When the Place that Hurts the Most is the Place that Feels Most Like Home

Healing is remembering that you were never meant to live there

I had a powerful experience today when practicing a somatic experiencing meditation.

I’ve been finding it difficult to get out of my head lately.

I’ve really been missing my daughter, Chloe. It’s been almost one thousand days since she died.

And living in my head is never a good place for me to spend too much unintentional time.

As she guided me through connecting to my body I noticed discomfort on the right side of my upper back.

As I explored the contours of the sensations I began to imagine an exit wound from a gun shot.

The sensation felt jagged and mottled like torn, dying skin although somehow it wasn’t overly intense.

She encouraged me to really embody that part of me.

To talk, as the sensation, to myself and vice versa.

My imagination led me to picture myself inside my body, looking out through the “wound.”

It seemed cold, windy and scary outside my body and oddly comfortable to be ensconced in wound.

I think that’s what trauma really is, finding safety in the very wound that hurt you, because the world outside of it still feels too dangerous to face.

Healing isn’t leaving the wound behind. It’s learning to trust that there’s life beyond it.

I’ll keep doing the work and I’ll keep writing about grief for men, and the people who love them.

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Most men try to think their way out of pain. I did too. Hell, I still do at times.

10 Hard Truths Every Man Needs to Hear About Grief is the guide I wish I’d had.

It’s straight talk about what grief does to you, and how to stop getting stuck in it.