Dr. John A. King argues that trauma doesn't make you special, but how you respond to it does. The choice is whether you let it define you or refine you, whether you stay stuck in victimhood or use it to become stronger and help others.
There's nothing special about your trauma. Now before you start trolling me, just hear me out. For thousands of years, men and women have been experiencing horrendous things. It's not the trauma of your battlefield experience or a violent rape or an abusive background. Those things have been happening since forever. Those things aren't special. What's really special Are the people, the men and women who get up every day and make a decision to overcome their past. See, your past will either refine you or define you. If you allow it to define you, you'll never graduate. All you'll want to do is celebrate being a victim of something. But if you allow it to refine you, then you just become a better person. You become a model to people that are struggling and battling, and they can say, "You know what?" If that person can make it, then I can make it. And I really believe that should be the aim for all of us.
