Bliss of the Old Soul
Wounded Times Blog
Kathie Costos
June 30, 2013
Today is the end of
PTSD Awareness Month. On Thursday Kathleen Sebelius wrote about it with this on the end of her piece.
During PTSD Awareness Month, PTSD Awareness Day on June 27, and all year long, we are determined to help our fellow Americans and their families and friends dealing with this debilitating condition. Through continued support for research, education, and treatment, we can help provide the hope and reality of recovery for all for those living with PTSD.
Millions of Americans suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but with all the raising awareness happening year after year, we have arrived in a place and time when 40 years of research has produced more suicides and attempted suicides, families falling apart and homelessness.
My focus has always been on veterans and their families but for today, we should talk about all people suffering after traumatic events. After all, we are all still just only human. There are events in our lives that change us. Sometimes people think events make us stronger but they avoid acknowledging the inner strength was already there and was merely given the opportunity shine. The power of the human soul/spirit is something we are all born with. The trick is getting all parts of us connected.
There are some people with everything inside of them working together and they are able to retain bliss in any circumstance. They grieve but are not destroyed. They are saddened but do not lose hope. They are the people walking away after traumatic events believing they were there for a reason, no matter how great or small. They do not think God did it to them or punished them but they survived by the Grace of God.
For others, especially when they hear the stupidly delivered fix it fast slogan "God only gives us what we can handle" they walk away believing they were just punished for something. No one was watching over them. They had been judged. What do you think they will think after hearing those words? God sent His angels to spare them or God sent the angels to harm them?
There is another group closely connected to the first group that needs to be explored so that we can actually do something meaningful on healing PTSD. First we need to understand people like me. I am nothing special. I have an expression that pretty much sums up what life is like for me. "I have finally arrived at a point in my life where I have succeeded at failing."
It sounds bad but in reality it isn't. Everything I have tried to do with my life has failed when you consider that we all equate success with financial gain. I can't pay my bills, find financial support or even begin to pay back my student loans. Everything I do people expect me to do for free and the two books I wrote so far have cost me money instead of making money. Some veterans and family members I helped over the years simply moved on and some of them started their own groups but forget all about me. All of this does tend to cause some depression but I get over it. Why? Because I know I am doing what I was intended to do no matter how great, no matter how small.
When I was working as Administrator of Christian Education for a local church, I asked the youth pastor how she came up with sermons so far in advance. She told me that most of the time she just went by the calendar but when she was inspired to write a sermon, she just went with what was inside of her. It didn't matter how well it went over or not because she was writing it for who was intended to hear it. She just trusted the guidance of her soul. I have heard some of those sermons and frankly there was some kind of divine map questing going on. There were usually several people reacting to the message.
While others may have thought it was not a good sermon, the people needing to hear it got the message because they had connected to it because she connected to her soul and listened.
We all have that capacity. All my life I knew I was supposed to be a writer. My English teacher, Mr. Aucone said I had talent and should be a writer. He also told me that if he just graded me on spelling, there is no way I would have gotten an A. Back then we didn't have spell check.
There was no guarantee I would be a good writer and my goals were pretty uncomplicated. In my high school year book my only goal was to graduate.
After having TBI as a four year old, things in my head didn't work the same. For the way my brain takes in information it is easy to lose it fast. I had to come up with tricks to fix what didn't work. One of them is spelling so I thank God for spell check. Considering I am from the Boston area with a full accent and they taught phoenix in school very little has the same spelling as it sounds. The other is the rule of grammar especially when I am writing something that raises my passion level to boiling. Then there is another. Important things I need to hang onto have to find room in my long term memory so I have kick somethings out to fit them in. When I read something I can remember when I had read something else. That is how I come up with old news reports to prove something is not new or prove the new report false. Still it is not the TBI that almost cut me off from listening to my soul. It was everything else that happened.
From 4 to 40 it was one traumatic event after another starting with my Dad. He was a violent alcoholic until I was 13. I lived in fear that he would lash out at my Mom and brothers but even though he never went after me, I feared he would. One day he did on accident. He was pulling apart the living room and didn't see me on the couch. He threw a chair and it hit me. He was devastated. Long story short it was around then that he decided to stop drinking and got help. There was a car accident I should not have walked away from. My ex-husband tried to kill me, then he stalked me for a year. A miscarriage caused me to hemorrhage when I lost twins. Another health crisis after our daughter was born and a massive infection took over. You get the point. Then the biggest reason was living all these years with my husband and what PTSD was doing to him after Vietnam. It was not until years later when all the investigation I had been doing on PTSD that I finally got the clue I had been looking for. What made me different from him?
For my husband his trauma came in Phu Bia Vietnam 7 years before I graduated high school. When we met I didn't have a clue what happened in Vietnam and even less about what war did to those we sent. When it came to PTSD, he had a much different experience than even I could understand. My traumatic events changed me but in a different way than his did. I spent the rest of my life trying to understand why I didn't have it as much as I wanted to understand why he did.
The difference was the way everything in me was connected. Not just my mind, body and spirit connected together but connected back to God and where my soul came from. When you can find bliss in any condition, that is what is happening. After traumatic events caused by natural events, there is not just the event but the threat of it happening again. That only happens when the weather report warns you. Like the hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004, only months after we moved here. We went through three of them. The only other time we worry is when something is in the Gulf. There is a huge difference between the type of PTSD survivors of a natural disaster can end up with compared to one done by other humans.
Accidents, crimes including abuse, death of a loved on and health issues can cause PTSD. I went through all of them and some hit me pretty hard but I recovered. These events did change me and the way I think but my strength was not something that developed. It was already there. It is one of the biggest reasons why I find the military's efforts on teaching "resilience" so repulsive. They are trying to teach something to people who already have it without telling them how to find it and get it working with the rest of everything else within them.
My strength was living within my soul and my soul is older than my body since my soul was created long before my body was born. My body is not perfect. It is getting older but will never catch up to the age of my soul. It is from my soul that I was able to make peace with what was done to me in every part of living. To know that God did not do it to me, but in fact, He spared me for whatever reason from the time I was 4, helped me have peace with my faith in Him. To know that I did the best I could with whatever I tried to do helped me find peace with myself. I am not haunted by the past but I am not strengthened by it either. I am only stronger because every part of me works together. When my body is weak, my head tells me to rest and do what I can until strength comes back. When my mind is weak, my spirit takes over. It all works together.
Whatever living does to us can be so much better if we make peace with what has been as much as we find peace living with whatever it is in this moment. When I say I have finally succeeded at failing, I am telling you that no matter what, I am at peace with all that came before, all that is and have faith that whatever comes next, it will turn out however it was meant to be. I no longer seek permission of the world to do what I do. I do not expect anyone to understand what I have to say as much as I expect the people hearing it need to hear it.
The best example I can give on this is often overlooked. When we talk about Christ it is easy to think of the 12 walking with Him but we forget there were many more.
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two
10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
We do not know their names but they are not less important than the others they were with on the same mission. Maybe they may have wanted to be as famous as the others but I am sure they found peace with what was required of them instead of what was required of the others. I wonder if they fully understood the impact they really had because had it not been for that multitude, Christianity may not have spread as much as it did because they reached more people and the people they reached, reached even more.
In the end the thing we all have to understand is that we make a difference in lives, no matter how great or small. When we follow where our old souls lead us, we find bliss on this journey. It is not how others view the outcome of our lives but it is how we view it. The sooner we make peace with what happened, the sooner were are ready for what comes next and that, that we can face with all that comes within this old soul.
