Some Truth about Trauma

I’ve sprained both ankles more times than I can count. I’d say the number is upwards of a dozen. For each ankle. And I’m not just talking minor tweaks here and there. I’m talking massive ankle sprains—the kind that balloon up to the degree that you can no longer force your swollen foot into your shoe, the kind that turn black and blue and generate their own pulse.

This was inconvenient to my life as a college athlete, especially around game time. Whenever physically possible, I would keep on trucking through the pain, first wrapping my ankles with medical tape, and then shoving them into expensive braces for extra support before going out and abusing them on the basketball court. Sometimes the damage would be too severe, and I’d have to miss a practice or two while I waited for the swelling to subside, but for the most part, I just tried to soldier on regardless.

So when a Facebook friend sprained her ankle a few months ago, I was surprised by the intensity of my disgust with her response to it. (These are the things I probably shouldn’t admit out loud, but whatever—none of you are suffering from an illusion of my perfection as a human.) Not only was she laid up in bed for the day having her family wait on her hand and foot, but for the next several weeks, she went everywhere on a knee scooter.

Something in me recoiled at the indulgence of her self-care. “Suck it up and walk already,” I telepathically shamed her through my screen. “You don’t need a scooter. It’s just a sprain. Let’s not be dramatic.”

My heart was really ugly toward her, and the saving grace of the situation is the fact that I was, at least, self-aware enough to recognize this in my spirit and committed enough to logic to realize that the one out of alignment with reason in this equation was me.

It’s objectively true that the wisest response to ankle injury is rest. It turns out that if you actually allow your ligaments to mend, you’re a lot less likely to continue tearing them every other week. I was angry with this poor woman on the internet because I was secretly jealous of her. She was living with the kind of self-respect that allowed her to take up space and prioritize health. I had categorized this as weakness and melodrama when, in reality, it was a form of strength, one which I, as a perpetually 10-feet-tall-and-bulletproof warrior woman had not yet even begun to master.

Last month I asked my therapist a question it had taken me literal months to summon the courage to ask because I was just so stinking terrified of what his answer might be.

“Alright, doc,” I began. “What does it say it your notes? What’s my official clinical diagnosis? Do you think I have a borderline personality or personality disorder? Is it just too messed up to really fix?”

I braced myself for impact like I was anticipating a bomb to drop.

He grew quiet before chuckling and assuring me, “Kaeley, one thing I’ve noticed in my years of practice is that people with personality disorders do not agonize over the possibility that they have personality disorders. They never imagine that the problem is them. You have the opposite issue.”

I heaved a sigh of relief before he continued. “Trauma. Complex trauma.”

The words technically reached my ears, but I didn’t fully allow them to land. My resistance to embracing that diagnosis is strong, as, in my mind, trauma is what’s going on in the Middle East right now. Trauma is losing a child. Trauma is watching an IED blow your buddy’s limbs off. Nothing in my life has been bad enough to merit such a strong descriptor. I can still tape up my ankles and shove my feet into braces and play an entire basketball game if I have to. I’m not really hurt that badly.

The problem with this kind of denialism, though, is that it circumvents the healing necessary to make you as strong as you want to pretend that you are. Resilience is a worthy goal, but it has to be properly cultivated, or you’ll end up harvesting a whole lot of bitterness and mistaking it for strength. You’ll encounter people taking the space to heal, and you’ll interpret it as weakness. You’ll be envious of the courage inherent in other peoples’ vulnerability, and you’ll instinctively want to shoot it down instead of honoring it.

I see this ALL the time in my work with female survivors of sexual and domestic violence—women who have convinced themselves that they’re stronger than everyone else because they sucked it up and got over it, women who are completely allergic to sitting in anyone else’s suffering, women who insist that actually tending to wounds is evidence of a “victim mentality.” They refuse to do the deep dive into the wreckage of their own heartache, and they deeply resent anyone who insists it’s necessary. It’s ultimately cowardice that wears a tough girl mask. But it’s not true strength or courage. It’s like watching my toddler put on his Batman costume and convince himself he’s got massive biceps that he hasn’t actually earned. Calluses make you numb and unfeeling, not whole.

True courage requires contention with our own vulnerability, and in the context of Kaeley, today that looks like saying, “Yeah, I’ve endured some actual trauma, and it hurt me.”

What happened to me as a child was traumatic. What happened to me in my first marriage was traumatic. What happened to me at the Y was extremely traumatic. It hurt me. It affected my ability to trust. It made me feel abandoned and alone. It caused me to retreat into myself and become extremely hesitant about allowing anyone in.

This is all freshly relevant, of course, as I’m watching the resurrection of the national conversation about men in women’s bathrooms play out all over Twitter. I spent an hour or so this morning looking up friends I lost during this whole ordeal and praying for God to bless their lives even without me in them, but it’s still painful if I’m truly honest. And rather than lecturing myself to suck it up and move on, today I’m saying, “Ouch. That still stings.”

Have I seen the Lord’s hand at work through it all? Of course. Has He been faithful to restore the locust-eaten years? Absolutely. I wouldn’t trade my present reality for an altered version of the past. But I also won’t pretend I’m not walking with a bit of a limp these days. And I won’t continue to shame myself or others for relying on a knee-scooter instead of just impulsively jumping back into the fray. I don’t have to thrust myself to the frontlines of the culture wars today. I don’t have to singlehandedly slay all the giants or conduct all the radio interviews or create all the parent resources or fix all the problems.

Today I’m resting. I may take a little drive out to Higgens Point to watch the eagles chase the spawning Kokanee. I may take my toddler to jump at the place with the bouncy houses. I’ll take some time to pray for the people who’ve replaced me on the frontlines, and I’ll invite the Holy Spirit in to heal the places in my heart I’ve been avoiding like the plague.

I pray that anyone reading this will find the inspiration and the courage to do the same.

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