Gratitude Blog Day 3: An Ode To Post-Traumatic Growth

Kala Farnham
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

Courage isn’t a battle cry that calls out one day and is exhausted the next. Courage is a gentleness that bends and sways through the currents of time, it is taking life by the horns with the lightness of small hands.

We can’t change the cards we were dealt, but we can choose how to play them. Precisely one year ago I came out to my family and community about the sexual abuse I endured as a child. Before that, I had only spoken to a select few about my experience. Sharing my truth was in many ways a liberation, unfastening the chains that held me down from fully engaging in the healing process. For today’s gratitude post, I’m reflecting on the gift of post-traumatic growth through sharing this prose poem, written in the format of an open letter, addressed in part to my abuser and in part to the monster in my head, C-PTSD.

It’s a letter that I return to often, whenever I need to be reminded of my intention to release the cycle of suffering, and to come back to a place of self-love and healing:

Small Hands

No more will I carry your bitterness like a heavy weight in my heart. No more will I let you sink my ship with jagged words or flood my soul with a deluge of shame. No more will I drag myself down with the ball and chain of your blame, “this is your fault.” For I have been wearing my flag at half mast for too long, mourning the wild child who was broken too fast, picking up the pieces of your darkness with the lightest touch of small hands. I have been a vessel for your fears too long, washing away my own tears with the same gentle courage it took to forgive you, again and again.

No more will I wear the badge of your shame on my chest. As a child, I believed when you said, “this is your fault.” Children are like that, entrusting their identity to those meant to take care for them. As a woman, I see now how the ball and chain has been passed down through generations. I’ve inherited a family stone carried through the lineage by each wild child broken too fast. I see now how each small, gentle heart was sunk with the weight of bitterness, flooded with the pain of our ancestors. And while I grieve for the suffering that has led you to cause me harm, I see now that it is not my ball and chain to carry.

So today, I am ending the cycle. I am dropping the ball and chain. I will no longer define myself by the way you mistake the strength of my tears for weakness; the way you mistake my courage to face my fear for cowardice. I will not be made bitter nor be blamed for the weight of your world that the lightness of my hands could not carry. Today, I am taking back my light, and flooding the vessel of my heart with self-love. Today, I am reawakening the wild child and choosing to live on my terms. Because courage isn’t a battle cry that calls out one day and is exhausted the next; no, courage is a gentleness that bends and sways through the currents of time, it is taking life by the horns with the lightness of small hands.

Kala Farnham

Written by

Creative Nonfiction Writer. Poet. Award-Winning Songwriter. Holistic Wellness Nerd. Social Justice Advocate. Counselor. www.kalafarnham.com

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