For me, one of the most difficult parts of recovery from trauma is learning to love myself. This may sound crazy, but I really don’t even know what that phrase means, “loving myself.”

How can I love someone I don’t really know?

People who haven’t experienced trauma may not know themselves, either. But this blog isn’t about them. It’s about me, and other people like me, whose connection to that inner self was broken, severed, crushed, killed, by the actions of another person.

Sometimes I picture myself reaching into space for an invisible rope that will lead me back to myself. I see a blind person on the sidewalk, tapping the white cane, and I, too, feel blind. There’s a vast ocean of air between the person I see in the mirror and the person who lives inside her.

Who is she? Is she worthy of love?

Who am I? Am I worthy of love?