

Having endured a lifetime of trauma, I have always seen beneath the façade of the present, looking for meaning in all that is said, done, and heard to determine what that means for me.

From my perspective, it was about ensuring and sustaining my safety and protection.

For others who hadn’t experienced trauma, the constant focus on the past disallowed the presence I claimed to want in the here and now, thereby hindering those connections.

Anyone who has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or Complex CPTSD will understand the isolation felt when you experience life on this deeper level. There’s no one standing in that graveyard with you, to validate what once was or to make sense of what is; and that devastation and depression can take its toll.

Memorial Day becomes the perfect metaphor, then, for the old parts of ourselves and old memories that we don’t know how to leave behind, but which we also know don’t serve us in the present and future.

How do we find the strength to leave that emotional cemetery?

♦️Honoring what mattered.

When we acknowledge the fact of what happened, as well as how it affected us, then we can also credit what arose from that situation or circumstance.

There is a lesson in everything we endure. We just have to be willing to see it and appreciate it.

♦️Grieving what was lost.

Positivity can be toxic if we don’t give credence to the negative aspects of situations, too. So, acknowledge what was felt, what was lost, what you didn’t deserve nor ask for. Then express the emotions around all of that in some verbal or written or physical format.

Just as we honor the dead, we can honor all that we grieve for all that will come in its place.

♦️Recognizing when we’ve built permanent residence in pain.

None of us are perfect and none of us know exactly what to do in any situation in life. However, we can be self-aware enough to know when we’ve drowned ourselves in our sorrow for too long, and when it’s time to choose better.

So, recognize where you’ve become comfortable in the pain, and then choose the discomfort of growing outside of that old cemetery.

Choose one of your greatest hindrances to address first:

💔An old betrayal (an unfaithful spouse, an untrustworthy parent or sibling, a two-faced friend)

💔An old wound of rejection or abandonment or lack

💔An old identity (the compliant one, the enabler, the people-pleaser, the strong one)

💔An old grief (resentment, guilt, loss, shame)

💔Or an old conditioning (appeasing, silent, avoidant, small, inept)

Then go through the steps of honoring what mattered, grieving what was lost, and recognizing where there is an opportunity for growth and to move past it.

As my favorite saying goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.” And no one wants to stay in an old, abandoned cemetery alone.

So, don’t stay in the same place . . .

especially when it comes to the way you think.

Honor it for what it was, then lay it to rest.

The rest of your life is waiting to be lived.💕

For more on my own experiences with the taunts of the past, read the third book in my memoir trilogy: RISING FROM THE ASHES: BREAKING THE CYCLE OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. (Available on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle, or anywhere books are sold online.)

Happy Memorial Day! Thank you to our United States Veterans for your dutiful service!