Choose to Be a Glove With a Purpose

We’ve all seen one: the solitary glove left someplace without its consent. It could be resting on a park bench, wedged between two city bus seats, or swimming in a pothole puddle.

Abandoned, it seems to no longer serve a purpose. It’s a passing thought in the minds of the busybodies who spot it. It’s just—there.

The post-trauma survivor can feel a lot like that misfit mitt unknowingly dropped by a grade-schooler walking home on an early spring afternoon. The world keeps moving while we’re stranded where the event dropped us. Frustration, anger, depression, and guilt can accompany feelings of emotional immobility and numbness. And our sense of purpose can dissipate when we feel robbed of what we felt was our intended trajectory.

Very rarely do lost gloves ever find their way back home. And it’s that feeling of hopelessness that can weigh the survivor down.

But the story of the solitary glove doesn’t always end like this. One instance sets the glove apart—when someone throws down the gauntlet.

It’s a single glove with a purpose. It draws a line in the sand with its index finger. It decides that the current situation is temporary and that it can spark change through its action. The gauntlet knows that actual change starts with it.

That’s the mindset the trauma survivor must find by searching deep within. We must get to a place where the current state is no longer acceptable. We’ve taken a self-inventory and understand that the path we’re on won’t take us to where we want to go. We realize that we aren’t going to wake up one morning and life will have fixed itself. We’ve got to captain our fixin’.

Healing is a process. The first step is understanding what trauma is and how it affects you. Once you understand what has happened and is happening to you, it becomes possible to take action. If a doctor diagnosed you with a disease, you’d track down as much information about it as possible to learn about it and how you could treat it. This is no different.

Nothing worthwhile is easy, and the same goes here. Understanding trauma first and then learning how to manage your triggers is no quick fix. However, it’s mandatory if you ever want to get back to truly living again.

Ultimately, you get to choose whether you want to be the lost glove or the gauntlet.