From Trauma to Grace: Grieving the Old Self and Finding God in the Loss (with Rev. Dr. Xenia Barnes)

Renae: Well, welcome Xenia, we are so glad that you are joining us here for the TraumaWise Ministry Summit. Thank you for saying yes, and thank you for being here.

Xenia: No problem. Thank you so much for having me.

Renae: Really, when I think of the goal of the summits for TraumaWise, that goal of bringing people with lived experience and their internal wisdom and their knowledge and sharing that with people, I think you really are the prime example of that for us, in that this is not a story. Your story is not a story that has, well, now everything's fine, and we're going to tie a bow on it. But instead, it is complex like we are, complex as human beings, and shows us ways that we can be in spaces that are challenging and hold hope. And I'm so glad that you said yes and that you're joining us today. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the people who haven't met you before.

Xenia: Absolutely. So again, thank you so much for having me and sharing this platform with me. Um, it's TraumaWise. It's near and dear to my heart. For those of you who are just tuning in, my name is Reverend after senior bonds. I am an author, speaker, and social behavioral scientist, and I am also a trauma survivor. And so today, I will be happy to share my story with you all, and just share a bit of how I was able to use my faith to move from a surviving mindset to a thriving mindset. And I hope that you can pick up some tips and strategies that will help you navigate your own path.

Renae: Beautiful. Yeah, I love that, that piece of surviving to thriving. And so to give people some context of your story and why you've had this journey and how you're living in this journey (it is a journey) could you tell us a little bit about your story, please?

Xenia: absolutely. So in 2021 I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis along with lupus and children's immune disorder. And for those of you who do not know, let me break that down what that means. Let me break that down for you. So pulmonary fibrosis is when your lungs begin to harden, and it's ill reversible. That's why they consider it a terminal illness. And so in 2021 I was diagnosed with that. And unfortunately, by the time I was diagnosed, my lungs had already hardened, the majority of them, so I only at that time was diagnosed with only 46% function ability between both of my lungs, and then my health begin to rapidly decline, and now at this point, I'm at 34% and I need a double lung transplant between the lupus and the children. My autoimmune system is constantly. Attacking itself because of the diagnosis, from the fibrosis, my body can tell that there's something wrong. So what happens is it's trying to fight to get better, but it's fighting against itself, and so my health continues to go up and down and fluctuate. However, this journey itself and being diagnosed has been a roller coaster, to say the less, and I'm sure we'll get more into it, but that was the beginning stages in 2021 of me going on this journey of identifying, or re identifying, what my life would look like, and in that path and on that journey, I began to get closer with my faith, and my faith is honestly I can say what pulled me through to be able to be here on this platform with you All today,

Renae: Beautiful, also, thank you for sharing and clarifying for us, so we could really understand that what you're talking about is that version of trauma that's a surprise, that's like a big, significant thing that's now chronic, exactly. So it was, it's, it's this level of shock, and it's a, it's a big thing. And then there is no, there is no predicted end in sight that you can point to as a milestone, okay, and now we'll be finished. It is very organic. It is very fluid. It's very unpredictable. And you said something that was really, I think, important for everybody to hear, which is that you had to re-identify yourself in this new circumstance, and to me, when I hear that, I immediately think of grief and loss.

Xenia: Absolutely, you hit it right on the nail. And so from that birth, my book grieving to hell, because that's exactly what I was doing. I was in the process of mourning the loss, the loss of my nephew. But then I was also, I also began, after being diagnosed, the process of mourning the old version of myself, and so I titled the grieving to hell, because I had to recognize that in order for me to begin to move forward, I had to grieve the old versions of myself so that I can begin to step into what a new version was, even as I was it was unfolding right before my eyes as I was building the point of fight, as you would say, or just trying to understand, like, what life would look like for me, from moving from this super energetic person to now being completely dependent on others. And when I say dependent, I mean I couldn't get I couldn't walk on my own, I couldn't sit up on my own. I couldn't beg for my own. So all the things that we naturally take for granted when we're not, when we're not, when we don't know that we have an illness, or things that we just get up in the morning, we don't think about those were things that I was struggling to do. And for me, I had to grieve that sense of I can no longer do those things as much as I wanted to will it to be, to be able to do at will just it just wasn't enough. And there's so many individuals out there who struggle with that, because they're battling against themselves, trying to be all of what they used to be, and not recognizing Okay. These are what my limitations are now. Okay, so what does it look like for me to be able to navigate and become navigate through those challenges and to understand okay? So how can I highlight the things that I am able to do so I'm not stuck in such darkness, and so that's what the grieving to hell became about. I wanted to become a voice for those who didn't have a voice or because I knew that I couldn't be the only one experiencing that, but I had nowhere to get an understanding of what it was I was feeling. And so I that's what made me write the book grieving to Hill, because I wanted to reach others who may have been experiencing exactly what I was experiencing, but felt alone

Renae: Absolutely. That's such an important piece of when we talk about emotional and spiritual maturity that they travel hand in hand, and part of our emotional maturity is telling the full truth of things that happened or didn't happen, and then moving on with compassion. That's part of that healing journey that is required in order for us to not stay stuck in that loop of constantly trying to recapture what was. I think that's poignant for everybody, because we, we all just went through COVID only five years ago. We're still and we're still going through it exactly. And there's a, there's this piece of it where that collective trauma, of, you know trauma, the three E's of trauma, is an event or series of events, or set of circumstances that's experienced by an individual is threatening or that's going to take life or harm that has lasting adverse effects on their full functioning. And if you, look at that definition, that there was this pandemic of we don't know who to look to for answers. It's convoluted. Things don't make sense. Do I have a job? Is it safe to be around people? Is it not safe to be around people? Am I going to die? What's going to happen with the economy? Where's the toilet paper? Like all of these questions, there are significant questions to the functioning, and we didn't have a strategy for it. We didn't know what to do. And we've all felt that together, and we are, we're going to be recovering that from the echoes of that for a very, very long time. But there's this idea that resilience is that we bounce back, and in reality is, it is that resilience is “I know what to do, or I know who to call for help.” It's not bouncing back. We can't bounce back. We, really, the only way to go through it is to go through it, and so I love that. That's really what I hear you talking about, is accepting the reality of what is while we mourn the loss of what was supposed to have been.

Xenia: Yes, I'm so happy you. You brought that up. I'm so happy that you, you. I'm defined with trauma is, well, the generic version of trauma is because am I and what I do, and in my talks, I give, I go through this experience for individuals to help them understand that trauma is so much more than what the definition the general definition is, right? So yes, that was the APA version, the American Psychological Association version of it, right? But when you think about trauma in terms of mental illness, when you think about trauma in terms of long-term illness and disability, trauma is so much more than that, because it is that emotional cycle or world cycle, a roller coaster that you go through, okay? No, it may not be visible bruises, but there's mental bruises, you know. And so when I, when I, when I speak about moving from trauma to triumph, I explain to people that trauma is so much more because you have this invisible disability or this invisible event that is continuously happening to you, and others may not see it or recognize it, and they just think like, oh, you having a down day. They have no idea emotionally, the toll that is being taken on you. And it's not a quick fix. It's not something that someone can give you a pill and it makes go away. You know, like you mentioned COVID, there were no work for COVID. That's when we were home alone, or either home with our families, and we really begin to notice, like, Oh, my goodness, I'm depressed. Oh my goodness, I have something going I have thing that's happening to me. Oh, my God, I have this thing. I'm sorry.

Xenia: Yes, so I'm sorry about that. So you we have this thing that's happening to us, and we were like, I didn't even recognize that. That's what I was doing. Because you were going to work, you have all these outside activities that you had access to, and during COVID, we no longer had access to those things. So we were forced to begin to realize the things that were happening to us, you know? And so that's why it's so important to explain what that part of trauma is. That's the that's the pastor that came in to do prayer for my aunt. And so, this is real life happening. This is real life happening. And so it was, it's important to distinguish that for individuals, so they can realize that a term that everyone throw around so loosely resilient. Again, that's an idea, right? It's an ideal things that we've been told whenever we have some type of hardship, you should be resilient. But nobody really taught us what that looks like, sound like and feels like in the midst of your trauma, in the midst of your struggles, and so that brings. Us to that connection of faith, right? Because that connection of faith was when you really start to understand like, This is My Journey to Understanding, my pathway to hope, without hope and without faith. Sometimes we feel like we can't get through. We feel like we there's no up, there's no down, there's no floor. When you to the ending of this roller coaster, right? And so that is so important, when we identifying what trauma looks like, sounds like it feels like for an individual who is battling a long term illness, or individual who is battling mental illness, the things that the invisible bruises that people don't get to see. Those challenges are all connected to trauma, to faith, to hope, to grief, loss, all those things are all bundled up in one and you just have to begin to understand what works for you, which then brings you to this pathway that I like to talk about in my, in my, my, my strategy of moving from trauma to trial, the strategy of understanding self. When you begin to understand yourself and identify with yourself, you begin to understand the triggers. You begin to understand who's your circle, who are the people that you can call on for help, who are the people that you're willing to welcome in and share your most vulnerable moments. Because that's what giving yourself grace is about. Giving yourself grace is about understanding what you're going through and being willing and vulnerable enough to share with someone else, to allow them to support you in that process.

Renae: Beautiful, and I love how you're very clearly pointing toward connection in this because there's this piece of trauma that's telling us a lie, that we're all alone in it. This is why it becomes traumatic, is that there's there is not a hope for a way out, and there's not a hope that there's any relief from it, and that there's not any anchor that we can hold on to. It is just, it's forever. And then it comes with the second piece, “it's probably our fault.” And that's the loop that lies within this false narrative of trauma. And the antidote to that loop is connection. It is their people, that and, God, if that we've that's our faith tradition, that we have something outside of ourselves, that is part of our telling the full truth of we're not alone, that there is hope, that there are anchors to hold on to. And so I'd really love to hear from you, what would you say is some of the ways that it became just very clear, like crystal clear, to you in your journey.

Xenia: absolutely. And that's such a great segue into when I was first diagnosed, I was, I was going to the doctor, and I kept I went to the doctor so often it was it's ridiculous, and I went to the doctor, I want to say, at least four times out of the month. I kept going to urgent care, make an appointment to my doctor, and I was saying how I didn't feel like myself, something was wrong, like my breathing was changing from someone who was going to the actively going to the gym three times out of the week, and now I can barely walk a block without stopping and feeling busy. I kept saying, there's something wrong. We have to, you know, check for something. And the doctor just kept dismissing me. It just was like, you know, oh, maybe, you know, maybe she got asthma, will switch to inhaler and would never run any tests, right? And so for me, I'm thinking, Okay, you're the doctor. You must know, but I'm still telling you this something that just doesn't feel right. And so I went to work one day, and I walked up three steps, literally three steps. I almost completely collapsed, and I said, “Something's wrong.” So I went to a completely different doctor outside of my regular doctor, and the cough that I was given was such a hard and dry cough that the doctor and the urgent care heard me from the back when I entered the door and he came out from his office, and he said, “don't have her check in. Send her directly to my office,” and when I got there, he immediately put me on steroids, he did an x ray, he said, “Do you know that she has bilateral pneumonia?” And I was saying, What? No, my doctor just kept saying it was my asthma. And then he showed me the screening, and he showed me how cloudy my lungs were, and he asked me, like, did you have COVID recently? And I said, No, I didn't have COVID, so he gave me a test. He said, your test is coming back and live. He said, I want you to take this. I'm gonna give you some AI's, but I want you to take the CD when you get to the hospital, give it to the doctor. So I did that, and then they ran another set of tests. They said, Well, you we keep testing you. We don't have COVID, but we're going to treat you like you do because we don't understand what's going on. So can you imagine, as for someone who's been actively going to the doctor and saying something's wrong and all these things, and to finally, you know, for someone to make you think that it's in your head, it's so it's so triggering, but it's also it's damaging. It's damaging to an individual. So I was dealing with, I was dealing with his doubt that this doctor, this physician, had placed on me. I was dealing with this, this power struggle of, no, I know my body, I like it's something wrong. There's something wrong. But then also constantly being told, like, it's that's not true, there's nothing. So there was this tug of war that constantly was happening, um, and it really made me feel like I was going crazy, like I really thought was thinking, like, what is this? Is it? Is this mental? Is am I mean, this up, like I can't understand. And I began to wonder, like, how many other people were having that same experience, how many other people were having that same experience? So when I was finally diagnosed, I want to say eight months, eight months of going to the doctor. Then I finally was diagnosed, I went through this depression because then by the time I was diagnosed this, this illness had already taken so much of a toll on my body, and I'm being told I need a double lung transplant. I went through this deep depression darkness of what if they would have found it earlier? Be here right now? Would I be here right like, will I be in this position right now where you're telling me I'm I don't have that much time to live on my lungs without getting a transplant. So now I'm like, Okay, I'm suffering food. So now this is, this is another way of adding with the trauma that was already experiencing, the challenges of feeling constantly dismissed, the challenges of someone making me think like that it was in my head, like gaslighting me, making me think that it's in my head. And then no, and then this, will I wake up in the morning? So all those things were happening. And I began to just start praying. I began to start praying over and over. I was praying the same prayer every night, and I just kept saying, God, just please, but I don't understand what's happening. Just please, calm my mind, calm my spirit, calm my heart, and just make me new. Show me. Show me. Let me be a testament to your strength and all that you can do. And I'll say that I put it over and over and over again, and eventually this calm began to kind of come over me, and I wasn't afraid anymore. I wasn't afraid anymore. I just became to be in this space of there's something there, there's something happening to my body, but there's a higher power, someone great in me that that's going to help me through this, and so I began to tap into my faith, and that's why it's so important that I share that story with others, because that belief in my faith began to give me hope, and my hope began to push my will of working even harder to get better, not to become the person I was, but to begin to identify the person who I was becoming, and so to answer, to answer your question. I know that was a lot, but I feel like it's important to share this with individuals, because so often people just tell you, like, yes, this traumatic experience happened to me, and now I'm great. And here are the things that you can do, but they don't share, or they say, book me, and I'll share with you. I'll share with you later, the things that I could do, but they don't share the troubles and the challenges they went through to get to where they are now. And so I share the troubles and the challenges. Because in that I began to understand how important connection work is. I began to understand that this thing that was happening to me wasn't only happening to me. It was happening to the people that surrounded me. It was happening to my family members that would care what my caregivers who were caring for me. They were physically watching me someone go from this thriving, vibrant, active person to being someone that was like wiggling away from them before their eyes, you know. So that was traumatic for them, in that sense. But then there was also that experience for them, was their fear for me, of trying to not show me how afraid they were was connected to my fear of trying to show not show them how afraid I was. And so until we had a family discussion, and we all sat together and I had to share with them, these are the ways that you can help me. These are the ways that you can help me, so that, so that you don't have to be free like let me see. Let me see what you let me see what it is that's weighing on you, and our share was weighing on me, so that we can work together as a family. Because other than that, I just feel alone. I feel so alone, and although I see the individuals, I see the strong people that's around me trying to hold me up, I still feel alone because I recognize that everyone's hiding. They're hiding the pain. And so the importance of sharing this is it's okay not to hide the pain, because if you continue to hide the pain, then people don't know how to show up for you, but then you also don't know how to identify and show up for the things that you need. So don't hide the pain.