Hidden Scars
I was so happy with this new journal page of writing I had just produced, it was beautiful, smooth to the touch and all the letters seemed like art. I am ten months into long term concussion recovery and these letters were a long rehab climb to have flow out of me. At the beginning of my concussion I could not write a word in the lines or with correct spelling, so this moment was one to enjoy and I was doing just that. It was peaceful and inviting running my hand over the page and I just sat with the open book on my lap, running my hand over its reassuring comfort, yet there was something not quite right. Something was lurking in the depths of my mind saying this smooth page felt wrong, that it was some kind of milestone, something new and treasured, but not the journaling I had been forged out of. What was this page trying to tell me?
Journaling is a widely accepted therapy tool to promote and provoke emotion out of our bodies and into our conscious frame of thought by transferring it to paper. Our act of witnessing what flows out of the pen and onto to the paper without even knowing what you're going to write about can and will bring shocking clarity of repressed or hidden emotions that need acknowledging forward to us. This then opens an opportunity for us to move down the path of our life after witnessing the hurt, pain, grief and giving our secret feeling a place to be heard and felt. Sounds a bit hocus pocus right? Emotions you cannot even name, magically spilling out of you and onto paper all through a common household pen. Read on and bear witness to my revelation of the existence of hidden scars within me as evidenced through the tattered and torn pages of my journal.
"Do you journal?" My therapist asked me in 2019 and I shook my head, saying "not very often" tears welling up and unrealized emotion putting a lump in my throat to big for my voice to be heard. "Start. Tonight. Start journaling, you'll be amazed at the portal for emotions that opens when you do. Okay?" I felt my head nodding daftly in reply, "okay" I offered in quite reply.
I took her advice of thirty plus years of helping people transform their lives and began to write. Over the years of self work I have filled books with raw emotion and tears that at moments felt as though they would never cease the grief of self awareness was so vast. This act of self love opened by journaling greatly increased the speed with which I moved through the pain of my life in therapy and my therapist often mentioned it keeping the momentum building. It was this awareness of the changes within that were showing on the outside of me that kept me putting pen to paper and doing deeper work needed to finalize the progression from victim of childhood pain and evils to self loving, self trusting woman.
This awareness and conversation with my first trauma educated therapist was vivid within me today as I ran my hand across the pages of this perfect piece of paper and then that thing from the back of my mind came and settled over me. This was not false growth. This was not growth with hidden pain I was denying and hiding from. This moment I was witnessing my own acceptance of self and it was unfamiliar to accept my own shining light without the lurking self doubt and mocking pain of my history biting and chewing at my brain.
Carefully I turned the page backwards, slowly at first and then in a mad rush looking for evidence of
this newly accepted self, and without thought my fingers caught it, a slight shift in paper on a page.
I opened the book to view that page and was transported instantly into the pain it held. Unconsciously my fingers flattened out and my palm began to slide across the surface in anticipation of its smoothness, only it was not smooth, it was scarred, torn and violently ripped, lined and dimpled with slashing words... a testimony to raw emotions felt. Tears streamed down my face as those words, which were written with such force that they were indistinguishable without study, pulled the scars of my soul into this moment of witnessed pain. Tears fell as these scars of my soul leapt from the page demanding once more that I accept the reality of their need to be seen and accepted by me. On this page and as I explored the entire years book of journaling, I found that most of the year had been in the darkness of pain which left scars on the paper a very real evidencing that they existed so hidden within me.
I sat there, tears flowing, knowing that this pain I was bearing witness to would have remained locked inside me had I not put pen to paper. Each unreleased thought carried an emotion that would have forever tormented my mind, destroying my body and holding my once invisible soul imprisoned within the grips of abuses where silent obedience was needed to live. The normalcy of complying beckoned me into silence and shames grip was I envisioned much like a mermaids lure to a lonely sailor, promising nothing but a moment of narcissistic love but offering a ragged death of self in return. But here I was feeling the transformation through these journal pages and I would not be a sailor lured to my death by the breadcrumbs of a mermaids alure.
This beautiful cover of my journal, "Sunshine State of Mind" as it so boldly and innocently promises holds a powerful year of darkness, pain, loss, grief, loneliness within my unseen soul that gives way quite by accident to growth, promise and hope in the last week simply because I possess a
stubbornness to never quit and this is just like everything else when you don't quit, you eventually create a path forward. My hidden scars, recorded forever in the slashing pen strokes of a thousand cuts of the soul pouring out of me and into my journals trusted promise of a sunshine state of mind. I suppose, now, looking back upon writing this it is rather appropriate that I choose this journal for my forth year of intentional self work in guided therapy to break free of generational trauma, for it is this work of witnessing and honoring my hidden scars that has freed my mind, body, spirit and soul for the journey of a lifetime in living my life to honor me. My actions in turn will teach my children how to live for them, so that they'll never experience a four year therapy deep dive to uncover and witness their hidden scars, maybe they'll never need to be lulled by the mermaids song and hide in the depths of shame and obedience of codependency.
"Pick up the pen and write. Feel. Embrace whatever comes out of the pen when you put it to paper because that whatever comes out, is the scars on your soul that you are hiding from." Nita shares.
Journaling has been a powerful transformative tool in breaking from a trapped trauma induced mind controlled by my pain, PTSD and most recently the ghastly effects of PCS, long term concussion recovery. My journal has evidenced it's profound ability to transport me from my limitations to embracing the opportunity and openness of a generational healing mindset that trusts me instead of being obedient and subservient to the mermaids call.
Nita Kruger
Nita is a mother of five, including one angel in heaven.
Writing her way to health,, happiness and financial independence.
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