Carrying trauma with grace

We had one of those big, (hopefully)-once-in-a-career type of traumatic events at my hospital, and someone asked me, “How do I learn to cope with this so I can walk into the next room and keep going?”

I told them two things.

Well, three things, because first I said “These are impossible situations and it’s very hard to know exactly how to cope.”

Honor the moment of transition from tragedy to business-as-usual; ritualize it. You need to keep going, but if you try to stuff your emotions down they will pop up at inopportune times. Instead of stuffing them down, lift them up. Find a quiet spot for thirty seconds. Cup your hands in front of your chest and fill them with everything you are feeling. Reach your full hands out in front of you and send all those feelings love and warmth. Lift your hands up, releasing everything, and then put it all in God’s care and keeping (if that’s your thing), or up on a shelf (if it’s not.) When it’s a better time, pick those feelings back up, look at them again, and release them again.
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And know that you won’t “get over” your experience of trauma. But you will grow bigger around it. It will not take up so much of who you are. You will become better at carrying it with grace.

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