Requiem for Innocence

I renamed this piece several times as it became more clear to me what it was about. It’s about trauma, the theft of purity, and the day we stop being children.

I’ve been reading The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté recently. Both books deal in part with the devastating effects of trauma and childhood abuse on both mind and body, and the lingering and pervasive consequences of these travesties that we experience as adults.

There are things, in a fair world, a child should never have to see or experience. But it’s not a fair world, and these things happen all too often. There are things that happen to all of us which break the world and rend the soul. They change us forever, we grow up too fast, we stop trusting and start to fear. We forget what it is to feel safe in our own bodies.

It’s thanks to the work done by professionals like Mate and van der Kolk that those broken by these things have a chance at finding some relief from the demons they war with daily. I have a deep and profound respect for both of these healers and all those who seek guide these victims out of the dark prison that is the legacy of trauma. They have helped me understand so much about my own inner battleground.

~NM