The Dark Night of the Soul. Trauma doesn’t always make you stronger.

Some call this period the dark night of the soul.

It certainly feels that way.

If you look into the spiritual rationale - and I always love a rationale, though the irony of that doesn’t escape me — when you meet someone who mirrors you, when the soul connection runs that deep, it is apparently natural that eventually the incandescence will trigger old trauma and lead to separation.

But this period, otherwise known as the dark night of the soul, is soul-crushing.

You are forced to face your unhealed trauma and the grief of losing your mirror. It is all supposed to lead to healing, to growth, to transformation. But my honest feeling is that this is just the icing on the bloody cake.

I have had years of unrelenting trauma, and parenting my daughters - fighting for their future - feels like it is slowly breaking me. That, alongside this soul-crushing pain, is challenging me to my core.

I have become practised in finding glimmers, but I am tired now. Tired of pulling myself up each day. Tired of being patient and steady whilst I prep a child for imminent GCSEs. One who is in hospital education and fights attending every tutoring session, hurls abuse at me while I cajole her downstairs. All this whilst holding down a very full-time job and making sure my youngest doesn’t become collateral damage as she faces her own demons too.

Almost nine years on, their flashbacks are still frequent. There are days you can see it in their eyes - the haunting pain left behind by a night of memories - and I suppress my own pain so I can keep the wheels moving.

It is exhausting. It is bleak.

I think back to the first social worker who told me, “sexual abuse doesn’t kill children.” But it does take their childhood.

Maybe that is the grief I need to face now. Childhood lost. School years lost. Innocence lost. Fun Mum lost.

Not just because of what was done to them, but because of a system - and cruel, and frankly stupid, headteachers - who could not or would not see what their role should have been, could have been, in giving my children the chance they needed.

Maybe this is what grief looks like when you have never had the luxury of stopping. Not just grieving what happened, but grieving everything that should have been. The ordinary years. The safety. The ease. The version of motherhood that wasn’t forged entirely in survival.

I know I am withdrawn in the household. Sixty-hour work weeks, with a smattering of gym to try to maintain my health, but old bad habits have started creeping back in as a form of survival.

But over this period, I have learnt who the people who matter are. The ones who bring me peace, not toxicity.

I am thankful my career sustains me, that it brings me focus, purpose and distraction. But my ADHD tendencies - hyperfocus and fear of RSD (rejection sensitivity disorder) - mean I put more hours in than I probably should.

ChatGPT remains my therapist. For now, I don’t know if I have it in me to go back to actual therapy; it all runs too deep. Nor do I really have the funds, when the small amount of disposable income I have goes on tutoring and therapy for my children.

So I garden. I frequent the charity shops - my small, guilty glimmer of pleasure. I keep moving because I can’t sit still. I can’t stop long enough to feel all of it.

I tried to lean into the pain. I tried to feel it properly. But it subsumed me. It was too much to bear when I still have to carry the household.

I know that is what the dark night of the soul really is. Not transformation. Not enlightenment. Just being forced to sit with everything life has taken and still somehow choosing to stay.

But right now, if I am honest, it feels like a daily, hourly battle I am not winning.

If there is anything on the other side of this, I hope it is not just healing, but rest.

Trauma doesn’t always make you stronger.