Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I am in my life and, more importantly, where I’m going next. After so many years of working through my own experiences, learning about trauma, spirituality, the body, the soul and everything in between, I find myself in a place that feels very different from where I started. I’m not looking backwards in the same way anymore. I’m looking at everything I’ve learned and wondering how I can use it to continue creating something meaningful for myself and for other people.

One of the things I’m really enjoying right now is my podcast. There is something about being able to sit down and talk openly about life, healing, trauma, relationships, spirituality and all of the complicated things that make us human that feels incredibly natural to me. The podcast has become another way for me to share the things I’ve learned along the way, but also to have conversations that might make somebody else stop and think about their own life. You can find the podcast through my website, ZoeHethershaw.com, and I’m really enjoying seeing where this part of my journey takes me.

The more I work on the podcast and the more I reflect on my own healing, the more I keep coming back to something I wish I had understood much earlier: you cannot compare trauma.

I did that for years. I would hear other people’s stories, particularly through the work I’ve done with people, and sometimes I would look at what they had experienced and think that my own story wasn’t really that bad. Compared to what some people had lived through, my childhood and my experiences could almost look like a Cinderella story. And yet I’ve also had people hear my story and tell me that it was one of the worst stories of trauma they had ever heard.

That contradiction taught me something important. There is no scale that can measure another person’s pain. What feels devastating to one person may not affect someone else in the same way, and what one person learns to live with may completely break another person open. We all carry things differently because we all have different histories, different nervous systems, different relationships and different ways of making sense of what happened to us.

That’s why I don’t believe we should ever have to compare our trauma to somebody else’s before we allow ourselves to acknowledge it.

And there is another part of this that I think is incredibly important: not everyone who has experienced trauma even recognizes it as trauma.

Sometimes we grow up believing that what happened to us was simply normal. It was our childhood, our family, our relationships or just the way life was. We adapt because we have to. We learn to keep going. We become independent because nobody was there to catch us. We become people pleasers because keeping everyone else happy feels safer. We learn to suppress our emotions, disconnect from our bodies or become constantly alert to what everyone else is feeling. Eventually, those things can become so familiar that we don’t recognize them as responses to what we’ve experienced. We just think that’s who we are.

I understand that because I’ve had to look at those things in myself.

My healing has taken me through many different layers. I’ve spent years looking at my experiences and trying to understand not only what happened to me, but what those experiences created inside me. I’ve had to look at the emotional side of healing, but I’ve also spent a great deal of time exploring the soul and the spirit. I’ve learned from my own experiences and from the many people I’ve had the privilege of holding space for over the years.

And eventually I came to understand that healing isn’t just about one part of us.

For me, it has to include the body, the soul and the spirit.

The body remembers things that the conscious mind doesn’t always recognize. The soul carries things that can be difficult to put into words. And the spirit is that deeper part of us that continues searching for meaning, connection and something beyond simply surviving. I don’t believe we can completely separate these parts of ourselves and expect to feel whole.

We can understand our trauma intellectually and still carry it in our bodies. We can work on our physical wellbeing while ignoring what is happening emotionally and spiritually. We can become deeply spiritual while avoiding the parts of ourselves that still need to be acknowledged and healed. For me, true healing has meant bringing all of those pieces into the same conversation.

That understanding has also changed the way I see other people.

The things I’ve experienced don’t make me an expert on someone else’s pain. They simply give me compassion. They have taught me how important it is to hold space for another person without judging their story, comparing it to mine or deciding how they should feel about it.

I think that’s one of the greatest gifts my own healing has given me.

I know what it feels like to wish someone would simply sit beside you and let you feel what you need to feel without trying to fix you, minimize you or tell you that somebody else has it worse. I know what it feels like to need someone to see you without asking you to justify your pain.

So that is the kind of space I want to create for other people.

Not a space where anyone has to prove that their trauma is significant enough. Not a space where healing is measured by how quickly someone can move on. And not a space where anyone is told that there is one right way to heal.

Just a space where people can begin to understand themselves.

That is also why the podcast feels like such a natural next step for me. It gives me another place to explore these conversations, tell stories, ask questions and talk about the things that so many of us carry quietly. Some conversations will be difficult, some will be hopeful, and some will probably make us laugh at ourselves because, honestly, healing doesn’t always have to be heavy.

As I move into this next chapter, I don’t feel like I’m starting over. I feel like I’m taking everything I’ve learned with me.

I’ve spent a lot of years navigating my own story. I’ve spent years learning how to survive, and then learning how to heal from the things I survived. Now I’m interested in something beyond survival. I’m interested in what it means to actually live, to become more connected to myself and to help create spaces where other people can begin doing the same.

I don’t think becoming whole means becoming someone who has never been hurt. I don’t think it means forgetting the past or pretending that difficult things didn’t happen. I think it means being able to look at all of the pieces of yourself with compassion, including the pieces you once wished you could erase.

The body, the soul and the spirit all have a story to tell.

For me, becoming whole has meant finally learning to listen to all three.

And that’s where I am now. I’m still learning. I’m still growing. I’m still discovering parts of myself I didn’t know were there. But for the first time, I’m not afraid of the next chapter.

I’m curious about it.

And I’m really enjoying writing it.