Finding Happiness Despite Challenges

In her inspiring new book, Happiness is Running Through the Streets to Find You: Translating Trauma’s Harsh Legacy Into Healing, Holly Elissa Bruno writes about how she helped herself deal with childhood trauma, and how these lessons might be helpful to all of us. Especially in today’s current situation, where each of us is experiencing some level of challenge, Holly Elissa’s words bring comfort and support:

“Paradoxes, when the opposite of what I believe to be true is also true, abound in trauma recovery. I accept that dynamic without understanding it. Paradoxes include…

Because I am intimate with sadness, my heart knows joy
The more vulnerable I become, the stronger I am.”

Holly Elissa explains how learning to grieve was necessary for her. She writes:

“Realizing I had no experience grieving, I stepped up to participate in Community Grief Rituals, in particular a ritual originating in Nigeria. There I learned to weep with and for others, to express my grief with my body, to allow myself to be soothed, to soothe and to sing together…. During these rituals, we bury an object imbued with feelings we choose to release. I release a rock, thick and heavy as granite.”

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