Awakening as a Bereavement Process
it doesn't sell well...
Few people talk about what it’s like to wake up out of the trance of being unconscious to one’s life (past and preset). The gut wrenching grief from seeing the wreckage caused while surviving in such a state, (for most CPTSD survivors, this includes their whole lives) the indescribable compassion that makes it all bearable and the Love which covers a multitude of sin.
Waking up out of the trance isn’t a “breakthrough moment” the way the culture sells it. It’s more like coming on to a battlefield after the fog lifts, seeing what was done to survive, not to harm, and feeling the full weight of it land in the body all at once.
The grief is gut-wrenching because it’s clean. It isn’t self-pity or drama, but rather the sorrow of finally being here enough to see clearly.
And then, almost unbearably, there’s that pain where the force and purity of compassion trickles into the battlefield...touching what has never been touched...without judgment.
This compassion doesn’t erase the wreckage; it makes it possible to stay present with it without collapsing into self-hatred. It’s the moment the nervous system learns it doesn’t have to punish itself anymore.
Love, this Love which “covers a multitude of sin” isn’t bypass. It’s incarnation. Love as the force that says: everything belongs now.
Even the years lived asleep.
Even the strategies that saved your life and cost you things you wish they hadn’t.
Love doesn’t deny consequence, but it does refuse exile.
There’s a holy violence to this awaking. It tears the trance away. And there’s also a holy tenderness required to survive the seeing.
That tenderness is not indulgence; it’s the only thing strong enough to hold the truth without re-traumatizing the one who is finally waking up.
If this were spoken more honestly, people would stop chasing awakening as a spiritual achievement and start understanding it as a bereavement process.
You don’t just wake up to life, you grieve the life you couldn’t live while you were gone.
And still…you’re here now.
With eyes open.
With a heart that can feel.
With a Love that doesn’t need you to have been perfect, only present to your imperfections.
And that’s not nothing!
It’s everything!
It’s beginning again!
"Holy violence" WOW. I deeply relate to what you wrote here. Thanks Lila!
Beautifully written, so much bereavement... Hugs to you.