Fierce Like a Mama Bear, Gentle Like a Homecoming: Post‑Traumatic Growth

(An image of a mama bear protecting her cubs, offered by Kristin Neff, that became a healing mantra for me.)

Healing from trauma is not only about recovery; it is about reclaiming the wholeness of who we are. My own journey of post-traumatic growth has been a process of softly reconnecting with my feelings, memories, and emotions — while being informed by the science of healing through Mindfulness, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Polyvagal Theory. Over time, these ways of understanding have helped me soften patterns of overwhelming fear and begin to reconnect with a sense of being safe and seen that had been disrupted by early experiences of insecure attachment.
Through the years, I’ve come to understand that healing unfolds gradually — as awareness deepens into kindness, kindness into compassion, and compassion into the courage to name your needs and make new choices. As I began to study the science of Mindfulness, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Polyvagal Theory, I could recognize in myself what these frameworks describe: the body’s instinctive ways of protecting us, and the possibility of returning, with kindness, to the safety that once felt out of reach. Learning to meet my own experience in this way has been both humbling and empowering — a steady reclaiming of agency and wholeness that continues to strengthen over time.

A Reflection — Writing as Integration
As I tell my story and allow myself to be with what I once endured, my brain and nervous system now feel safe enough to stay present. From that safety, a quiet spaciousness opens — space for new awareness, for gentle insight, and for the ability to be with what arises without overwhelm. Writing from this space feels coherent; understanding unfolds rather than being forced.
This is what post-traumatic growth without retraumatizing can look like: safety in the body allows the mind to calm and integrate what was once fragmented. The past no longer presses against the present; instead, it informs it with wisdom. Writing becomes both expression and repair — the nervous system naturally moving toward coherence.

Vignette — How I Found My Voice
The science of healing is an interweaving of information in our mind and the signals and sensations our body is offering us — new awareness can then take form as clear action and behaviors, and the nervous system can remember how safety feels. One such moment unfolded for me this way…
During a coaching conference with hundreds of participants, I realized I was experiencing integration in real time. I was softly aware of both fear and excitement, yet able to stay clear, coherent, and connected. I was in the world — no longer watching it from behind a protective window.
When I was called on, I raised my hand and spoke with clarity. I introduced myself and, with courage, wove together adult development, trauma-informed coaching, and Polyvagal Theory. In that moment, the strands of my journey cohered into voice. Something strong and steady within me rose — a quiet rhythm of trust returning.
The presenter received my words. The next participant even shifted his question after hearing mine. At the close, the organizer thanked the four of us who had spoken — my name among them. As tears of release began to fall, I apologized — an old pattern whispering that emotion was too much. But this time, I could see the pattern for what it was — an echo of the past. The story wasn’t about the apology; it was about the moment of connection itself. About courage. About presence. About reconnecting with myself.
In that moment, the strands of my journey — science, mindfulness, and spirit — cohered into voice.
In the Jewish calendar, the month of Elul invites us into T’shuvah — the spiritual work of returning. Returning to our wholeness, to our truest selves, to the Emet of our hearts. Emet — Hebrew for truth — carries faithfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity. Its root, aman (אָמַן), means “to support, to make firm, to be faithful,” and also gives rise to amen (אָמֵן), our affirmation of what is true. Even its letters, spanning the Hebrew alphabet from beginning to end, teach that truth is enduring and all-encompassing.
That evening, in front of hundreds of faces on a screen, I caught a glimpse of such a reconnection. For people on a healing path, researchers, and communities engaged in healing, such moments matter. They show us that post-traumatic growth is cultivated and sustained through embodied acts of courage, presence in vulnerability, and the spiritual return to truth. In vulnerability, there is strength. In emotion, there is wisdom. And in returning, we find the wholeness of our hearts.

From Felt Experience to the Science of Healing
From my trauma recovery, I learned the powerful impact of combining science and mindful awareness. I studied and learned a pathway to healing. The frameworks of Mindfulness, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Polyvagal Theory, and Attachment Science each illuminate how safety, awareness, and compassion allow healing to unfold. It became my pathway to gradually integrate the pain of the past and embrace the present with hope and contentment.

Interpersonal Neurobiology — Integration as Health and Wholeness
As mindfulness opens awareness, Interpersonal Neurobiology helps us understand what is happening within us — interconnecting the flow of energy and information within our mind, body, and relationships. Dr. Dan Siegel, a leader in Interpersonal Neurobiology, describes integration as the linkage of differentiated parts. To borrow his words, integration is the foundation of health and well-being. He teaches that “integration is kindness and compassion made visible.”
When we are integrated, we can move fluidly between our inner and outer worlds — between what we feel and how we respond, between what is in our hearts and what is on our mind. This is integration — the return of communication and connection across regions that were once disconnected by the woundedness of traumatic fear, shame, and other strong emotions. Through the lens of Interpersonal Neurobiology, healing becomes the movement from rigidity or chaos toward coherence — a balanced state where all parts of ourselves can communicate and belong.

PolyVagal Theory — Befriending Our Nervous System
(a metaphor first offered by Deb Dana)

Through the work of Stephen Porges, PhD, we’ve come to understand that our nervous system continuously scans for cues of safety, threat, or danger. This process, called neuroception, happens below the level of conscious awareness. It is the body’s way of asking, Am I safe?
When we feel safe enough, the vagus nerve supports a state of calm engagement — our heart rate slows, our breath deepens, and we can connect with others with more ease. In this state, our social nervous system becomes active: the muscles of the face, eyes, and voice convey warmth and trust. Safety cues become visible — and heard.
When threat or danger is sensed, the nervous system automatically shifts into protection. We may move into fight or flight — or, when escape feels impossible, into freeze, a shutdown that once helped us survive.
Through the compassionate work of Deb Dana, LCSW, and Dr. Arielle Schwartz, we learn that these states are not signs of weakness but adaptive responses — ways our body has carried us through. PolyVagal awareness invites us to notice these states with kindness and self-compassion, not with blame but with respect — and, in time, with gratitude for the ways our body has tried to protect us and keep us safe.
As we begin to recognize these patterns, we can learn effective ways to regulate our nervous system through breath, movement, and connection. Over time, regulating our system and increasing a sense of feeling safe shifts the responses of our brain and nervous system. Our resilience grows stronger. I came to see the nervous system as a wise guide in recovery and post-traumatic growth.

Closing Reflection — Returning Home

In time, I came to see that post-traumatic growth is a heroic journey — finding the way to softly create a compassionate relationship with both sorrow and joy. When suffering is met with healing presence, it can become a gateway to love, to freedom, and to the deep homecoming of reconnecting with yourself. The story I tell is the same one I carried for decades; what has changed is the voice. Where once I wrote from pain and survival, now, through trauma recovery, the story has softened and unfolded. Today I write from the ground of agency and grace — to embrace the natural rhythms of life with hope, and to experience the quiet joy of being in this moment with more and more ease. And so I offer these words with the hope that they may serve as a light for others who are finding their way — to reclaim their voice, to return home, and, in that return, to gently reconnect with themselves.

Coming home…
Not to a place,
but to myself —
to the soft rhythm of safety
I once thought I had lost,
and now remember again.