But what, precisely, does it actually mean to create a beautiful adulthood for yourself? And do you need to be “fully healed” in order to achieve this? At what point does the recovery work from childhood trauma end and the pursuit of building a better adulthood begin?

What does it mean to create a beautiful adulthood for yourself?

The four pillars that ground my relational trauma recovery work are psychoeducation, skills-building, grieving and processing, and reparative relational experiences.

And the goal of each of these steps is to help individuals who came from adverse early beginnings heal, make sense of, and psychologically and physiologically integrate their pasts so that they can move forward and build a beautiful adulthood for themselves.

Each of these cornerstone elements of my work contributes to this one larger mission. 

Building a beautiful adulthood is both the end goal and culmination of relational trauma recovery work. But it doesn’t begin when the “healing work” is done. 

It literally happens as we’re doing the healing work to face and grieve the past. Throughout our attempts to develop the skills to meet any developmental gaps we missed. And integrally connected to our attempts to seek out and be influenced by reparative relational experiences. And so forth.

Building a beautiful adulthood is not the last step; it’s woven into every step along the way.

Building a beautiful adulthood for yourself is the second chance you give yourself after a less-than-ideal and powerless childhood. 

But what does it mean to create a beautiful adulthood for yourself? 

In my personal and professional experience, this means, as much as possible, matching your insides to the outside world. 

It means, as much as possible, matching what you truly desire. And what suits your soul when it comes to the big externals of our life. Where (home, community, place), What (career, hobbies, life endeavors), Who (relationships – with ourselves and others), and How (money, time).

Giving yourself a beautiful adulthood also means, in my personal and professional experience, not only identifying what you hunger for on the inside but also working through and psychological and physiological trauma impacts that may – consciously or unconsciously – still be ruling you and leading to a disconnect between what you hunger for on the inside and what exists on the outside. 

Such trauma impacts may include maladaptive beliefs and behaviors (addictions, compulsions, chronic self-, and other-criticism), a dysregulated nervous system (hyper- or hypo-aroused), attachment wounds (disorganized, anxious, or avoidant attachment patterning), and so much more.

So as you move through relational trauma recovery work, the task is to help better understand what you long for and hunger for and also to help you cultivate more choice and develop more agency so that you can be responsive rather than reactive in your life.