New Branches

How can we move through trauma to health? It IS possible, as Caroline Beidler shares.

Elisa

New Branches

Caroline Beidler, MSW

When my twins turned two, which was the age I was when my mother left, I started to question again how and why my mom could bring herself to do a thing like leaving. I imagined her setting our little bodies down, watching as we tottered toward our grieving, shell-shocked dad, driving away. Not being present.

I couldn’t dream of living a life where my babies weren’t the absolute center around which I orbited like they were my sun.

When I was finally able to ask the question, “Why did you leave?”—or better, “How could you leave?” I couldn’t. She had already lived through so much. It was understandable. Even back then before I started researching trauma and resilience and also what the Bible might have to say about it all, I knew that brokenness was generationally cyclical. I felt it in my blood. The pain comes round again and again. It is more than apparent when I look at my family tree.

Sometimes my mom was a bright and shining figure, like a Pegasus with golden wings that swooped down and carried us above the clouds to McDonald’s to get our Happy Meals and to Foot Locker to get the expensive sneakers that our dad would never go for, because who in God’s name in 1992 would ever buy shoes for more than fifty bucks.

My brother and I would spend the weekend, two half days driving, two nights, and one full day, visiting our mom like she was some distant relative or a friend of a friend’s mom. But it was our life, and it was our reality, and it wasn’t until we were older that we realized how crushing and confusing this was. How it impacted us.

My mother was beautiful back then and still is today. Blue eyes like my daughter. Blondish hair like me back then. But when she cried, her face morphed, and its beauty contorted. It was hard to witness. Maybe because I was a kid and I didn’t know what to do about it. Like I was somehow responsible. Some weekends, she cried and cried. Some weekends, she said she tried a new medicine and it was better. Some weekends, she tried to explain (again) why she was leaving her current husband (again) and finding a cute little apartment (again) that would have room for us (again) if we wanted to visit or even move in with her.

Over time, my brother and I stopped letting my mother’s various men into our lives in a genuine way. It was too painful. But we did start to learn more about words like trauma and power and intimacy. We started to understand that there was something broken about our childhood. We watched other kids with their two parents and not forced to travel to for “visitation” every other weekend, the after-effects being like some medieval torture device, nibbled inch by inch by hungry mice. Another hole in our gut.

Jesus answers this question: how can we move from heavy to light, from the weight of the world (divorce, trauma, addiction, etc.) to freedom? “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

Today, I can look at my mother with compassion. I can hug my kids and not be reminded of the pain of my childhood because she left. I can understand the truth that although trauma can feel final, we can heal. We can learn that there is a yoke, a burden, that isn’t heavy anymore because we don’t have to carry the hard things alone. God is there with us and has always been.

On the outside, it might appear hopeless that we should ever heal or become new branches, ones that come from the old roots of human brokenness and ugliness and trauma. We may feel doomed to repeat the past or continue cycling through generational trauma. It may feel hopeless—and yet …

You see, there is a sweet place in all this human mess where God comes in. Ever since that very first broken relationship in the Garden, God has been intent on redeeming our brokenness. The prophet Isaiah uttered the visionary words, “Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.” (Isaiah 11:1, Life Recovery Bible NLT) This prophecy about the eventual coming of Jesus provides hope that through him, all things will be made new.

Out of all our family trees, something incredible can grow—new branches that bear fruit.

Have you ever seen a shoot growing up out of an old stump that’s been cut down? A fresh, new, young green thing that’s aching toward the light? It’s a beautiful sight. A picture of hope. If you don’t yet believe that things can get better, that you can be new, hold on. We can.

*Adapted from You Are Not Your Trauma: Uproot Unhealthy Patterns, Heal the Family Tree, by Caroline Beidler, MSW with Diana Dalles, LPN, MSSW. Copyright 2024, Used with permission.

Caroline Beidler, MSW is an author, speaker, recovery advocate, and founder of the storytelling platform Circle of Chairs. She is the author of Downstairs Church: Finding Hope in the Grit of Addiction and Trauma Recovery and You Are Not Your Trauma: Uproot Unhealthy Patterns, Heal the Family Tree. As an addiction recovery expert and trained mental health provider, she writes extensively about related topics and works with state governments, international partners, and faith communities. Connect at carolinebeidler.com