To Come Home To Yourself
May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you,
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.
John O’Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher
Excerpt from To Bless the Space Between Us
The process of therapy is coming home to yourself.
Over the past few years, I have kept coming back to this poem by John O’Donohue. In my personal life, and as I sit with clients, I consistently see the theme of connecting back to ourselves. That is what happens in the healing process; finding who we are beneath the pain and trauma.
The things we have been through in life often eclipse our true self- the core of who we are. We take on the identity of parts that protect us, keeping who we are hidden. These parts have saved us. They have provided strengths we didn’t know we had in order to survive; to cope with pain.
In therapy, we learn how to connect back to these parts with compassion. To understand why they do their job and how they have helped us survive. We get to know them so we can see the self that is underneath these parts. The process of therapy involves connection to self, who we are in God. A self that is grounded, unburdened, whole. This process feels difficult because there is a shedding of who we thought we were. There may be doubt, fear, and uncertainty.
One of the last pieces of trauma treatment involves reconnection. Reconnection to others and to ourselves. There is a rebuilding of an identity that was taken away by the trauma. Trauma fragments us and the core of our identity is lost in the service of survival.
Yet at the end of it, there is hope, hope that the future is more than we imagined it could be. That we can see ourselves as whole and connect back to who we were created to be. Who God has seen all along.