Surviving trauma is hard work. I have spent decades figuring out how to keep moving forward and have found several practices to be key. Here is my short list:

1. I married well. I am not a great wife. I only cook on holidays, rarely clean, almost never do laundry, get in way over my head on one project after another, and am regularly distracted. My husband took on my oldest son and I as a package deal and stayed through hardships he could not have anticipated. Our spirits have been broken more than once but our path has made us more compassionate and laser focused on what matters most. We learned to rely on each other and have become a solid partnership. He supports my need to somehow make meaning from our experience by doing what I can to help children and families and enabling changes in systems … and the hours that these pursuits require.

2. Relationships are everything. I am not a great friend, really not even a good one. I do not return calls or emails well. I forget birthdays and do not make near enough time for the people I love. But I have remarkable friends who love me anyway. I trust people who share my experience. Those mamas who have fought for their children to be taught in our public school systems. Those mamas whose children hurt themselves and others no matter how much we love them. Those mamas who fear for their children who dance at night not knowing the danger that lurks around the corner. Those mamas who have seen evil in people and places once trusted, whose churches shun them, whose neighbors look away. Those are my people. Belonging to a group of my people is extremely important to my sense of myself as someone worthwhile.

3. Sleep is really important. Who knew? Once upon a time it was easy. Then Aaron had a hard time sleeping as a child, so I did too. I have at various points in my life been too willing to forgo sleep in favor of productivity. When Aaron died, sleep became difficult again. I put myself to bed 8 hours a night but did not sleep. In order live best I need 7-8 hours of sleep a night. I have learned I need somewhere around 9 hours down to get 7 hours of actual sleep. I attend to sleep hygiene. I slow down before going to bed, read a bit and allow myself time to wind down. I take melatonin, and if I did not sleep the night before, Benadryl. When I wake in the night, I breathe deep and say a Buddhist mantra until I fall back to sleep. I invest time and energy in my own renewal.

4. Movement. There is a lot written about the importance of movement, particularly in coping with trauma. I have dogs who push me to move whether I want to or not most mornings. I begin my morning walks in a fog, but it is habit and the dogs herd me into our regular routes. I hate exercise, but I do it several times a week anyway because when I am finished I feel better. I lift weights because I want to age well in my bones. I need to get back to Body Combat because I found relief as i envisioned the forces of greed and directed my anger at them with every kick and every punch … I miss that focused, physical release.

5. Mindfulness. Often, early in my walk, I feel the weight of Aaron’s absence, sometimes I cry and allow myself to just be there. I see him in the expanse of sky (particularly storms but that is another story) and I notice how heavy grief feels as I walk through it. I turn my attention to the trees above me and their particular nuances by the season. I breathe in deeply and hold to stretch deep in my belly and release my breath and pain simultaneously, slowly. I am reading Treleaven’s book about mindfulness and trauma, and he cautions the need to recognize that while mindfulness can be useful in integrating trauma, for those with post traumatic stress responses it can also bring forward sensory awareness of traumatic memories. I may veer into this but for me it is part of so many losses that need to be examined and I am okay with feeling them. I am not ready to let go.

6. Spiritual practice. Once I had a strong religious faith but right now I am not ready to forgive that faith for the role it played in Aaron’s abuse. I prayed without stopping and I let that prayer numb what should have been a fury that should have driven me to take my son out of harms way. Instead I trusted and allowed myself to believe that to do otherwise was to lack faith; to stop before the “miracle”. Today, I cry every time I enter those churches because, in his silence, that god conspired to hurt my child. I still have a deep spiritual practice but I find that spiritual renewal in other faith traditions braided together. I sit quietly at Aaron’s grave most Sundays, burn sage and lavender, meditate with Mala beads and the natural world.

7. Altruism and hard work I practice kindness and good work as a spiritual walk. I seek to sublimate my experience into work that has meaning. Victor Frankl said “He who has a why can live with any how.” I seek to make our story mean something. We spent too much resource trying to find the right label when Aaron was little and none of that added to his quality of life. So I looked for a discipline that would ground a focus on living well, on building habits and routines, building relationships, and enabling participation. I became an occupational therapist because I wanted to figure out how to help people like Aaron have a life anyway, voices be damned. Unfortunately, systems have really changed very little over the past 40 years, and families are still left hoping that finding the right label is going to do something. There are practices that work well but often they are so poorly funded and inadequately staffed that they bear little resemblance to what they claim to be. I teach so that I can prepare therapists to support people like Aaron but worry that they will not find work that will sustain them. I seek to fill impossible gaps in my community because my salary is covered teaching and my students need to practice skills. There is so much to do, and always so much left undone.

8. The stories I tell myself. Brene Brown used this phrase in her recent Netflix special and it is a good one. I reframe. I tell myself this is good work, that Aaron’s pain has meaning. I refocus on savoring the joy of grandchildren, glorious flowers, the time I will one day carve back out to paint, sculpt, create. I watch closely the stories that I tell myself and edit them to assure that they build rather than destroy my spirit. My life is hard enough, I work not to make it harder, even to lighten my load in what I say to myself.

I am a work in progress, never done. I try to care for myself in all that I choose to think and do. I make lots of mistakes and often reset my course. I honor that this path is hard and I deserve joy. I also know that the sadness deep in my soul will always be, and I embrace it too.