Channeling Trauma

When I travel, one of the pleasures for me when buying souvenirs is buying from real people, with real stories. Sometimes I get to talk to the vendors and find out about their lives and how they came to sell what they are selling. Most recently, I was in Nova Scotia, in the village of St. Martin, where I went into a little shop. I didn’t intend to talk to the owner, but I’m so glad that I did – so glad, in fact, that I would like to share her story because it speaks to a deep kind of healing.

It was the cutest little shop, maybe 15 by 15 feet, in a stand-alone little wooden house. When several people entered the shop, the owner, a woman in her late 50’s warmly greeted us and let us know to be careful with the uneven floors. I gravitated toward a wall with unusual-looking jewelry, as did several other people. The owner came up to us and started telling us that she made this jewelry herself – several pieces were made from old silver serving trays, and several from pieces of China that the owner’s mother used to own. I was really drawn to one of the silver pieces (a pendant), and brought it up to the register. As she wrapped it up for me, I commented on the beauty of the jewelry and her creativity in repurposing the silver and the China. She looked at me with a very alive, warm gaze, and spontaneously volunteered this story: “When I was a little girl, my mother would make me polish the silver. I had to do it for hours, and it was awful. And I vowed that when I grew up, I would never have to do it again. So when my mother died, I took the silver and cut it up to make jewelry.” She had a really joyous smile on her face (as she handed me the credit card receipt), and I couldn’t help but join her. “What a creative way of changing your past”, I said to her, realizing immediately that I misspoke. You can’t change your past, my inner voice reminded me. But both the shop owner and I knew what I meant.

I was very moved by this. I don’t know whether this woman realizes the depth of this act on her part, or whether this was an intuitive path she followed. As a child, she felt trapped in this really tedious chore. As I imagine it, maybe her mother was tough on her, possibly criticizing the quality of her work, and maybe making her do it until the silver was polished to the mother’s liking. To a little girl, sitting for hours, possibly alone, and doing this chore, was grueling and painful. To make a vow to oneself at a young age means both encountering something traumatic, and also having a sense of hope and a powerful will to heal and find one’s own life, away from the source of the trauma. So when this little girl grew up, she changed her story. She channeled this trauma into a creative experience and even a way to make a living. Thus, she was able to separate from her mother (at least in this way), probably also channeling her anger into the act of cutting up the silver (and breaking those China dishes, too). She got to “get rid” of all that tedious silver, but not by selling it and pushing it out of awareness – she repurposed it with her own creativity, in her own way and no one else’s. I feel so grateful to have heard that story and to now own a piece of this very healing act.