Did Trauma Take the Best of Me?

Who are we after trauma shreds us?

We talk about our pain and our stuckness and our ACEs (adverse childhood experiences, if you’re not into therapy lingo). We talk about how long we’ve been in therapy, what worked, and what felt pointless. We talk about shitty parents and childhood insecurity.

When do we get to talk about the missing parts of our identity because trauma gutted us?

Are you still a mom after your child dies? Are you still a strong, confident woman after learning your partner deceived you throughout your relationship?

What is left of who you were after being forced to carry the full weight of protecting your family because you’re afraid your alcoholic husband might wrap himself and the children around a tree one day?

Whatever the trauma, there is a part of us that is ripped away. A void remains that we weren’t prepared for and don’t know how to fill.

Our identity story has changed.

Trust is what’s torn away first. Someone we trusted turned out to be undeserving, and I include God or the Universe as part of that “someone.” Our instincts about what is safe and who is safe have been dropped into a vat of acid. But it’s our habit to think and speak about the loss of trust as if it’s about ‘the other’—all men, the church, scenarios we perceive as dangerous—we run, we fear, we avoid.

It’s not actually trust in others that is underneath our fears; it’s really about our trust in ourselves. We frame our thinking around what has been done to us, while secretly blaming ourselves for not preventing what happened because our instincts failed us.

But who are we after trauma if we’re rendered unable to trust? What fills that void in our hearts? Fear? Hate? Anger? That complex post-trauma transformation is an identity shift that we may or may not be conscious of, but it’s there, tainting our future if we let it.

There’s a woman in my history who held her pain close, refusing to let go of being a woman scorned. That was her new identity, not a positive one, but a new identity nonetheless. And you know someone like this too, someone whose identity shifted to brokenness after trauma gutted them.

Whatever part of you that was taken away by trauma will be filled with something, good or bad. Our challenge post-trauma is to take control of our own identity narrative.

That’s the work. Does trauma have the upper hand, or will I shape it?

One of the surprisingly hard questions we get after losing a child is the moment someone we don’t know asks if we have children. What do I say? Yeah, a dead one? Pretend and only identify the one still living? Go into a morbid diatribe on how, when, and where he died? I’m being a bit flippant here, but these are the questions running through our minds in that moment as we debate how to blunder through that innocently asked question. What do I say and how much do I say because my identity as a mom has changed and I don’t know how to frame that yet. To shape my narrative around that trauma, I answer, “I have two boys. My youngest is an engineer. My oldest died two years ago.” I’m still a mom of two; one just isn’t with us anymore. It’s a small shift that allows me to control my identity in the aftermath of that particular trauma.

For me, using my voice by stating facts is part of how I’ve grappled with and reinforced my new identity as a mom whose child died. I’ve pushed away the silence with a short, direct, honest answer. I may or may not go into details in the moment, but I don’t blunder through the answer feeling my heart stuck in my throat struggling for words.

A few days ago, I spoke to a man who lost his son around the same time I lost mine. Although he didn’t frame it as identity, part of his struggle was with the loss of shared interests and activities that had been part of his relationship with his son. Their bond of interests had been so aligned that he didn’t know what might bring him joy again, given the absence. He didn’t know how to relate to his family without the prior focus. The empty part of his missing identity and the pain that filled him had begun damaging his marriage and his relationship with his other child.

After trauma, we desperately wish for our old life, our former identify, to return. He was asking me for advice, and I gently told this grieving man his old life, his old heart, was not returning. He needed to discover a new identity that included this new scar. An identity that worked with the scar instead of fighting to make it go away.

Looking back, this is one of the most important trauma lessons I’ve learned. We must actively think, talk, and act on shaping a new identity after trauma. If we let the trauma shape the version of us discarded in the ashes, the hole in our hearts will remain.

We can’t fix what we don’t acknowledge when we stay in the pain. And we can’t go back to who we were before the pain. It sucks, but choosing your own new identity is far more satisfying than letting the trauma choose for you.