Embracing Presence: Living in the Moment After Trauma
Time is a strange thing. It moves like a river, or like a trickster, or like something with too many legs that scuttles away just as you reach for it. If you've ever lived through trauma, you know how the past refuses to stay in its place. It lingers in doorways, whispers in quiet moments, and sometimes, it shouts.
For a long time, I lived in a place between then and almost. My body was here, but my mind kept returning to old wounds, trying to rewrite endings that had already been written. But I’ve chosen a word for 2025, a guidepost to light the way: Presence.
Because the truth is, the past is a ghost. It cannot be changed, only learned from. The future is a dream, not yet real. But this moment—this breath, this sunrise, this stitch in fabric, this laughter, this cup of tea—is real. And that is where life is waiting.
Why Presence Matters After Trauma
Trauma has a way of stealing time. It fractures moments, traps you in loops of fear or regret. I’ve lived there. I’ve played the “what if” game with my own mind until I didn’t know where I ended and the past began. But presence—the simple, radical act of being here—has been my rope out of the maze.
To be present is to own your life again. No longer bound by the ghosts of what was, no longer manipulated by the specters of what could be.
Practical Ways to Cultivate Presence
1. Find Rituals in the Smallest Moments
Presence isn’t about grand gestures. It’s in the ritual of morning coffee, the rhythm of a paintbrush against canvas, the way thread pulls through fabric when I sew. Each stitch reminds me: I am here, my hands are moving, I am making something that did not exist before.
2. Breathe Like It Matters (Because It Does)
Sometimes, when the past tries to creep in, I stop and inhale like I mean it. A deep breath in, hold, exhale. It is absurd how much a single breath can anchor you. The body understands what the mind forgets: we are alive now.
3. Engage with the Senses
The feel of denim between my fingers. The scent of rain before it falls. The warmth of a candle in a dim room. Trauma pulls us away from the body, but presence invites us back into it, one sense at a time.
4. Give Yourself Permission to Choose
For too long, I let someone else hold the strings of my choices. I learned to anticipate moods, to navigate tempers, to shrink and twist myself into something more palatable. Presence reminds me: I am free. I can choose joy. I can choose solitude. I can choose to walk away. Every day, I get to decide.
The Joy of Now
The other day, I played in the snow. Well, I played. My dog, Marley, who is nearly thirteen and has no patience for human nonsense, watched with profound disinterest. But I laughed, and the world felt wide and open, and I remembered what it was like to be light again.
That’s the gift of presence. Not just survival. Not just getting through the day. But joy—unexpected, unplanned, and wholly yours.
If 2025 is to be the year of presence, then let it be filled with these moments. Moments of art and breath and snow. Moments where I am not a ghost in my own life, but fully here.
The past will knock, sometimes loudly. The future will whisper, tempting me to chase it. But presence is a door I can choose to walk through, again and again.
And so can you.
What small moment can you claim today? A sip of tea, a slow breath, the quiet hush before sleep? Hold onto it. Stay here. This is where life happens.
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