The Positive News Thread

[Nía]

How to Heal Unthinkable Trauma and Choose Love

Service, doing for others, is the most powerful and profound trauma healing there is on the planet. It’s so powerful, it elongates our lives. When you do for others you have a 22% reduced risk of mortality. I remind myself that every day…

Everything that you give, you get back. So all of the nurturing, healing and love that you give out, you get back. And there’s science behind all this too. This has been my experience, but it’s true.

Choosing Love means having the courage to be grateful when life isn’t easy, to forgive when the person who hurt you is not sorry, and to step outside your own pain to help someone else…

We want kids to know that they have a choice. That they are responsible for their thoughts and feelings and that they can always choose love. We are trying to cultivate resilient, connected and compassionate people. There’s strong evidence that children who develop these skills have less anxiety, lower rates of depression and mental illness, experience less bullying, violence and incarceration and even in later life, have lower rates of divorce.

We all have the courage that Jesse showed that day… the courage to be kind and gentle. The courage to create peace even in the face of terror. The courage to respond to fear with love. The courage to tell the truth, to show up and be present…

There’s no other solution. Legislators and politicians can’t do it. We are the most powerful proponents of it. I’ve learnt that when we choose love, we change the world around us.

I remind myself that I’m a courageous human being when I’m feeling low. And I experience that miraculous thing of being able to shift yourself from a lower energy into a higher level, by practising gratitude. Contemplating forgiveness for yourself and others, and understanding that forgiveness cuts the cord that attaches you to pain, doesn’t mean that you condone or forget. It doesn’t even mean that you can’t hold the person that hurt you accountable. It simply means cutting the cord that attaches you to pain. And then shifting your focus outward to others, and passing this along. Passing the message, the formula and awareness, on to others. That is how you can be part of the solution.