I have cptsd. I’ve struggled with it for nearly 40 years. Until – I finally found someone who could put all the pieces together and give my basket of problems a name.
That in itself was one triumph. Knowing.
Then I remember the bonsai. We are the bonsai people. Tiny seedlings shaped, trained, even mutilated into forms that nature never intended.
When I see those ‘conquer’ posts or those “I’ve recovered” posts… I’m envious. And I wonder if I’ll ever be ‘healed’.
And as horrible as that process was, the twisting, the shaping at a person’s hands they survived. And each is entirely unique.
Like the bonsai it is that uniqueness which makes each survivor of CPTSD a little universe of our own. We all responded to the pressures and dangers of our lives in our own way. So do not judge your successes by someone else’s.
All of us are as different from one another as can be. Your healed is going to look different from mine.
I will admit that I don’t think of myself as ‘healing’ from my past so much as growing beyond it. You will grow. You will take yourself in new directions. You will fly. And you will fail. And you will learn, and fly again.
Like the forces that shaped the bonsai, cptsd cannot be removed from us, or eradicated. It has shaped us. But, now that we know we can choose to grow beyond that limited shape.
You will grow, and thrive, and be magnificent.
We are the bonsai people, bent, pared away, shaped by our environment.
Despite all of that, we survive, we grow, we thrive in places others fear to tread because we are as fearless and tough as we are unique.
We are the bonsai people and we are beautiful.