big t, little t

If you’re feeling irritable, foggy, exhausted, indecisive, jumpy, blah, wired, weepy, angry, etc., you’re not alone. You’re most likely calibrating after a few very intense weeks. Also, the upcoming election.

Not quite two years ago, I was in a golf cart accident that was entirely my fault. Everyone was fine but I got banged up. I never published what I wrote about it because I was embarrassed. I worried readers would be sick of hearing about my accident-prone shenanigans since I had been in a skiing accident only a couple of months prior which resulted in a complete tear of my ACL along with some other nooks and crannies in my knee.

But in the interest of the collective trauma that our community faces after back-to-back massive hurricanes, I thought I would share this now. Here is what I wrote:

I’m hiding underneath my baseball cap waiting for physical therapy. My therapist is going to love this story. On my forehead is a cut with a band aid. Behind my sunglasses are small cuts and a bruise by the corner of my eye. My other knee now hurts.

In addition to the cute baby animals on my curated Instagram feed, I follow a lot of psychologists and therapists. Today a post popped up about the little t’s and big T’s in life, T standing for trauma.

I’m hiding because of a little t that I experienced this past weekend. Thankfully, it wasn’t a big T. Everyone is fine. No one was seriously injured. But I keep replaying the impact of the golf cart slamming into the back of the car, me trying unsuccessfully to stop it, and how scary it all was.

My daughters and one of my daughter’s friends, although quite shaken, were fine, thank God. But because I hit my head, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. No scan was needed, I was coherent, my body was just really scraped up.

The next morning, I woke up sore and bruised, and called one of my dearest amigas. After I cried, we laughed about the ridiculousness of the incident. I mean it doesn’t get much more Floridian than an accident involving a golf cart and a Porsche that belongs to a couple we met the day before while they fed a hurt heron on the pier. The only thing that would have been more Florida, is if we had been on our way to have lunch at Hooters or swerved to avoid hitting Hulk Hogan and Rick Flair riding an alligator or manatee.

I told the ponytailed caretaker of the heron, as he dropped shrimp into her beak, that I related to the sweet creature because I too had an injured leg. I hadn’t had surgery and was still limping.

36 hours after the golf cart fiasco while hobbling up my stairs at home, I started shaking uncontrollably. Teeth chattering, hardly able to hold my toothbrush, it seemed as if I was all jacked up on Mountain Dew. I mean not really, I don’t drink Mountain Dew, but I like to repeat this line from the movie, Talladega Nights, when I get the chance. 

But all the bottled-up tension, fear, and adrenaline came rattling out of me as I shook wildly underneath the covers.

And while I’m grateful it wasn’t worse, it was scary, nonetheless.

We often downplay our little t traumas because we’re okay and don’t want to be “Negative Nellies.” Or we’re ashamed. Or we feel guilty for complaining when others are going through something far worse.

There’s a lot of pressure culturally to be positive and productive. To turn lemons into lemonade. We’re encouraged to be warriors, fighters, survivors. We want to be healthy, strong, and resilient. We want to be fine.

But we get hurt and sick. Shit happens. Weather happens. And we’re not really fine. Carrying on and pushing through while never stopping may be a coping mechanism and it may also be a response to trauma that we’ve suffered in the past. Were we allowed to stop when something was wrong? Were we ever encouraged to take a beat, a breath, rest, take as much time as we needed when something scary happened?

We require space to rest and process what it means to be human and at the mercy of something outside of our control. Whether it’s crying, talking, walking, shaking, or screaming, our bodies know what we need. Dealing with our woundedness and fragility is big, sacred work.

Just because you survived, and it could have been worse, doesn’t mean that what you went through wasn’t hard and doesn’t deserve attention, love, and support. Life is finite. We get one chance as far as we know. And that’s some big, frightening business to wrap your head around.

When my kids were little, I used to read them the Dr. Seuss ABC book. I imagine seeing: Big T, little T, what begins with T? Trauma, Trauma, trauma in a tapioca tree or something to that effect.

Our traumas change us. And not always for the worse, sometimes for the better. When we’ve had time to regulate our nervous system and accept our new normal, we continue to practice being present with ourselves, staying in our bodies, and being honest about how we’re really feeling and what we really need. Help and support doesn’t magically appear if we don’t ask for it or accept it when offered. Then and only then can our grief become growth.