A friend recently shared this video, and I confess, I didn’t expect it to take the direction it did.

Kent Steenekamp, the subject of the short film, shares about some of the history he had to overcome, to find his way in the world. It’s very moving. Take 15 minutes with your coffee break. I think we all need to be reminded to look after the little boy or girl inside us, especially if they were hurt. There were a couple of lines that really dropped me. I don’t want to share them here… it would be a spoiler if you saw them coming.

But I’ve been thinking lately about the wounds we carry and how they can, left untended, become all that we are. Steenekamp speaks to this:

“A lot of people walk around with their wound, and carry it, as if that’s the person they are, not realizing it’s just a wound that they’re carrying. It’s not something that they are. Everything that happens to us can become a blessing. When we’re in the trauma, and in the hurt, it’s the worst thing in the world. But once you’ve worked through it, it becomes something that empowers us. It becomes something that is a guide and a teacher. We’re all coming to know who we really are beyond the stories that we carry from our childhood. Each person has their own wounds, and their own stories, that is unique. So each person has their own unique way out of it, too.”

I appreciate that he comes to this, as someone who has come through it, himself. It’s not an aggression, when a trauma survivor says, “it can be a blessing.”

It’s work to heal and integrate it. There’s so much work I think people would rather do than turn and acknowledge their own shadow selves… which is why this cartoon makes me laugh so hard.

Steenekamp’s words combined with this cartoon made me think of Thomas Hubl, who speaks and writes about trauma, and who shared recently:

Everything we integrate is actually an amazing additional energy resource. We recover energy. What was split off can come back in and is unified. That expands my perspective. Trauma is fragmented energy. It reduces my perspective, and a smaller world lands within me. Integrating trauma enriches my perspective, and more of the world can take place inside me. This is a gain of energy. I’m no longer using energy to freeze my trauma, which consumes energy every moment of my life, so to speak. I’m gaining that energy back.

If you treat yourself to this coffee break, I’d love to hear which piece resonated for you.