Trauma is a funny thing. It nests in your body and appears without warning with a skipped heart beat, a sinking of the gut, a heaviness in the chest, a loss of breathe...a flashback perhaps that draws tears to the corner of your eyes.
Trauma by definition, " is an emotional response to a terrible event. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks and even physical symptoms."
Fours years ago my third daughter, just three at the time, fell down a sewer well at our local park. We were excited for our first real spring day, and I had taken both my toddlers out for an early morning after dropping the older two girls at school. It was just us that morning and after about an hour of play, we decided to head home. I actually remember feeling slightly proud I had managed a playground visit with a 2 and 3 year old with no injuries and accidents (playgrounds always made me nervous). We were about to pack up when my daughter announced she needed the washroom so we made our way over to the outhouse buildings. The washrooms were still locked up from the winter months, but the children found some large boulders to climb on. We stopped briefly to explore. My son took a little fall off one of the rocks so I turned away from my daughter to pick him up. In that split second, my daughter jumped off her rock and landed on the sewer well lid. I turned back around to her direction after lifting my son up and she was gone. One second standing there playing, the next just gone. I raced over to where she had been and realized the well lid was slightly ajar. I tore it off and there she was...a tiny little face, wet hair at the bottom of freezing, dark well. The lid had been tampered with (I would learn) and was broken just enough for her tiny body to slip into as the lid fell right back into place.
I took a quick look around and was reminded we were still alone at the park, I took my sweater off and tossed my phone, held my two year old back with one hand and slid head first on my belly into the well. I yelled to my daughter "reach for me baby reach", she was doing her best to paddle and stay above water. ( Just the night before, I had taken off her puddle jumper in the hot tub and taught her how to doggy paddle.) In what I can only image was an angel watching over us, I managed to just barely grab her wrist and haul her out with one arm, the other one still trying to ensure my son stayed back from the now open hole. I wrapped my sweater around her, threw the lid back on the well noticing for the first time the word "TOXIC".
The rest of the day was more of a blur, unlike those 5 minutes that stay firmly rooted in my body...that is trauma; the ambulance and fire trucks arriving, the vital signs being checked, the injuries on my own body, my husband and best friend arriving. And after that the nightmares, the anxiety, the loss of control...and the fear of wells, grates, even playgrounds for a good while.
I share this story with anyone that may have experienced some type of trauma in their life, so that they know these feelings are real and normal. I owe gratitude to my personal yoga and meditation practices for giving me the tools I needed then and still times now to find healing for the day my daughter slipped into a well. The day I truly realized life is so precious, that things can change in a split second and that no matter how diligent we are we can not control everything externally around us.
It is yoga, breathe, mindfulness that pull me into the present on difficult days.
"We are safe, we are loved, we are strong."
It is sitting with the feelings that come up and reminding myself I am human and it is okay to not always have it all figured out.
It is remembering after all;
that with ' April showers,
come May flowers".
"Sometimes I feel cold as steel. Broken like I'm never gonna heal. I see a light, a little hope in a little girl. Hello world." ~ Lady A
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