Question of Month: Healing Absolute Trauma?

This is a heavy burden. Oftentimes calamities come in threes – as was for me – a relationship was ended on Monday, my father had a 12.5 hour operation on Thursday and Tariq died on Saturday. One week in my life. We all read in horror as the news unfolded for this family as it all happened in only a few hours. I was glad to read that Hannah, although severely traumatized, is safe. It will take time to heal.

The first step is to grieve. Grieving itself is medicine. There is a Turkish proverb that says, “Those who hide their grief do not find a remedy for it.”

The second is to call in the troops – they are going to need a lot of help from extended family, the spiritual community and community at large. The key is to take your time – it took me a good 3.5 years before the cloud parted. There is a healthy way to grieve and an unhealthy way to grieve. The unhealthy way is drugs (legal or otherwise), alcohol, anger, resentment and hatred. The healthy way is to journal, meditate, pray, read something inspiration, spend time with nature (the beach and the mountains is what I enjoyed), remain in empathy and compassion and honor the departed by doing good deeds in their honor.

There are many other suggestions in my third book The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit – How to Bounce Back from Life’s Hardest Hits. The main thing now is not to rush back to living life but to take the time to respect and honor the lives and the loss of life.