Every single soul on this planet is dealing with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This isn’t just the fight-or-flight response to tragedy or the war trauma that veterans suffer from—that is, the well-known and documented form of PTSD.
There’s also an epidemic of hidden PTSD.
This unknown form of PTSD, which is the focus of this chapter, is so rampant that almost everyone has it. It results from the unpleasant situations that we all have to deal with, ones that we may forget about consciously but not subconsciously. PTSD stems from millennia of hurt, too; its essence is in us from human history.
It’s normal, and even healthy, to be terrified when your life or someone else’s is in danger. Your fear triggers a fight-or-flight response that floods your body with adrenaline, temporarily giving you enhanced strength and heightened reflexes for dealing with the threat. Once the threat has passed you may experience emotional aftershocks. This is the classic form of PTSD that therapists and psychiatrists recognize.
A client, Jerry, once told me of his son-in-law Mike’s near-death experience when they were working together in construction. On the job one day, Jerry heard Mike screaming for help from across the site. Jerry raced to see what was the matter and found Mike trapped beneath a half-ton trailer. Mike had been fixing an axle when the blocks the trailer had been resting on gave out and the trailer pinned him to the ground, nearly crushing his chest.
If he stopped to call for help, Jerry knew it would come too late. So rather than dialing 911 and later having to tell his daughter that she’d lost her husband, Jerry went into survival mode. A burst of adrenaline filled his body. He proceeded to lift the thousand-pound weight off his son-in-law’s chest enough that Mike could slide out. Mike survived.
Even though a miracle had occurred and everything was okay, Mike consistently had nightmares about being trapped under something heavy and screaming for help. And Jerry couldn’t look at any type of trailer without feeling nauseated. After years of this, Jerry came to me for insights into how to heal. Both men had experienced what could obviously be deemed PTSD.
Then there are the day-to-day emotional wounds that add up. Insecurities, trust issues, fears, guilt, shame, and more: These all actually stem from past negative emotional experiences. They are all a result of hidden PTSD. So, for example, when a person has a fear of committing to a relationship, it’s showcasing that something happened earlier in life to create a certain level of posttraumatic stress disorder. You never know what happened in someone’s past that’s contributing to her or his present-day reaction.
PTSD can happen on so many different levels. I remember a hike I took once where I decided to go off the beaten path. As I veered from the trail, Spirit warned me not to do it. And yet, knowing that I was meant to go in the safe direction, I instead used my free will to follow my curiosity to a cliff. I crept to the cliff’s edge and saw a terrace below that I could reach if I was careful. With no safety rails, I started to climb. Just as I was navigating the most treacherous ledge, with the ocean 100 feet below me, a fog thicker than clotted cream rolled in, and fast.
I could barely see my hands in front of me. Below, waves crashed into rock. I knew that if I slid forward or to the side just six inches, I would meet my maker. I was stuck.
For hours and hours, the fog remained. By nightfall, it was still just as dense. The temperature had dropped, and the light clothes I was wearing were soaked through from the mist. Falling asleep on the side of a cliff was not an option, so I stayed up, freezing, until dawn, when the haze lifted enough for me to see the footholds that would guide me to safety. I finally got back to the car, drove home, and tried to sleep.
As soon as I closed my eyes, all I could see was the cliff—with me on it.
Over and over, I saw the same image and felt panic at how close I’d come to the end. For someone with a daredevil streak, someone who liked to experience nature with a dose of adrenaline, the experience probably wouldn’t have fazed her or him one bit. I know people who wouldn’t flinch from being fogged in on a precipice—rock climbers, for instance, who regularly risk their lives free climbing with no safety equipment. That’s not me, though. I was shaken.
Luckily, I knew the secrets to recovery. With time and patience and the application of Spirit’s healing program, I moved on from the trauma before long.
UNRECOGNIZED PTSD
In recent times, we’ve become a society that’s in favor of talking openly about subjects that used to be hush-hush. In the past, we pretty much had to shut up and be quiet about how we felt or we’d be sent to the asylum. If we acted out a little too much, we might even be eligible for a lobotomy.
It took centuries for war veterans to finally receive attention and treatment for the lasting stress of the traumas they had endured in battle. As a culture, we have a history of burying emotions with alcohol, drugs, food, and adrenaline-fueled activities. Expressing ourselves wasn’t really an option until fairly recently, within the last 40 years. We live in a stressful age, but therapists, counselors, and life coaches abound now—and we’re allowed to expand the definition and scope of PTSD.
Posttraumatic stress disorder is something that occurs from any difficult experience. There are the more severe cases of PTSD we know about, the ones that result from experiences such as abuse or tragedy or kidnapping or witnessing a violent crime.
Then there are the under-recognized triggers. A child’s parents divorcing could make her avoid marriage as an adult. A teenager who doesn’t get a date for prom could start disliking all school dances. Turbulence on a plane ride could lead a person never to want to fly again. And I’ve heard many stories about food poisoning contracted at a restaurant franchise that lead people to squirm in their seats every time they drive by one of the chain’s locations.
Other triggers include getting fired from a job, breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend, small fender benders that don’t even result in injuries, or a moment in life when you feel like you failed at something. There are no limitations to what can cause PTSD.
A client once told me that she hadn’t been able to eat green beans and meatloaf since adolescence because it had been forced on her when she was a teenager at boarding school. Just the sight or smell of either food gave her flashbacks to her coercive headmaster. I’ve also had many women clients afraid to conceive after enduring difficult pregnancies in the past. These are forms of PTSD, too.
Yet even in today’s modern times of self-help, therapy, and emotional understanding, society isn’t ready to refer to any of these under-recognized triggers as PTSD-inducing. Health professionals mostly reserve the term posttraumatic stress disorder for life-or-death experiences. This ignores the hundreds, if not thousands, of other incidents that alter (for the worse) the way someone experiences life.
That’s what PTSD does, no matter the scale: it negatively influences the choices we make and changes the fabric of who we are.
One trigger that is all too rarely spoken about is illness. Many people develop PTSD just from having the flu for two weeks, never mind chronic fatigue for three months or neurological problems for years. The experience of these symptoms is one part of the story. A whole other cause for emotional damage is the doctor-shopping journey—the battery of tests, the constant MRIs and CT scans that don’t reveal anything, the despair of not finding relief or validation.
PTSD tends to pile up on top of itself. Once you’ve been sick for any period of time, and you start believing your body is letting you down, and you’re lost in a non-diagnosis or a misdiagnosis or a diagnosis that leads to no healing, and the financial strain starts to build, and maybe you feel your hold slipping on your career or relationships—it makes you a likely candidate for a unique composition of posttraumatic stress disorders.
PTSD is a very real response to the illness of a loved one, too. Watching someone lose her or his vitality and cease to be able to perform the same role she or he once did in your life can make you feel vulnerable and powerless. Overextending yourself to care for someone can be taxing, too. Even if your loved one recovers, the moment they later sound groggy or develop a benign sniffle, it can dredge up those old fears and make you feel you’re reliving that dark time.
It’s possible to have PTSD and not realize it. If it originates from one of those subconscious memories, you may experience unexplained feelings of avoidance, or you may shut down in certain circumstances and not know why. Perhaps you find yourself driven to overeat sweets or seek out adrenaline-rush activities. Or maybe people have given you the upsetting labels “touchy,” “prickly,” “fragile,” “wounded,” “anal,” or “oversensitive.” These are all signs that something once happened—or happened over an extended period—to bring about a reaction now.
The medical establishment doesn’t truly know yet what PTSD is. It doesn’t know PTSD’s range, and it doesn’t know how it occurs.
In this chapter, you’ll get answers.
You are not beholden to the unpleasant parts of your personal history. You are not destined to relive the same patterns of trauma over and over again. The people who’ve hurt you do not hold the power to haunt you for the rest of your life. The mishaps and chronic stresses do not have to define you. There’s a way forward.
With the right nutritional, emotional, and soul-healing support, you can reclaim your vitality and go back to fully living your life.
Think of it like working with a computer that’s become bogged down with viruses, old files, and outdated software. It’s gotten slower over time, but you’re used to it. So if your niece came to visit and decided to run an anti-virus scan, to download your old files onto an external hard drive, and to update all your software, you’d be astonished at how much faster and more efficiently your computer could operate. Plus you’d have so much more storage space available.
That’s what it can be like when you rid your mind and consciousness of subtle PTSD wounds. When you learn to heal, you increase your operating capacity and open yourself up to all that goodness you haven’t had room to receive.
What happens on a physical and emotional level to cause PTSD?
Put plainly, it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that occurs when someone experiences trauma. When there isn’t enough glucose stored in the brain tissue to feed the central nervous system, emotional upheaval can create lasting effects. Contrary to popular science belief, though electrolytes do play a critical role in brain health, PTSD does not occur from a loss of electrolytes. A lack of glucose is the real cause.
Have you ever heard the expression “He has a thick skin” or “It’s like water off a duck’s back with her” to describe someone who goes through life untroubled by life’s shocks and upsets? What’s really behind these people’s temperaments are ample glucose reserves in the brain. As a result, they can handle a heck of a lot of trauma without being affected.
Glucose is a protective biochemical critical to the brain because it places a veil of protection over sensitive brain and neurological tissue. Medical research has not yet tapped into an understanding of just how much glucose the brain requires to function in times of stress—and just how critical it is that there’s ample glucose reserved in the storage bank of the brain. If glucose were converted into dollars, then one substantial traumatic event, like an accident, could be the equivalent of buying a new car. And a long-term trauma, such as an abusive relationship, could have the same effect on your glucose reserves that buying a new house would have on your bank account.
Glucose’s protective veil is necessary for two reasons: First, glucose is needed to prevent brain cells, brain tissue, and neurons from becoming saturated by the acidic and corrosive nature of the adrenaline and cortisol released from anger, frustration, hopelessness, and fear. Second, glucose is there to stop the electrical storms in the brain that arise when trauma occurs, with electrical impulses firing off at an alarming rate, affecting brain tissue, neurons, and glial cells.
Think of the brain like a car’s engine. Sweet like sugar, antifreeze runs through the engine. Without this coolant, the engine can overheat and become damaged. In the same way, when the brain doesn’t have the coolant it needs—glucose—then the electrical impulses that run through the thousands of neurons in the brain can cause overheating and burnout.
Have you ever heard of eating sugar to calm the spice of a chili pepper? Sugar acts as an antidote to the pepper’s heat units, preventing the gums, tongue, and roof of your mouth from becoming burned. In the same way, glucose (sugar) protects the brain. If someone’s glucose storage is low, she or he could get PTSD just from a flat tire. On the other hand, someone with a high level of glucose storage could witness an armed robbery and tell the story to a friend over dinner that same day, unruffled.
Animals have a built-in understanding of glucose’s importance. Here’s something else you won’t find in an Internet search: when two chipmunks are running across the road and a car runs over one of them, the surviving chipmunk will dart back into the road and drink the other’s blood for a quick hit of glucose. It’s an innate, natural response that the chipmunk was born with to prevent brain damage from its fight-or-flight adrenaline response.
Humans also intuitively understand sugar as a calming device. It’s why the doctor hands a child a lollipop as a reward for getting stuck with a needle. Or why a mom takes her kid out for ice cream after a checkup.
The problem is that, in today’s world, there are so many bad sugars out there. Those lollipops and ice-cream cones aren’t doing anyone nutritional favors.
Plenty of people still turn to sweets to soothe their wounds. They may just think they have an overeating problem and are particularly vulnerable to the temptations of sugary treats—whereas, really, they’re subconsciously trying to address a physical debt.
And as another antidote to PTSD, people have started to replace sugar with adrenaline. There’s an increasing number of adrenaline junkies who jump out of planes, engage in high-intensity sports, go zip-lining or bungee jumping, or dive off cliffs as a way of coping with suffering they may not even realize is there. Then there are rebound relationships—that new girlfriend or boyfriend someone may turn to for a boost of adrenaline following a breakup. These are all examples of using adrenaline as a quick drug to stand in for glucose.
The problem with these approaches is that what goes up must come down. A sugar high from packaged cupcakes is going to mean a crash later. And while an adrenaline high from running over fiery coals may feel healing and empowering in the moment, the surge won’t last, and you’ll go home depressed. These aren’t the real solutions to our wounds.
We don’t have to take risks in order to heal from PTSD. We don’t have to gamble.
HEALING PTSD
Posttraumatic stress disorder, in its true definition, is the experience of lingering negative feelings that result from any adverse encounter, and that limit a person in any way. These feelings include fear, doubt, insecurity, worry, concern, panic, avoidance, anger, hostility, hypervigilance, irritability, distractedness, self-loathing, abandonment, defensiveness, agitation, sadness, frustration, resentment, cynicism, shame, invisibility, voicelessness, powerlessness, vulnerability, loss of confidence, lack of self-worth, and distrust.
One of the most powerful ways to heal posttraumatic stress disorder across the spectrum is to create new experiences to serve as positive reference points in your life. The more of these you create, the greater your chances of putting PTSD behind you. Every new positive experience plants a life-giving seed in a garden of nutrient-thieving weeds.
These experiences don’t have to be big. They don’t have to be dangerous or risk-taking (nor should they be). And they don’t have to look like much to anyone else. Just taking a walk in peaceful surroundings can help you restore your brain.
It’s all about how you perceive each new adventure, however tame. Keep a list of every new experience and journal each one, taking notes on how you felt. For example, when you took a walk, did you see any birds? What was the weather like? Was there a certain angle of light? What effect did it all have on your state of mind? It all matters. It’s all part of being in the moment.
Or try putting together a puzzle. As you turn the pile of random pieces into a coherent whole, you’ll be teaching yourself that order can emerge from chaos. Try painting, sketching, or drawing, too. These are powerful exercises that help orient us in the present moment and make us pay attention to beautiful details in the world around us that otherwise go unnoticed. The cathartic effects of art-making are potent.
Or perhaps call up a dear friend you haven’t seen in years and ask her or him out to lunch. It will help reconnect you to essential parts of yourself. Or adopt a pet—every day will be new and filled with love. Alternatively, pick up a hobby. Surprise yourself; choose a skill area you never would have expected yourself to venture into, or one you always wanted to explore. Learn a new language. Take a vacation. One of the best things you can do is start your own garden.
No matter what you choose, journal about it all. Keep adding to your log of favorable experiences. It will help you become aware of the goodness life brings your way when you’re not even looking for it, and it will help clear out the negative experiences from your consciousness. Spirit always tells me this is an exercise that will pluck one unwanted weed at a time to free up space in your garden mind. This isn’t hollow advice. When you’ve endured emotional turmoil at one time or another, whether it’s ongoing in the present or has passed, it has probably shaken you and altered your perception of the world. You may find yourself re-experiencing those old memories as though they were happening all over again—or re-experiencing the emotions they triggered without knowing why.
When you create new, constructive touch points for yourself—and pay attention to their positive effects on your state of mind—you train your brain, as though it’s a radio, to access a healing frequency that is always available to you. And then when life becomes overwhelming, you can turn that internal dial to the restorative station to activate the impressions those positive experiences left on you, as though they’re recordings of the original broadcasts.
When you’re healing from PTSD, picture yourself as a tree that’s been transplanted. Digging up the tree puts it in shock—just as whatever stressors you’ve experienced may have felt like they uprooted you. When you replant the tree in fresh, new soil, it’s still traumatized, affected on all levels by losing its foothold. It will take months for the tree to recover from the change and reestablish itself.
In the same way, it can take a good three to four months on a PTSD-healing program to feel like yourself again. And just as nurseries offer nutrient-dense soil amendments to feed that tree in its new spot in the ground, you can nourish your central nervous system and cognitive function, as well as restore your heart and soul, with the nutrient solutions (i.e., healing foods and supplements) in this chapter.
Healing from PTSD requires support from loved ones, time, patience, and key nutritional elements. Part IV, “How to Finally Heal,” will fill in more information.
Prayer, in whatever form brings you comfort, is another healing tool. You can also pray to specific angels by name to help you. The angel who best understands how the spirit and soul can be beaten down, and how they can be recovered, is the Angel of Restitution, and that’s who you should call upon for the most direct aid with PTSD. (See Chapter 23, “Essential Angels.”)
And to help mend the soul fractures that trauma can create, try the soul-healing meditations and techniques in Chapter 22. They can have a remarkable effect on the psyche by putting you back in touch with yourself, and restoring faith and trust.
You don’t have to live in a tortured state of mind anymore. There’s a way forward.
Healing Foods
In order to restore glucose to the brain—and build a glucose storage bin to prevent life disruptions from turning into PTSD—focus on incorporating the following foods into your diet: wild blueberries, melons, beets, bananas, persimmons, papayas, sweet potatoes, figs, oranges, mangoes, tangerines, apples, raw honey, and dates.
Note that fruit sugar and raw honey in their unadulterated states are among the only sugars the body accepts for glucose storage in the brain.
Healing Herbs and Supplements
CASE HISTORY:
Soothing the Soul from Hidden Trauma
Jacquelyn had worked in the corporate world for over a decade. During that time, she’d proven herself as an extremely loyal and disciplined employee who was easy to get along with and who cared about her co-workers. After years of commitment, she’d been promoted to her dream job, project coordinator.
Though she wasn’t technically a manager, Jacquelyn had been one of the first employees hired in her department ten years earlier. Everyone knew that her experience made her the de facto boss in their division, and they respected her quiet leadership style. Whenever they finished a task, her co-workers would come to her desk to ask, “What can I do next to help you?” Every time she presented a finished assignment to the head of their corporate branch, they rooted for her to hit a home run. And she always did.
Jacquelyn’s boss knew that she was one of the company’s best workers, that she was eager to take on every project with a deadline of yesterday thrown on her desk, no matter how much after-hours work it required. The new position was demanding—and that was before all the drama.
Soon a new employee, Bridget, was hired in Jacquelyn’s department. Bridget had worked for the company previously in human resources. Jacquelyn had been asking for more hands on deck for the busy season, and she figured the new addition would work to support her like the other people on the floor did.
At first, Bridget didn’t seem to do much of anything, besides chat on the phone in a low voice and spend long stretches away from her desk. Then on the Friday of Bridget’s third week, Jacquelyn arrived back at the office from a lunch break to find Bridget going from cubicle to cubicle, telling each of their co-workers, “You report to me now.” If anyone asked why, she said, “I have the most experience.”
Rather than confront her with everyone watching, Jacquelyn went to her desk and continued on as though nothing had changed. Her employees weren’t eager to start turning in their work to this imposter Bridget, so they kept going as usual, too. Bridget approached Jacquelyn a couple of times during the afternoon to fuss about this or that detail she wasn’t happy with in the checklist for their current project, but Jacquelyn just nodded each time and returned to the task at hand.
After the others had gone home, Jacquelyn approached Bridget, ready to put her in her place. Before Jacquelyn could open her mouth, Bridget told her she’d looked into Jacquelyn’s past projects and they were all seriously lacking. The department needed an overhaul. Jacquelyn felt the room spin.
On Monday morning, after spending Saturday and Sunday catching up on work projects, Jacquelyn came into the office and noticed the room had been rearranged. A note was on her desk saying she was expected at her boss’s office at 9 A.M. When she got there, her corporate branch manager and Bridget were deep in conversation, laughing. As soon as they saw Jacquelyn, their happy expressions faded. “Bridget, why don’t you kick things off?” said Jacquelyn’s boss.
Bridget proceeded to voice outlandish complaints about Jacquelyn, then produced a list of Jacqueline’s unmet responsibilities. Bridget claimed that the current deadline they were working toward was destined to be a disaster and told the branch manager there was no leadership in the department. At the end of the meeting, the boss told Jacquelyn they’d been working on creating a new manager position for Bridget, and effective today, it was official.
Staving off tears, Jacquelyn rushed back to her department and inquired among her staff about issues with the project Bridget had mentioned. Several told her that, yes, it was looking like they’d blow the deadline—because Bridget had insisted they stop their tasks and start over. One staff member became incensed on Jacquelyn’s behalf and led her back to the boss’s office. The staff member explained to the manager about Bridget’s tactics to undermine Jacquelyn, yet the boss told him he must be fabricating the story. A few days later, Jacquelyn’s advocate was fired.
For the next few months, the mental abuse Jacquelyn suffered at the office was worse than that in a high school cafeteria. Bridget made up more lies about Jacquelyn, spread gossip, and acted as a taskmaster. She’d frequently assign Jacquelyn something to do, then take it away. Though Jacquelyn didn’t realize it, her brain was suffering physical damage from the repeated trauma.
Jacquelyn decided she’d take her complaint to her boss one more time—but she was turned away by his receptionist and told she needed to register a complaint with human resources instead.
As Jacquelyn’s weekly complaints filled a file in the HR department, nothing was done to address Bridget’s abusive behavior.
One day, Jacquelyn poked her head into the HR office to make sure she’d been following the proper procedure to get Bridget disciplined. The woman she spoke with told her that the complaints hadn’t, in fact, been sent on to the branch manager. “Those descriptions didn’t sound like Bridget.” Suddenly it dawned on Jacquelyn that this was the department where Bridget used to work, and this HR person was her friend.
Jacquelyn spent her lunch hour on a walk, working up the courage to approach her boss about the HR conspiracy. But then she walked by the window of a restaurant and spotted Bridget and their boss dining together inside, all smiles.
For about the umpteenth time, Jacquelyn went home in tears and poured her heart out to her husband, Alan. He had been her witness through the chronic nightmares, anxiety, and insomnia. She was exhausted and burned out. Whenever she tried to have a moment’s peace, she heard Bridget’s voice in her head, berating her. She now felt worthless, and every hour of work was torture. After ten years of effort and devotion, she might have to resign.
Jacquelyn contacted me, and before she spoke a word, both Spirit and I knew she was afflicted with posttraumatic stress disorder. When she did speak, anger, sadness, abandonment, and hurt came through in her voice.
Her identity had previously been as the hardest worker at her corporation. It was what made her feel she had a place in the world. Before her mother had died, she’d told Jacquelyn how proud she was that she’d gotten through college with flying colors and landed the job she had.
So Jacquelyn’s PTSD was layered. It wasn’t just about Bridget making the office an unpleasant environment; it was about Jacquelyn losing her sense of self. Jacquelyn’s will and spirit were dwindling fast, and she was headed into a grave depression.
Alan got on the phone with us and said that he hadn’t been able to say anything to comfort Jacquelyn. “It’s like she has an allergic reaction every time I tell her she’s capable.”
“Do you have any vacation time?” I asked Jacquelyn. She said she had two weeks stored up, so I told her to request time off immediately.
Over the next 14 days, we implemented powerful restructuring of her spirit and soul.
To begin with, we searched for and revived things she’d once loved to do, long before her corporate identity had taken hold. We made a list of everything she’d ever enjoyed in life. Alan took out the old Scrabble set they’d played when they were courting each other. The memory-imbued game alone was a powerful first step in reigniting Jacquelyn’s spirit.
Jacquelyn also started a journal of the positive experiences she was enjoying during her time off. For example, walking the dog at night had once been her task, before she’d gotten too busy and Alan had taken over. Now she made note of how calming and quiet the neighborhood was at night, of how her dog stopping to sniff every tree reminded her to breathe, and of how so many people she passed greeted her warmly.
For more positive touchstones, Jacquelyn ordered DVDs of television shows she’d once loved. Alan suggested they start learning the waltz at a local dance school. They went to favorite restaurants they hadn’t had a chance to visit in years. Then they decided on a weekend getaway to a bed-and-breakfast that held positive memories.
As the list grew and the pages in Jacquelyn’s journal filled, she started to feel capable again. She felt an inner strength return, the essence of who she was—her soul. On a physical level, to replenish Jacquelyn’s glucose stores, Alan had been cutting up melon for her in the morning and making her all-fruit smoothies in the afternoon.
At this stage, we talked about how miserable life must be for Bridget. She must be a very injured person to be so hateful, deceitful, and angry; it must be very hard to be her. We developed a way to feel sad for Bridget. Jacquelyn realized that despite her facade, Bridget wasn’t empowered at all. Just the opposite. She had no power—which was why she felt the need to trample on Jacquelyn. This allowed Jacquelyn to see Bridget in a whole new light.
We discussed how Jacquelyn’s place in the office had always been hers, and it still was. Her title hadn’t changed. She had been there the longest and had the most respect in the department. Instead of absorbing Bridget’s negative energy each day, Jacquelyn needed to find a way to shower her with caring, love, and positive energy.
At the end of the two weeks, Jacquelyn arrived at work and noticed Bridget sitting in her car with talk radio blasting—no doubt trying to drown out the negative messages she was hearing in her head. A sorrow came over Jacquelyn as she watched Bridget sipping her coffee and frowning, and she saw how pathetic Bridget’s attempts at domination truly were.
Jacquelyn knocked on Bridget’s window. “Do you want to go in to work with me?”
Bridget cocked her head. “Um, sure?”
As they walked into the building, Jacquelyn put her arm around Bridget. “You’re a wonderful person, you know that? I see you’re struggling, and I want you to know, I’m here for you.”
Bridget appeared so shocked she couldn’t come up with anything to say. Over the course of the day, Jacqueline noticed Bridget didn’t utter one snide remark.
After a few months, when the corporation went through restructuring, Bridget advocated for Jacqueline to become head of the new creative department. Bridget probably got a bigger paycheck in her new, vague managerial role. Still, assured in the knowledge that she was probably much more fulfilled than Bridget, Jacquelyn learned to accept the gift she had been given and move forward.