Your Soul is a Garden: An Illustration of Post-Traumatic Growth

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and trauma are major topics in the world of emotional, mental, and spiritual healing. But this brings power and attention to the trauma and not the healing. On the contrary, we have post-traumatic growth -- where the adversity is used to propel us forward in life.

Picture your soul as a garden. You've been tending to it throughout your life, learning from other gardeners how to care for different areas. Some of the flowers are blooming. Maybe the vegetables in the corner of the yard are in need of more attention than you've been providing. It's not perfect, but you're learning how to make it grow.

Suddenly one day, a mole comes into your garden, and you wake up to five holes tearing through your beloved flowers. Not only are your flowers damaged, but you have holes you can fall into. You can either choose to A) quickly patch it up and replant, B) start focusing on other areas of the garden that are currently thriving and ignore the holes, or C) kill the mole, fill in the holes, nourish the soil, and replant.

Sometimes it's not a mole that pops up in your garden, but a stealthy bug that has been hiding amongst your plants, spreading disease as you have been focused on other areas of the garden. Or maybe when it comes time to harvest the vegetables in the Fall, you discover that they are insufficient for your needs.

We often want a quick fix or to ignore the problem because we don't want to feel the pain, but without addressing the reality of the wound and going through it, the root will always find its way back to the surface. Like weeds, we must pull them out from the base so they do not regrow.

Regardless of how the disorder came into your garden, if it hadn't occurred, you would not have had the opportunity to grow greater things. Maybe you weren't much into flowers, and you always wanted a fruit tree. Or the ground beneath the vegetables needed added nutrients and tilling, but you weren't able to do so until you uprooted all the plants.

We want to grow to flourish, not to survive.

Post-traumatic growth is this process -- going through the garden, cleaning it up, and nourishing it to build the garden truly meant for you.

Some people may need to learn how to water their plants better. Some may need to clean up the weeds. Maybe some even need to go through their garden with a brush cutter because it has gotten so overgrown they can't see through it. Regardless of how your garden looks, it is never too far gone to make it thrive.

The garden of your soul desires to thrive, and it is designed to flourish.

Are you ready to go in?