Something I have been thinking about a lot is how we approach changes in this life. I used to pride myself on being a person who loved change, maybe a little too much at times. I also think change and growth often go hand in hand and how we as people have choices to cultivate space for change.
I want to talk about the impacts of trauma on our minds that make change difficult sometimes and sometimes easier. The impacts trauma has on growth are really interesting. We talk about change like it is just a mindset; however, for a lot of people, change is shaped by what it costs. When you are navigating systems that aren’t really for you, whether that is your health, your family, or larger structures, growth isn’t just about choosing differently. It is about negotiating risk, safety, and survival.
Sometimes growth looks like big visible change. Sometimes it looks like staying, adapting, or moving slowly in a world that doesn’t make space for you to move freely. Change isn’t just a personality trait or a preference. It is deeply shaped by what our nervous system has learned is safe. You can love change on the surface and still have parts of you that resist it. That is not hypocrisy; it is complexity.
Trauma especially reshapes how we experience change in a few ways
Change can feel like danger even when it is good. If your past taught you that unpredictability equals pain, loss, or instability, then your brain starts scanning for threats anytime something shifts. Even positive change can feel challenging. Growth asks you to step into the unknown, and trauma wires the body to cling to the known, even if the known isn’t ideal.
Or the opposite: constant change can feel like control. Sometimes people who have experienced instability become seekers of change. Reinvention, movement, new environments can feel empowering, kinda like “I choose this before it happens to me.” It is a way of staying ahead of discomfort, and it can also make stillness feel unsettling.
Growth requires safety, not just effort. We often frame growth as discipline or mindset without acknowledging that trauma reminds us growth is also physiological. If your nervous system doesn’t feel safe, it will prioritize protection over expansion. What looks like resistance is often your body doing its job.
Trauma can both block and accelerate growth. This is the paradox. Trauma can make change harder, fear, avoidance, shutdown, flight. It can also deepen awareness, empathy, and intentionality. Some people grow because they have had to make meaning out of hard things. The growth is real, and it often comes with a cost.
On a personal note, I don’t talk about this too often. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 17, and here we are a lot of years later. That diagnosis is actually what made me so fascinated by trauma. When I got that diagnosis, my first response was “I didn’t fight in war so that is stupid.” This was before the endless conversations around mental health on Tik Tok or an easy “what is PTSD and do I have it” search on Chat GPT. I learned about it first through my own process with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Prolonged Exposure Cognitive Processing Therapy, EMDR, and then side by side through certification programs, classes, books, licenses, etc.
What fascinates me and what I struggle with is that the process of learning and healing is never ending, and it is so individual. What works for me will likely not work for someone else. Getting to experience this and then learn so much in this area has made me extra aware of how many systems truly oversee so many people.
When I was working in the clinical space, someone told me “if you find yourself fighting against the system you may want to redirect because you will spend your whole life trying to change something that doesn’t want you to change it.” This is the reason I walked away from the clinical space and church space. Not because I don’t see or experience the benefits from those spaces, rather because the people I want to be advocating for are often not going to be the ones being considered. I walked away because I wanted to explore what could be created when we weren’t constrained by systems that were not really designed to see everyone. There is something deeply hopeful in choosing to create spaces that consider those often overlooked, so that is what we will continue to do.
We have made a lot of shifts in what that looks like, and we will probably continue to. We definitely aren’t doing this perfectly yet, and the mission to be a movement that allows people to acknowledge their gifts in the midst of whatever they are facing and explore ways to use their gifts and their story very much remains at the center of everything.
I think about all of this through the lens of trauma and transformation. I trust the God I believe in is the God who transforms and redeems. To be in a posture to navigate transformation, everything else, the nervous system, the safety, the context, the systems people are in, needs to be considered. This is deeply spiritual and human work. It is messy and imperfect and worth it.
All of that to be said, this April we are exploring this idea of growth. April 11th we have a garden project and cleanup at a local park, a hands-on learning space to talk about creating space for growth and actually invite people into this space to experience it first-hand.
The theme of growth will be intertwined through cowork, through resources being creating for our global partners, through the research we continue to gather, and of course through myself. I am personally working on some ways to shift the presence of the giving gifts and hopefully create more spaces to engage particularly with youth, my favorite people group. More on that later!!