Barefoot, Brave, and Bold

06/17/2026

PART 2

TRAUMA AND SHAME

Probably need to read part 1 for this to flow.

So… I do NOT sit around thinking about the trauma and shame of my ex’s injuries. They seldom come to mind these days. He was addicted (to work and pills, at a minimum), abusive (verbally and emotionally, at a minimum). AND unequivocally I am not responsible for his injuries, his behavior or the horrors he dumped on me. The medical / injury verbal assaults were just the tip of the iceberg. I was responsible for many other awful things… just ask him. (Note sarcasm).

However, a similar situation came up recently… where I was recruited to be a sounding board/ help and instead I got ridiculed and hung up on. Guess what? My trauma from the marriage still lurks. How do I know?? Well IYKYK… it filled me in in about .7 seconds… the sense of being mistreated, fearful, nervous system absolutely stinging and hyper-vigelant. Wanting to run away. No where to run. No, it isn’t as bad as it used to be. Yes, I had reactions. I cried. I was overwhelmed. I had a real trauma reaction… and I felt shame for what happened to this person (a relative). Then…..

Then…. I breathed (yes, I’d been holding my breath). I let the tears come and reminded myself that tears were acceptable and appropriate and not a sign of weakness. I realized very quickly that I was in a new and different situation, not back in the old trauma (that’s good because separation of what is happening NOW and what happened THEN is an important part of healing). I talked it through with a couple of people. I didn’t require anything more of myself for the day… I just “settled in” and rested… I have the tools. I can work through a trauma reaction. I can also not accept more of that treatment. I can self-advocate (ironically, what I was suggesting to the person who hung up on me to do… self-advocate). I love that person but I don’t have to fix anything. Or accept unkindness for trying to help.

It isn’t my shame. My entire family was hurt by the shame my ex caused us. It’s incredibly unfair… but WE have to heal… while he/ ex goes on his merry way. It is sooo much not fair. But “fair” can’t be my focus. Healing HAS to be my focus, even if I still have to work on it all these years later.

06/16/2026

Oh man! Yes, this.

I don’t want to be celebrated for my resilience.​​​​​​​​
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I don’t want to be admired for how much I can endure, how well I take the hits, how gracefully I carry what should have broken me.​​​​​​​​
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I want something else. I want softness without suspicion. ​​​​​​​​
I want ease without guilt. I want support without having to first prove how much I’ve suffered to deserve it. I want to be surrounded by kin, by those who don’t just applaud my survival, but who refuse to let survival be the only story I get to tell.​​​​​​​​
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Because strength was never meant to be a constant expectation, only a tool when needed. And I am so tired of always having to be strong.​​​​​​​​
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How many of you feel this in your bones?​​​​​​​​
꩜ Ella ​​​​​​​​
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06/16/2026

PART 1
(Please pair reading this with the video I recently posted from Katt, a therapist. The video is about shame).

I’ve been quiet for a while…. Processing. Sometimes writing is the best tool (for me) for that endeavor. Other times it’s silence, reading, avoiding over-stimulation. The latter has been my need lately.
What have I been processing?

TRAUMA AND SHAME - that’s the title.

They’re married, you know. Trauma and shame are wed together. Oh, not a healthy marriage. But they are arm in arm. And even when they’ve been away for awhile, they return, arriving together. Why is this significant? Because if we aren’t addressing the fact that the shame isn’t ours to carry, the trauma will strike at unexpected times and carry us away in short order.

Here’s part of my trauma story. You may relate to it. You may not. In my marriage, there was a huge theme of “injury,” seeking medical care,” and “lashing out toward the caregiver (me).” My ex, defied his bodily limits regularly…. Daily, weekly at a minimum. Even as he aged into his 60’s (esp then), he physically did things that were severely straining and/ or dangerous. He was not just motivated by work, but severely addicted to work… not a moment could be wasted. A few examples:

1. He was fixing a garden tiller that wouldn’t run. He sat on the garage floor, with the tines between his legs. At some point he reached up, attempting to start it, to see if it worked. Well, it did… and because he hadn’t bothered to change positions, the tiller chopped the inside of his thighs like hamburger. Off to ER.

2. He was cleaning out our car in the driveway. Very hot day. Sweating like a pig. And he was doing a meticulous job…. Which is fine… but his OCD was highly kicked in. In his haste, he had a seat raised up and somehow the clamp that was supposed to attach to the floor, clamped one of his fingers. This was not a gentle clamping down. There was a blood-curdling scream. The clamp wasn’t budging. I called 911 and at least 10 people responded over the next hour while he sweated and moaned in the back of the car, attached to the seat clamp. I truly envisioned a driveway amputation, coming soon. Finally the ambulance director came up with a solution to free him… and drove him to the ER in the back of the ambulance. Miraculously, he didn’t loose the finger.

3. A friend told me that she and her husband drove past my (then) husband way up in a tree with a full sized chain saw cutting limbs precariously as he dangled off a branch. It was mid-week. The husband said, “wasn’t he just asking for prayers Sunday about his bad back and how he could barely walk? Now he’s hanging in the air in a tree?”

4. In the winter, he moved snow generally using a small tractor with a blade. He didn’t just move snow. He started at 5 am and did it straight through till 8-9 pm. He wanted our teen sons out there with him, but I picked them up after 8-10 hr and brought them home. Ex’s fingers, when he removed the wet gloves were BLACK from frostbite. Off to a specialist in another town. Somehow, after months of care, they healed. He lost months of work so he could work a 16- hr day. And he was none too happy…. And here’s the part that added to my trauma….

IT WAS ALL MY FAULT (somehow). I was the villain in every injury story… and there were MANY more than I mentioned. While I was washing clothes, fixing meals, taking care of our teens and going to my own job…. I was somehow retroactively responsible for the pain, suffering, medical needs that he endured. I was (told I was) a HORRIBLE wife whether I just let him do what he was going to do or if I tried to convince him that these kinds of work habits were creating more problems than they were solving. I was yelled at, cursed at, and made to “pay” for all the suffering. I was SHAMED and if not being yelled at, given the silent treatment instead. My personhood was demolished.

I carried the trauma of injuries that literally dominated our lives and the shame of not being able to stop it or fix it. Logically now, I see… it wasn’t MY shame… but trauma and abusers tell you otherwise.

And of course, there’s more…….. next time.

06/16/2026

Please read! This is truly important to healing! I’ll be writing a personal narrative about it soon. May be one of the most important things you read if you’re healing from trauma!

06/13/2026

👏♥️

06/04/2026

♥️

"Some wounds don't show up as sadness. They show up as overthinking, irritability, numbness, perfectionism, or never fully relaxing."

True wounding rarely presents itself in the tidy, expected guise of sadness; more often, it lives within the quiet, exhausting ways we try to protect ourselves.

When the spirit has been shaken, the burden settles into the mind as relentless overthinking, an endless searching for safety in a world that feels fragile. It manifests as irritability, where the soul’s exhaustion wears thin against the noise of everyday life, or as numbness, a heavy curtain drawn to shield the heart from feeling too much at once.

Even perfectionism and the inability to ever fully relax are but the silent cries of an inner world that believes it must control everything to keep from being hurt again.
To heal is to recognize that these heavy burdens are not flaws in our character, but the armor we constructed to survive, and it is only through gentle self-compassion that we can finally invite the soul to lower its guard and find rest. 🕊️✨

Mitra @ https://www.facebook.com/tipsthatchangeyourlife/

06/04/2026

*** Just a very real post about shifts, hard things, a regret, and carrying on to live well after abuse, trauma and divorce.***

Absolutely, I didn’t expect to be re-evaluating my healing (and apparently, lack of healing in a couple areas) five years later. The healing was profound and to me, miraculous and amazing. And it still is. I won’t downplay the transformation. Yet, for a while now (maybe months?), some of the pain and anger and sorrow from the years of marital abuse has re-visited me. Definitely not the full-fledged depression. But an emergence of more focus on the unfairness and loss (not loss of him, I want to be clear about that).

While some would say to “change my focus back and get on to living the way I have been for 5 years,” I know in my spirit, that stuffing down something that is trying to give me a message, isn’t helpful to me. Yes, I DO need to manage these feelings, but not dismiss them. If there’s anyone not willing to go down a rabbit hole of a resurgence of depression, I’m raising my hand high on that one. I’m not willing to spiral, but I am squaring up, to examine and correct.

Why the “confession?” Well, maybe I’m not the only one… maybe you’ve felt healed (or close to it) and then situations developed that pulled you back. Or maybe mundane-ness set in and the excitement and celebration of healing just became more challenging.

Things I’m going to do to start the process back to gratitude and celebration for healing (and to add a layer of healing):

* get more exercise. Succumbing to lack of motivation isn’t going to help… that I do know.

*make sure I’m having the honest authentic conversation that I have started but don’t feel is reconciled yet. This is complex. But necessary.

* re-evaluate use of a GLP-1. (With my dr). It helps immensely with a couple health issues I have that have zero to do with losing weight. But I’m not sure it’s worth it. MANY are now reporting that it creates/ contributes to a “flat” feeling. Yep. Flat describes things well.

* the biggest long-term struggle for me from the divorce aftermath has been finances. In general, I’ve reconciled that peace is worth the price of living frugally (and generally, it is)… and that’s easier to say when frugality is doable… but insurance/medical costs and taxes (property) keep rising and my income can’t keep up. I was duped (one of many times) by my ex on the financial settlement of our divorce… he was “going to be destitute” (a lie, I now know) if I asked the court for a portion of his pension, which I was legally entitled to/ and contributed to through the marriage)… so I didn’t. It’s my biggest regret in the whole divorce. I will eventually get it… but not yet… as long as I live long enough (longer than him). If you’re in process of divorce now, seriously, don’t fall for their financial manipulation!!! PLEASE! Please! They are probably lying… again.

06/02/2026

Some might recall that I was once a guest on this podcast, “Giving Voice to Depression.” I did not know this other part of the host, Terry until reading it yesterday. It’s very much worth reading and pondering.

06/02/2026

** I tell these stories to help others develop clarity around how they arrived in similar places… places of pain and struggle where there should have been tenderness and team. Our stories aren’t all the same, but they all matter. **

There’s two things that I knew with certainty… both true and yet in opposition of each other.

I imagine many can relate to the first one…. That is that I always, from childhood, planned solidly to be married for life. It was a never a question. I watch my grandparents and my parents devote themselves to one another. I didn’t even know any divorced people… until a high school classmate’s parents got divorced, I think after high school. I knew them but I didn’t KNOW them as a couple.

People in the world I was living in just did not split up. And I “knew” I wouldn’t either. There were lots of things I wasn’t sure about for my future but a lasting marriage wasn’t one of those uncertainties.

The other thing I know is that my ex loved-bombed me and “captured” me… basically a trick and he was very convincing that he loved me. But I didn’t really love him beyond “the trick” (deceit). I loved that he loved me (or so I thought)… but I had questions about marrying him, literally a week before I walked down the aisle. He’d rushed me. Pushed hard for the engagement and the marriage. Used charm. And I got sucked in. I can see it clearly now. Back then, I knew something was “off” but I couldn’t pinpoint it.

Yep, the girl that knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her marriage would be forever, was marrying a trickster… and at some level, I knew that (but couldn’t fully reconcile it in my brain). It was not a fully conscious thought but I know I was grappling with it in a sub-conscious part of my brain, even weeks before the vows... Anyone else relate to this?

What’s the result of those two realities?

Thirty years of captivity.

Sometimes I’ve pointed to church teaching that kept me inside of a place I desperately wanted to escape, but my own certainty about staying married played a role too. I try so ardently in my current life not to live in regret. And most days I focus on “now” and don’t allow the regret to take root. But if there’s one thing I could change, I can’t say it would be not to marry him (in spite of my doubts) because I’d never give up my sons.

I would let myself admit sooner, that being married forever to a captor is not a marriage at all. And I would have gone so much sooner. But regret doesn’t offer solace, so again I choose today to let my spirit just be grateful that the captivity is over.

06/01/2026

Best understanding of trauma bonds I’ve ever seen. It was truly what kept in in a destructive marriage for 30 years. I’d like to think that if I’d understood it, I’d have left sooner. It is anything BUT sacred. It truly is captivity.

One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma bonds is that they are simply very strong emotional attachments. Survivors are often told they stayed because they loved the person too much, cared too deeply, or could not let go. While love may be present, a trauma bond is far more complex than an ordinary emotional connection.

A trauma bond develops through a repeated cycle of harm followed by relief. The same person who causes fear, confusion, rejection, humiliation, or violence also becomes the person offering comfort, affection, apologies, promises, or temporary calm. Over time, the nervous system becomes conditioned to chase those moments of relief.

This is why leaving can feel so difficult, even when the survivor clearly understands that the relationship is harmful.

Many survivors become ashamed of this. They ask themselves questions like, “Why do I still miss them?” “Why do I still want them back?” or “Why am I struggling to let go of someone who hurt me?” These questions often come from a misunderstanding of what trauma bonding actually is.

The bond is not evidence that the abuse was love.
The bond is often evidence of prolonged exposure to unpredictability, fear, hope, disappointment, and intermittent rewards. The survivor becomes emotionally attached to the possibility of safety, kindness, or change, while simultaneously trying to avoid the next episode of harm.

This can create a feeling that resembles addiction. Not because the survivor is weak or irrational, but because the brain and nervous system have adapted to surviving within a highly unstable environment.

Understanding trauma bonds is important because it helps remove self blame. Survivors often judge themselves for staying, returning, forgiving, or struggling to leave. When they understand the conditioning involved, many realise they were not trapped by a lack of intelligence or willpower.

They were responding to a powerful psychological survival mechanism that developed over time. Recognising that reality is often the first step towards breaking free from it.

Survivor, you can do this. 💜