Tag: Human Connection

The Voice on the Other End of the Line

One of the hardest things for a trauma survivor to do is reach outside their little bubble.

To move beyond the isolation that has started to feel safe.

To reach for another human being.

Another voice on the other end of the line.

Because after trauma, isolation can become comfortable in a strange way. Not because we necessarily want to be alone, but because being alone can feel safer than risking another misunderstanding, another dismissal, another judgment.

Sometimes healing begins with something that looks incredibly small from the outside.

Picking up the phone.

Sending a message.

Telling someone, “I’m not okay.”

And in the beginning of that journey, we are not expecting anyone to heal us.

We are not expecting another person to make us whole. We are not expecting one conversation, one relationship, one therapist, one medication, or one moment to suddenly make everything better.

Most of the time, we simply need someone willing to sit with us.

To listen.

To hear us.

Because something, someone, or some series of events hurt us deeply enough that, for a while, the expression of what happened may feel like one of the only things we still own.

Our words.

Our memories.

Our anger.

Our grief.

Our questions.

Our version of what happened to us.

Sometimes those expressions are all we have left while we are trying to understand who we are now.

That is why the response of the person on the other end matters so much.

It can take enormous courage to finally speak. And sometimes all it takes is one judgment for everything we have expressed outwardly to turn inward.

Suddenly, we are no longer simply saying, “I am hurting.”

We begin asking ourselves whether our pain means something is wrong with us.

Whether we should be further along.

Whether we are failing at recovery.

Whether what happened damaged us so completely that we will never find our way back to ourselves.

Whether we deserve pity instead of respect.

Whether we have somehow become something that should be judged instead of understood.

That is a tremendous amount of power contained in what can look like an ordinary human interaction.

The people we reach toward cannot heal us.

But their response can influence what happens next.

Whether they listen or dismiss.

Whether they stay or retreat.

Whether they make room for us or try to tell us who we should be.

Those moments can affect whether we are willing to reach outward again.

They can affect how safe connection feels.

They can even shape parts of who we become as we rebuild.

But there is another side to this.

No one person can protect another person from everything.

It simply is not possible.

We can stand beside someone.

We can warn them about danger.

We can try to shield them from pain.

We can carry what we are able to carry.

We can love someone so fiercely that we wish we could stand between them and every hurt, every disappointment, every loss, every sadness.

But we cannot live their life for them.

And sometimes, in trying so hard to protect someone we love, we unintentionally stand between them and something they need.

The chance to see clearly.

The chance to make their own choices.

The chance to discover what they are capable of.

The chance to decide what happiness looks like for them.

Protection can come from love.

But so can standing beside someone while allowing them to face what is theirs to face.

Because ultimately, most human beings are searching for many of the same things.

We want to be heard.

We want connection.

We want purpose.

We want some measure of happiness and productivity and the freedom to build a life that feels fulfilling to us.

The American ideal speaks of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But happiness has never meant the same thing for everyone.

The clerk standing behind the counter at Dollar General may be every bit as content with their life as the millionaire sitting at the head of Walmart.

And either one can also be profoundly unhappy.

Money cannot tell us.

Titles cannot tell us.

Houses, accomplishments, jobs, and status cannot tell us what fulfillment looks like inside another human being.

And neither can we.

Maybe that is part of what we owe one another.

Not the promise that we can remove every painful thing from someone’s life.

Not the belief that we know what their happiness should look like.

Not the need to rescue, fix, or rewrite them.

Maybe what we owe one another is much simpler.

To listen.

To make room for another person’s expression without immediately turning it into a weakness, a failure, a diagnosis, or a judgment.

To trust that another human being knows something about their own life that we cannot possibly know for them.

To stand beside them without trying to become the author of their story.

There is a difference between saying,

“I will keep everything from touching you,”

and saying,

“Whatever happens, you will not have to face it alone.”

The Strength We Hide

There is something deeply human about the way we hide our suffering.

It is not vanity. It is not pride. It is fear. Ancient and instinctive. The fear that if others see how much we are hurting, they will decide we are no longer worthy of standing where we once stood. That our pain disqualifies us. That our suffering is evidence of weakness rather than survival.

So we learn to tuck it away. We learn to smile carefully. We learn which parts of ourselves are acceptable to show and which parts must remain hidden, even in the moments when we need connection the most. Suffering becomes private not because it is shameful, but because the world has taught us that pain invites judgment.

And judgment isolates.

As I began my healing journey, still very early, incredibly fragile, somewhere in the first steps of learning how to live inside my own mind again.  After the chaos and harm of the past few years of torment and self judgement; I found myself reaching outward. Not widely. Carefully. Toward the people who had reached for me before, even briefly. A call here. A text there. Small gestures that carried enormous weight.

One person, in particular, kept returning to my thoughts.

I had known her for nearly a quarter of a century, a lifetime by many measures. I could remember the first inspection we ever did together. I was still green, still learning, and she was brand new. Back then, even if you were fresh at your job, you taught the next person who walked through the door. We walked into a restaurant so infested with cockroaches that when you pulled the paper towels from the dispenser, the roaches came spilling out with them.

It was horrific.

And yet, it was also a place of happiness for her. It was where she had gone after getting engaged to the man who would become her lifelong partner. Someone who would stand beside her through everything that came after. I remember thinking, even then, that she had found something rare. I never envied her for it, but I noticed it. I admired it. I always had.

Over the decades, she became woven into the fabric of my life. She came to my wedding. She arrived as a brand-new mother of her second child, carrying that soft, luminous exhaustion that only new mothers have. I still remember how her face glowed illuminating beauty. A lot of pride and exhaustion all wrapped into one. Her smile carried warmth, happiness  into the room. I remember how deeply it mattered to me that she was there, standing beside me in that moment of my life. Not out of obligation, but because she chose it. I realized presence is its own form of loyalty.

After that, she came to my son’s first birthday.

It was one of those ordinary milestones that doesn’t feel ordinary when you look back—balloons, laughter, the chaos of a one-year-old discovering the world. And there she was again. Showing up. Witnessing. Standing inside the small, meaningful moments that quietly build a life.

Those memories stayed with me.

And then, at one point in her life, she became ill.

Cancer.

The word itself carries judgment, whether we admit it or not. The world looked at her differently—not because of who she was or what she had built, but because she had been sick. People quietly decided she was no longer capable. No longer reliable. No longer the same.

Watching that happen to her impacted me. And now, as I look back, I realize she probably understood what I am going through now more than almost anyone else ever could.

Because I, too, have been judged not by my competence or my history, but by my pain. I have been treated as though being hurt means being diminished. As though suffering cancels out worth. And when institutions reinforce that lie, the trauma mind absorbs it. Begins to believe it. Begins to whisper that maybe they are right.

—Still, even during my darkest years, the years I wanted to give up and give the world a pass and just let the darkness absorb me, even when I couldn’t see in myself what I outwardly carried, she would tell me she envied my strength.

Strength, in my world, has never been abstract. I have a daughter with diabetes, and I have raised a son who taught me that every child asks something different of their mother. It required different patience, different advocacy, different ways of staying steady when life gets hard. 

A diabetic child is a whole different layer of trauma and fear. It was measured in blood sugar checks and sleepless nights, in vigilance that never turns off, in learning how to stay calm when your child’s life depends on your steadiness. My friend saw that. She named it in words that have never left me., “They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle,  but sometimes I’m not sure what God’s plan was for you.“

She didn’t say it lightly. She didn’t say it cruelly. She said it with awe. With concern. With the quiet recognition that what I had been asked to carry was heavy—perhaps heavier than anyone should have to bear.

At the time, I didn’t know how to receive that. Trauma has a way of convincing you that endurance is not strength, just obligation. That surviving does not count if you are exhausted while doing it.

Something in me kept thinking of her. It was the same quiet, persistent pull I’ve felt my whole life. A mental pull, the one my grandmother, Rose used to talk about. She would call one of her children or grandchildren by the wrong name, then laugh and say, “They must be thinking of me” And most of the time, she was right. Someone would call. Someone would show up. Time and distance would collapse into closeness.

I think I inherited that from her. That empathetic sixth sense. The feeling in the pit of my stomach when someone’s name won’t let go.

So I reached out.

She is a cancer survivor, nearly ten years strong. But survival does not always erase the fear. The possibility of its return can linger quietly in the back of the mind, creating its own kind of darkness. Doubt. Questions about value. Questions about the future. Questions about whether the world might once again reduce a person to a diagnosis.

I want to stand beside her.

Because her illness never diminished her worth. It shook her confidence. It challenged her sense of self. But it did not erase the truth of who she is deep inside; a remarkable mother, a devoted partner, a capable leader, a woman who built something extraordinary even when fear told her she might lose everything.

During the recession, she worried she wouldn’t be able to feed her family. Later, she and her husband built an empire. An empire she still doesn’t fully recognize as evidence of her own strength. Suffering has a way of blinding us to our greatness. It teaches us to fixate on the fractures and ignore the structure still standing.

And here I am still isolated, still crying, unable to put up my Christmas decorations because I don’t yet know how to feel joy again. I don’t know how to live the way I once did. But I want joy for her. I want peace for her. I want her to see what I see.

I want her to know that what the world calls kryptonite was never weakness at all.

Trauma does not require a single violent incident to nearly destroy us. It can come from prolonged judgment. From betrayal by systems we trusted. From having our identities questioned and our value reduced to what we can produce rather than who we are.

A lawsuit can be trauma.
An institution turning against you can be trauma.
Having your faith in yourself put on trial can be trauma.

Kindness, then, becomes resistance.

Standing beside someone and saying, I see you. I know your strength. You are still worthy, is not softness. It is defiance against a world that confuses suffering with failure.

Watching my friend continue to fight, continue to live, to build, to love someone who internally feels so unlovable as me, helps inch me closer to remembering the life I once had. The strength I outwardly showed the world that I couldn’t internally allow myself to feel. It allows joy to return slowly, alongside the pain, rather than being consumed by it.

And maybe that is how healing works.

Not all at once.
Not loudly.

But through remembering one another.

Through refusing to let suffering be the final word.

Through choosing to see strength where the world looks away.

By building strength in those around us, by remembering that everyone is fighting an internal battle, and by rolling up our own sleeves to help the person beside us, that strength may become bright enough to light the way.