Let me be clear: I do not do that.

I am the person who, at six years old, asked if I could be a Pilgrim for Halloween. A Pilgrim.

I am the person who, at age 10, was checking books out of the local island library about the sinking of the Titanic, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Holocaust.

I’m the person who, at 17 in her high school valedictorian speech, talked about the role we must all play in social justice and what collective responsibility looks like.

I’m the person who launched a trauma-informed therapy center when her daughter was three months old.

I am a person who defaults to hard work, self-sacrifice and confronting the hard and the unjust.

But defaulting to joy and play and ease?

No, that is not naturally me.

Seeking out joy and play is a life skill I’m still working on because I believe that actively building play and fun into life is a critical skill to develop, particularly when we come from adverse early beginnings.

To read more about my journey with this and what it actually means to develop the skill of seeking out fun and play, keep reading.

The importance of play and fun in relational trauma recovery work.

Following up from a few weeks ago when we talked about how building a beautiful adulthood for ourselves is the end goal of relational trauma recovery work, I firmly believe that actively seeking out and moving towards fun and play is an integral part of this end goal.

Why?

Because play and fun help create that sense of vitality and enlivenment that can so often help us feel as though we’re actually living, versus just treading water through our days.

Seeking out play and fun is, in my personal and professional experience, our natural state that we have as children (my daughter models this for me day in and day out), but when we go through traumatic early experiences, this normal and natural impulse may be impeded by how we self-organize to cope with that trauma.

So then, part of supporting ourselves as adults as we seek to heal and overcome our adverse beginnings is to recognize and undo any mental and behavioral conditioning that’s impeding that natural impulse inside of us.

Again, all with the end goal of helping ourselves feel as vital and enlivened as possible as adults, despite our adverse early beginnings.

But what the heck even feels like fun and play?

But what exactly *is* fun and play?

Fun and play. “What feels like fun and play to you?”

If you’re like me, this seemingly easy question can feel hard, murky, if not downright impossible to answer when you come from a relational trauma background.