Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self

by Thema Bryant-Davis

We sabotage ourselves in part when we come to see ourselves through the eyes of those who demeaned us. What are the lies you have come to believe about yourself? What are the emotional and psychological walls created by the painful experiences of your life? The lies, armor, and walls may be blocking you from receiving love, making friends, and manifesting your dreams.

Select one of the external signs you have observed in yourself and take notice of each time you do it. Consider how you feel right before, during, and after engaging in the behavior. For example, if you find yourself eating when you’re not hungry, drinking more than feels healthy, buying items you cannot afford, or choosing to spend your downtime with people who take you further away from yourself, reflect in your mind or journal about these acts of disconnection. As you raise your awareness, you open the path to more options and possibilities for the journey home. Your awareness provides the opportunity to choose a new path, one that leads you back to your authentic self.

To see yourself more clearly is not an invitation to shame. It is an invitation to acknowledge where you are and how you want to live. I invite your soul to tell your heart, mind, body, and spirit, “Welcome home.”

You are worthy of care and protection. You deserve goodness and kindness. You can set limits to protect your time, energy, mental health, physical health, resources, and spirit. I know in terms of culture and gender, you may have been raised not to have any boundaries; but you may want to consider being an advocate for yourself, a protector of your emotional wellness, and even the parent you never had. So who are the people you need to stop entertaining? Can the mother, father, grandparent, elder in you arise and say that some people can’t come into your home anymore? Can you allow your inner parent to speak and declare to those who are breaking your spirit, “Absolutely not. This is unacceptable.”

You may be an adult and still can’t apologize because you never saw it modeled, so you associate apologies with weakness. If you avoid apologies, assume time will heal all wounds, and never take responsibility for your actions, your relationships will suffer from unaddressed ruptures. Being able to own your part in a problem is an act of growth and development.

Before you share, prepare yourself for the diverse responses the person may have. Sometimes we assume that people will react a certain way, and we are devastated when they go off script. Honor yourself with the reminder that your feelings are yours and are not dependent on others’ response or agreement. Consider what you want to share even if it gets hard or you become anxious. You may want to write down a few notes or journal before sharing your feelings. Some

The first is that sometimes we remain silent to keep the peace. I want to ask you whose peace you are keeping. The person who is clueless about how you feel is at peace, but you aren’t. There is a difference between peace and silence. To attain authentic peace, you must be authentic.

It can be a form of oppression when mental health professionals, faith leaders, and community members see you struggling but ignore all the barriers, stigma, and discrimination you face, simply concluding that you need to do better.

Most faith traditions take the position that our bodies are sacred, so we need to contemplate how we have honored, cared for, and restored this temple, or conversely, how we have desecrated, neglected, or dishonored it.

Another spiritual value that we hear echoed across traditions is to love others as we love ourselves, or to treat others the way we want to be treated. We often hear that and focus on loving and treating others well but overlook the part about loving them as we love ourselves. Loving and caring for yourself can be a spiritual value.

How is your sleep? Do you take care of your belongings? Can you tolerate or even enjoy solitude? What has your experience with binge eating, drinking, and smoking been this week? What do your dating relationships look like? How do you feel about yourself in the presence of the person you call your best friend? What are you doing to cultivate your gifts? What are you doing to feed your mind and your spirit?

You need nourishment not only from others but also from yourself. You can choose to accept yourself even when there are aspects of yourself you are still working to improve.

Instead of thinking of exercise as a dreaded chore, explore different ways of moving your body until you find one that feels enjoyable to you—whether that’s walking, cycling, dancing, yoga, group sports, or even martial arts.

Remember that failure is an event, not an identity.

When you start operating out of your hard-earned wisdom, you can prevent yourself from walking into traps like those you have already fallen into. Think back on some circumstances, perhaps at work or with family, where a situation was a mess and you participated in the mess-making. But if that same bait, same mess, was to show up again, you would see it for what it was and not get caught up in it.

While past success can build your confidence, there is also something to be gained from our missteps. This is perhaps why many people in drug and alcohol recovery prefer to have a sponsor—someone who mentors a person newer to the recovery process. Similarly, some people who have had relationships that didn’t work out can share wisdom gained from those experiences. Some people who have struggled with health conditions or financial difficulties can provide insight that those who have had perfect health and a perfect credit score may not have.

When you approach newness with curiosity and openness instead of insecurity, you have more confidence to step into the unknown.

Although you are not a child anymore, if you allow yourself to learn and grow, you will increase your confidence to try new things. Growth is a process and a journey, so you need the confidence to take one step at a time, trusting that the path and the destination are real possibilities.

Some of the ways you survived may be rough, awkward, or even embarrassing, but you made it, and I’m glad you’re still here. Even if you want to change and grow, you can still give yourself patience, grace, and appreciation for the ways in which you made it this far.

Get in the presence of those who will celebrate your wins and who can remind you that your failures are not the end of your story.

Women often note that after marriage their labor increases, while men report less stress after they get married.

there are some truths, some revelations that come to us only when we sit down somewhere.

I invite you to get into a comfortable position and begin to focus in on your breath. As you come home to yourself, you become more aware of the ways you have distracted yourself from the pain with extreme productivity, loud voices, nonstop television watching, addictive phone scrolling, steady sipping, and late-night eating until you fall asleep. You shift away from the constant busyness used to cover the pain. To come home is to stop running away from your grief.

You may have lost hope, which led you to settle because you no longer believed, or perhaps never believed, you could have good things in life.

Remember the time before you started believing everyone was terrible, so you might as well hold on to the terrible you know?

Toxic spirituality has silenced many of us. Messages like “Just be grateful because others have it worse” or “Just look on the bright side and count your blessings” lack compassion.

Homecoming means we don’t need the Trauma Olympics of deciding who has it worse. Your grief over your losses is significant; at least allow it to be significant for you.

There is a Swahili word, kujua, which generally means to know, but some translate this word as “remembering that which I already know.”

You reclaim the losses you can, and you open yourself to new manifestations of joy. This is not about replacing people because people cannot be replaced, but it is about experiencing losses and still living a whole life.

Tell yourself the truth about what you feel, as layered or complicated as it may be. Give yourself the gift of honesty because you cannot heal what you will not acknowledge.

As you tend to the wounds at the end of a relationship, do not overlook the opportunity to learn from it. What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about your needs and wants? What did you learn about communication? What did you learn about who and what you find attractive? What did you learn about grace, compassion, and forgiveness of yourself and others? What did you learn about intimacy and connection? What did you learn about love? What warning signs did you discover? What and who did you discover is healing for you?

Mistreatment in your past can make you

more inclined to accept or ignore continued mistreatment. It is important for you not to blame yourself because no one deserves mistreatment. It can also be helpful to acknowledge past experiences that may have caused you to think love means endurance and tolerance, no matter what.

For those of you who need to stay where you are for a season, there may be a number of things you can gain from the place you’re in. You may learn a new skill, acquire new wisdom, or develop the ability to work with certain people. Decide what you want to gain from your time there, and let that be the center of your focus and motivation.

You may make a lifelong friend there, you may learn negotiation skills or self-advocacy skills that will serve you down the road, or you may learn to disconnect from the drama around you so it does not drain you.

I invite you to consider developing a practice, a ritual that will feed your spirit before you go to work.

Explore to see what feeds you, and then give yourself that gift each day so you are nourished and grounded.

Remember who you are and what your purpose is before you spend a lot of time engaging in something that is being blown out of proportion.

It is wonderful when you have a supportive supervisor, but if that is not the case, remind yourself about the value of your contributions.

As human beings, we appreciate acknowledgment, but if you are working in an environment where that is not going to happen, don’t forget to give that recognition to yourself.

Develop a plan for how to make your time at work more fulfilling, or at the very least, more peaceful. If you’re going to stay there, who would you like to improve your relationship with? Who do you need to communicate or collaborate with more, and who do you need to find a way to reduce interaction with? Consider the things that are in your power to do to bring more ease to your day.

No matter the form of trauma, whether it happened in one day or over the course of your childhood, I want you to know that trauma affects you, but it doesn’t define you. In other words, there were definite consequences to what you experienced, but those experiences are not the totality of your identity.

Acknowledgment is not only recognizing that the trauma occurred, but also being aware that it was significant and that you are significant. You may have continued to see the perpetrator and had to pretend it didn’t happen or that it didn’t matter, but it does. Your safety and well-being matter.

The trauma should not have happened. You may have been pressured to tuck it away or compartmentalize it, but the reality is that trauma often peeks out in various ways. So today, push past family, cultural, and

religious pressures to deny, and instead, choose to acknowledge w...

Pushing people away and constantly seeking others’ approval are actually two sides of the same coin, because trauma can lead to doubting yourself and not feeling safe in any space.

Part of your healing journey involves releasing the shame that often accompanies trauma. Shame causes you to feel like something is wrong with you, instead of focusing on the fact that something wrong was done to you. The violations you experienced are the responsibility of the offender, the perpetrator, the one who mistreated you. They are accountable for their actions. You are not responsible for the ways you were hurt or left unprotected as a child.

When you allow yourself to be seen authentically by others, you move closer to your homecoming. Being at home with yourself is powerful, but being home in the presence of another is liberating. Trauma teaches you to be suspicious, cautious, and vigilant. It teaches you to trust no one. To come home to yourself and to heal, you must reject that script and begin to risk being honest and present with others.

We exist in context. Your environment affects and shapes you. To come home to yourself, you will need to see the systems and messages that have influenced you.

My hope for you on this homecoming journey is that you create and cultivate a beloved community, a space in which there is mutual love, respect, and appreciation. Create spaces of ease, where you have nothing to prove and freedom to gain. Create spaces that are not built on shame and self-blame, but full of intentional mutual care. These spaces will affirm you and remind you that you matter. You need space where you can breathe and be yourself. You need space where people do not deny or minimize or oppress. You deserve space where you are seen and appreciated in the fullness of who you are, and where you do not have to leave any part of yourself at the door. You deserve a community where your humanity is not up for debate and requires no justification or defense.