PTSD Survivors Speak: Tapping the Self through Song

I’m always interested in how we find, define and present ourselves after trauma. I met today’s guest post author, Marina, in a PTSD online forum. I was writing about my love of dance and how it helped me bridge the space between my post-traumatic and trauma-free selves. Marina responded with her experience of singing. I invited her to expand the idea…

Everytime I confront one of the memories that I have kept stuffed down and feel it has assimilated into my mind in a way that I can mull over, I inevitably get some of the good memories that went underground with the bad.

I realize that I was a sensitive, shy child who had the potential to do some amazing things. I had a love for nature that sustained my spirituality and creatures that I had over the years to distract me before I began to get angry. I loved being in the woods, would spend hours exploring the creek or sit in a tree up high and watch how crow communities behaved.

I used to love a spot I found one day where you could sit in the middle of a rock canyon, on top of a waterfall, water rushing by on either side. I used to practice for choir there and sing at the top of my lungs. It was magic, pure magic! …and the accoustics, Wow! It combined the best of things I loved.

My love of music and my ability to sing is truly a gift from God, I have always been able to show how I feel through my music and people can feel it when I sing. I am not bragging, this just is. It comes to me honestly and I have always loved that people respond to my music the way they do. It has been the one constant in my life that I always had, my voice. My feeling.

At one point I had the opportunity to go all the way with it but I became scared of the fairytale I was living in and the realization that it wasn’t real made me take a swan dive into a coccaine habit that almost killed me in the eighties.

I had no love for people or for myself, you see. I would have self-destructed in a most ugly way. Also, the idea that  people would like/love me seemed crazy.

At least my fall from grace was quiet and seen by very few. I’m still not that confidant that I am a good person but the difference is today I know when I am falling short of the mark by the gauge of my feelings. If it doesn’t feel good emotionally, it probably isn’t in my best interest.

When I sing now I do it because I can and it feels good. I no longer sing for people to validate who I am and what my worth is, I do not require the strokes. Singing is now something I can do, not who I am. What I do like about it is that people who would normally not come talk to me, come talk to me. Music is the bridge where I meet them and they see me, not the image.

(Photo acknowledgement on Flickr.)

Tags: post-traumatic, ptsd