What happened to you was absolutely not your fault, as it was far from anything that you ever asked for, it definitely was not something that you deserved and what happened to you was not even remotely close to being fair. You were merely collateral damage on another persons' demonic war-path, an innocent bystander who got wrecked out of proximity. We are all traumatized by life, some of us from wrong-doings, other people by un-processed pain and side-lined emotions. No matter what the source may or may not be for you, we are all basically dealt a hand of playing cards and more often times than not, they far from being a winning hand. However, what we cannot forget is that even though we are not at fault whatsoever, healing in the aftermath of a traumatic experience or sometimes a sequence of traumatic events, most generally we will always fall onto us and instead of being burdened and overwhelmed by this, maybe we can actually learn to see it as a truly rare gift. Healing is our responsibility because if it is not, in fact, our responsibility than an un-fair circumstance ends up becoming a completely un-lived life. I say this with almost certainty as I believe that the healing process is our personal responsibility, because un-processed pain gets transferred to every single person that are around us and we are not going to allow what one person negatively chose to do to us to become what we ourselves do un-to the people that we love. I think that the healing process is our responsibility because you see… We all have this one life, this single shot to actually do something important or to make a difference. Another reason as to why I think that healing is our responsibility is simply because if we personally want our lives to be different, then sitting and waiting for somebody else to come along in an attempt to try to make them different - Will not actually change anything at all, as it will only make us dependent on other people and it will probably even make us bitter throughout the remainder of our lives. I mean, we do now have the power to heal ourselves, even if we have previously been led to believe we do not have any power at all; As we tend to get un-comfortable quite often and discomfort, for me atleast, almost always signals a place in life in which we are slated to rise up and to also transform. Every great person that you deeply admire, began with every odd stacked up against them and they eventually had to learn that their inner -power was no match for the worst of what life could possibly offer. The word “healing” is actually not returning to how and who we were before, it is becoming a person that we have never before been or even known, for that A person who is stronger, a person who is wiser and a person who is also kinder. When we heal, I think that we then step into the person that we have always wanted to be. At that point, we are not only able to metabolize the pain, but we are also able to allow real change in our lives, in our families and also within our communities. Not only that, but we are able to pursue our dreams and our goals a lot more freely. We are able to handle whatever life decides to throw our way, because we are now or hopefully soon will be in the future, self-efficient and assured. Finally, we are more willing to dare, to risk and to also dream of broader horizons, ones that we never ever thought that we would have the ability nor the opportunity to actually reach. The thing is that when another person does something wrong and it affects us and also has an ever-lasting impact on us as an individual… We often times will sit around simply just waiting for that person or even someone in general, to take all of the pain that we feel away, as though they could come along and be able to un-do what has unfortunately already been done. I think that we also fail to realize that in all of that hurt, are the most important lessons of our entire lives and that is the fertile breeding ground upon which we can finally start attempting to build everything that we really want. I also do not believe that we are not meant to get through life un-scathed and I do not believe that we are meant to get to the finish-line unscarred, clean and bored. Life hurts us all at some point or another and also in many different ways, but it is how we respond and who it is that we end up becoming as a result that truly determines whether a traumatic experience becomes a tragedy or simply just the beginning of a beautiful and inspiring story of how the victim became the hero. Crystal K. Floyd January 2020