cars & trauma

🍃Have you ever cried over a car? Maybe it makes perfect sense like saying goodbye to a home or maybe it makes no sense at all. I thought my tears would baffle my husband & daughter, and they’d think I was overreacting & ridiculous. But in that moment I didn’t care. “Mom, are you crying?” Yes, I replied. “Liam rode in that car,” replied my husband. And, so I cried when I watched its new owner drive down the street. I bought that car by myself. A huge accomplishment in and of itself at 25. But that’s not why I cried. I cried because that car was the last big thing we had… still connected to Liam. 

 🍃Moving to another state was beyond hard. This house isn’t connected to him, the car I’ve been driving is not connected to him. Our new furniture isn’t connected to him. Finn has outgrown the crib & clothes connected to him. The “things” connected to him are getting less & less. Time marches on. Watching that car drive away was like watching the memory of him grow further & further away. Grief isn’t just emotions & visuals reminding us of that person, it’s also woven into things. Grief is relentless, it keeps hitting like ocean waves against shorelines. 

🍃With every goodbye, the same things rise up in my body. Because the healing of trauma takes time. A lot of time. I allowed my response to not only surface, but I sat flooded in them. Felt them. Felt them move, swell and dissipate. I used some Somatic tools to help them move around even more, experiencing all of it. I can’t release my pain if I refuse it. Saying goodbye to homes, cars, states, clothes… it floods us the same way as a song playing, hearing their name called in a store. Not only are we brought back to a moment, a memory, the body is brought back to a state. For me, my body returns to a survival state. It’s all connected to trauma stuck in the body. 

🍃It still exists in my body that I need to save him.

✨We have to move it, to release it. It takes time. It moves slowly. Taste the salt falling from your cheeks, breathe, when you hear the rumble, you’re moving it.