When I read this topic, I immediately felt the tension of ‘choice’ and the notion of change. I can’t deny that for much of what we suffer there is no choice and ‘a something’ that will be forever part of ourselves. Yet we work to ‘rise above’, ‘get over’, ‘pass though’… (metaphors we live by and tend to trip over) to transform, transcend past traumas and ‘move forward’.

I cannot change the trauma, no choice, but work to build a bridge to ‘get over’ it – choice. Something happens that triggers the past and I find myself struggling in the current of the river looking up at the bridge that for some reason I didn’t choose to take or in the moment was not able to take. In that moment, I know, as I’ve done it, instantaneously transport myself onto the bridge… but often wont… a part of me choosing?