Dealing With Traumatic Anniversaries

And the question is, how do we deal with anniversaries of traumatic events?

Well, I was just anticipating that it will probably have some emotional impact on you. So if you've already gone around the anniversary, you may know that and you may know that, okay, every year about this time I have this experience or start to feel these emotions or sometimes I feel off and I don't know that it's an anniversary of something. And then I'm like, I become aware of that. But maybe just knowing that for some people you might not just know that. And then if you do, anticipating that I may feel something, I may need to talk a little bit more about my emotions. And then I would, I would just say be honest about how you're feeling. Be realistic about expectations on yourself. So if it's about a day or a week or something like that, around that time, maybe it's taking a little pressure off yourself. Maybe I need to reflect a little more. I need to have some self care, do some journaling. Sometimes there's some rituals around grief that are really important. So any kind of loss, not just if someone passes away or if we've been through a divorce, that any kind of major loss or trauma in our lives can really bring around that grief and it's okay. And it's normal to. For grief to come back around and be a big wave that knocks us over when we kind of thought we were through that to the other side.

Yeah. You know, when I first read this question, I thought about it from a slightly different angle. Just maybe this is for a couple of listeners out there. But I want to say you don't have to remember the dates unless, I know sometimes things happen. It's unavoidable. You're like, you're going to remember that date for the rest of your life, whether you try to or not. But on the flip side, like, just know, it's not important that you know, well, this was the day on which I started my journey and I need to remember it so I can tell people how long it's been or like if remembering it is actually part of the trauma and it's better to just try to let it go and not keep track of how long it's like you've got the freedom to do that. But I sense that the person who asked this question, they can't avoid remembering, well, that's the day my marriage blew up, or that's the day they left, or that's the day this happened. And because of the timing, you know, the stories we hear that it was on someone's birthday or it was on a holiday or it was on whatever day. Like they can't disassociate the day from the event and it'll be with them probably for many years. What comes to mind is just what we do with other anniversaries. The more you prepare, the better they tend to go. Right. So if my wedding anniversary comes up and I wake up on the morning of and go, oh, it's my anniversary, I can pull some things together and make it work, but it's not going to be near what it could be. If a month out, I'm like, okay, my anniversary is coming up. What do I do to make my wife feel special? What's something fun? What plans could we pull together? What are we going to do for the kids? Then when we get to that day, it's much more likely to go how I want. And I think when it's traumatic, if we know, okay, I'm a month out from D day or whatever I call it, and we know I need some support that day, I'm going to actually invite a friend to come hang out with me or I'm going to actually take that day off work because I know I'm not going to function real well. So I'm going to plan healthy, fun things almost as a way to start reversing how I think of that day. I'm going to do something meaningful as a memento to say, this isn't my identity anymore. This doesn't define me. I'm going to invite my group to do something with me on that day. So I just think the more we prepare rather than making it more traumatic when we get there, we can feel like it's okay. This is going to be the one year mark. But I'm really looking forward to some things I'm going to do on that day to celebrate that this doesn't define me and what God is currently doing in my life. And then I think as the grief comes, we are present to it, but we won't feel the need perhaps to escape or run from it because we've been getting ready by putting a few things in place that can help us navigate maybe the strong emotions we expect to feel that day.

Yeah, I wrote down to schedule self care before, during and after. I think obviously you guys have both talked about preparation and the day of, but I think that piece too of there are gonna be potentially some lingering effects the days after. And so making sure that you, you know, and one of my favorite quotes is what gets scheduled gets done. And so if you're scheduling self care and putting it in place, you're preparing yourself emotionally for it. You have self care in, you know, on the day or during the week or whatever of that traumatic experience and then after you're still continuing to care for yourself. And I think that, you know, and you guys have mentioned it and kind of in other ways, but just inviting other people into that I think is also helpful knowing that you don't have to share that burden. Maybe the person you're spending time with didn't have the same traumatic experience on that day, but if they're a good friend, they do want to be with you. And look, if you have like fun self care things to do, who doesn't want to be a friend who does fun self care things with you? So yeah, that's my thought.

And I think just remembering that mourning and celebrating can coexist. So we may have still grief coming up and yet we're celebrating. Sometimes we're celebrating that we made it through the worst time for life or the worst situation we've ever thought we would go through. And other times we're celebrating our progress as a couple or as an individual, our growth and our healing. So I remember a year after my husband and I started walking out recovery together, we built an altar and said a prayer and definitely everything wasn't all fixed and rosy and feeling great again by that time. But we had some things that we had walked through together that were so tough and that we could celebrate some things in that or at least just sit there and cry and thank God that God walked through it with us. And then at our 10 year mark, we went back to the same place and built an altar again. And definitely there was more to celebrate and it was lighter than that first time. But I think just remembering to celebrate and remembering even, even to celebrate our resilience, you know, if. If nothing else is so important.

That's super cool.

I love that. Don't just remember the trauma or the pain, but find ways to mark the growth that's occurred because of it. And maybe that's something you're getting to do like Tracy's story with your spouse. Or maybe you're now doing it alone and that's part of the grief, but you can also look at yourself and see how did God sustain me through it? What's happened in the last year that I'm meeting God in new ways or he's brought new friends into my life. I think even if there's still traumatic things currently happening. It can be that moment to just look back and reflect and say, God, where have you been in the time since this happened? And I think if that becomes the regular rhythm over time, the weight of that date, just like Traci's story 10 years later, was different than one year later. That if you take time to reflect on God's goodness and provision and what he's done in the last year, and that's happening year in and year out, you might get to a point that date actually becomes kind of sacred of. It's my mark of how God is sustaining me, and it's part of my story. And we see all the time that God transforms pain into purpose. He transforms those trauma experiences into our growth and the message we have for others. And if you're not there right now, that's great. That's fine. Right now, you may just be in the. Moving through grief and preparing for that. But I think if you can hear from others and believe that one day this mark in my journey might look really different, that can help you keep moving through them with faith and confidence.

Yeah.