debbie mendoza

When I was a teenager, my dad took me back to swim in the same river where I had recently nearly drowned (a frightening event from which he had saved me). He told me that if I didn’t face my fear and get back in the water, I’d never get back in the water for the rest of my life.

Doing as he said, I trepidatiously cooled off in the river. I now better understood my abilities and limits in the river. The fear trapped in the memory of being dragged down and spun up by the powerful force of the eddy was now conjoined with the reinforced simple pleasure of a Belizean river on a hot day.

That lesson made it easy for me to accept later on in life the concept of being intentional in attaching new memories to particular dates and places I’ve visited in the past to which painful memories are at the forefront.

I’ve revisited some of those places to make new memories. Also, planning distinct activities around anniversaries that are painful to remember has been incredibly healing.

Healing from trauma and from our past is not passive. Selecting a therapist, setting up appointments, and showing up consistently are all active choices we can make.

Deciding how to handle an approaching painful anniversary in a way that validates, and/or augments it, is being proactive about our healing, and increases our ability to receive goodness from life.

Another activity that brings freedom is deciding to safely engage in something fun or beneficial we said we would never do because of the hurtful memories attached to it in our past.

Recently I gave in after much contemplation, and made the decision to try a three day juice cleanse in spite of a painful picture memory I’ve carried around for many years that involved a juice cleanse. In deciding to do it, I spoke the memory out loud and admitted the effect it had on me. I then declared that although I couldn’t change what happened in the past, I could make my own new memory, just like getting back into the river after having nearly drowned there.

Healing is an active process made up of some big steps but also tons of small steps. We may not feel like we’re making headway, but then one day, faced with an unwelcome situation, we find that we reacted differently than our unhealthy selves would have.

We can’t entirely forget the painful memories of the past, but we can choose to make new memories to live alongside and maybe even overwrite them. My memory of being powerfully controlled by an eddy is complemented by the countless memories I have of being in a river since then.

I now have a juice cleanse memory all my own that sits comfortably beside the one I carried for years, and it is the life of the party in that particular memory room.

Choosing to heal means choosing to take action. Which of these actions can/will you follow through on:

Is there a painful anniversary approaching that you need to proactively do something different around?

Is there a place you may need to revisit so you can claim your own memories about it?

Is there something you need to do that a sad memory has held back from doing?

Be gentle with yourself as you consider how to do any of these things, and give yourself grace. Take the small step, or if you can, the big one.

And remember, lean on the safe people in your life. All the action steps I’ve described here were taken with God’s help and the help of others. The repeated decisions to choose to heal are always internal and personal, but we need God and others to walk them out.

May God bless your process. May He make you strong and courageous and give you safe people to journey with. And may the new, good, and beautiful memories you actively build be the prominent ones in your life!

© Debbie Mendoza, June 2023