Rising From Your Ashes

Are You a Day-to-Day Phoenix?

Hello ♡,

One of my favorite things about being a therapist is that I get to hear about the details of human life. Everything from what someone had for breakfast, to why they are running late today, to the thing their boss just said. This is indeed where life is lived. There are also the details from clients of how that one person humiliated them, or left them hanging – again. There is the thing they are scared to say out loud, or the realization they finally have when they start saying things out loud. There is the pain, and there is also what happens next.

I was trained to ask: “What happened next?” when helping people process trauma. That is in part because the brain stops on the traumatic moment, and can get stuck there. The brain can forget that the awful thing ended at one point and something happened next. It doesn’t make the trauma any easier, but it reminds the brain that something did happen after next that felt less threatening, even if the after was not immediate.

But this is not just for trauma, it works in everyday life too. “What happened next” is also the best parenting advice I have ever gotten. I will ask my children when they are excited, worried, or hurt, “then what happened?” When they are telling a story, it’s not just that I want to know more. Sometimes they need to know they were brave and made it through that hard thing.

Back to the details I get to hear every week. I don’t just hear the quirky details of a day, or the painful moments of a week, I hear the stories of getting up and trying again. Over and over again, big and small, I witness the miracle of day-to-day phoenix behavior. The phoenix is a mythical bird attributed to many different cultures that rises from its own ashes. It’s a common metaphor and image, used in movies and songs. But why does it resonate so much, why does it transcend time, cultures, and genres?

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

I think the phoenix represents the inevitable fall, and the hope for recreation in spite of that fall. There is the recognition of pain, loss, and destruction in the phoenix, and the hope for a chance, the energy, or the miracle of trying again. We need hope that something will happen next. Trauma therapy puts a focus on what happened next not to bypass the hard, but to remind us that there is something that came next, even if it is just the ending of that hard moment.

Let’s talk about you now.

If we could all hear the gritty, quirky, and hard moments of your day, your week, your year, what would we hear? What would you share? And, what are the moments that you got up again after a hard thing?

Maybe you drove back to the hospital again to visit the sick person you love. Maybe you cried in the closet and then went to pick up the kids. Maybe you felt so lonely your tears were frozen and you made a plan to get out of the house. Maybe you helped a family member keep looking for the right diagnosis after a series of frustrating appointments. Maybe you washed the dishes after struggling to get up off the couch. Maybe you said you were sorry after losing your cool again, or said I forgive you to someone you wanted to forgive. Maybe you didn’t give up when you wanted to.

I don’t know what it is for you. But what I do know is that in sitting with so many people over the years, it is easy to miss our own phoenix moments. We get stuck on the hard thing (validly so), and we miss what happened next…We got up, again.

You may rise from your own ashes twenty times a day.

It doesn’t make it any less miraculous.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Where are you a day-to-day phoenix? Where are you rising from your own ashes to recreate a hope, a moment, or help (for you or someone in your care) again?

I don’t have to know you to know you have these moments.

To find one today, think about a hard moment from the last week.

Honor it, validate it.

Then ask: What happened next?

There you are.

Rising from your ashes. Trying again. Honor that too.

With you,

Monica