Childhood trauma is an insidious beast. You mature into a young adult, thinking you overcame it just because you’re no longer in a deep debilitating depression. But what actually happens is you became so good at coping that your entire maturity, and sense of self is warped around ways you learned to cope, that you don’t even know who you are at your core anymore. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who’s experienced childhood trauma that has wondered what type of person would I be today if that trauma never happened? What would I be like if my mom didn’t die when I was 13? What would it be like if I had a capable father with a family to help a young teen navigate her youth while grieving the insurmountable loss of her mother?

A lot of self help books may tell you that this type of thinking is fruitless or a waste of energy and that you should just focus on the here and now and moving forward. But I’m telling you from personal experience that that’s exactly what I did for almost 20 years, which has led me here – questioning everything. Of course I’m not saying you should steep yourself in misery for eternity, but it’s important to reflect on the child you were before the loss and the child (turned adult) you were after. Because the older you get, the more years that pass, the harder it becomes to connect with your innermost desires, needs, preferences.

After many years of feeling disconnected, and empty (albeit relatively successful and normal from an outside perspective) it started to dawn on me that I didn’t know where my coping mechanisms ended and where I began. I’ve been feeling lost, anxious, and confused about the direction my life is headed because I’ve haven’t been marching to the drum of “me” or my inner self –I’ve just been marching. Just trudging along the best way I knew how to give myself the sense of safety that I’ve desperately seeking since I was 13. Only when I get to point where I finally feel safe, I stop, and I look around and wonder “how did I get here?” Not only that, but am I even happy here?

I’ve been so mislead by my unconscious needs that I don’t even know what I want anymore. The only thing I do know is that I’m not satisfied. I feel in every cell of my being that there’s something different out there waiting for me to acknowledge. A hidden passion perhaps, a hidden purpose. It’s been hidden by all this grief, this heaviness, this longing to have a family again that I’ve carried around since my mom’s death.