The Trees Are Still Green in the Dark

I love nothing more than getting up before the rest of the house on a weekend. I make myself a cup of tea, find a quiet spot, and just watch my little corner of the world wake up.

At first, it’s just plain dark out there. I can make out the outline of the mountains, but not much else. The trees are just shadows. The birds haven’t started up yet. Everything’s still and quiet.

Then, slowly, things begin to change. The sky lightens up. Sunlight hits the mountain in patches. The clouds start showing off in pinks, oranges, and gold. The trees finally let you see their color. The birds wake up and start making a noise, and before you know it, the whole place is wide awake. Or at least, that’s what I like to think is happening.

I know, nothing actually woke up at all. The mountain was there the whole time. The birds were there. The trees were there. And those trees were green even when I couldn’t see them. The light didn’t turn those trees green. It just let me see what was already there.

When Trauma Becomes the Whole Story

I’ve spent a lot of my life around foster care and adoption, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say:

“Well, it’s their trauma.” I’ve said it too. A child is struggling with sleep. It’s their trauma. A child lies. It’s their trauma. A child steals. It’s their trauma.

A child struggles with attachment, relationships, anger, food, school, boundaries, or anything else. It’s their trauma. And please don’t misunderstand me.

Trauma is real.

Trauma affects the brain and body. It affects relationships, trust, safety, attachment, regulation, and behavior. Understanding trauma is incredibly important when caring for children who have experienced it. But trauma isn’t always the whole story.

One of our children struggled with sleep for years. Because she had experienced trauma, her sleep difficulties were repeatedly attributed to trauma. Recently, we started seeing a new doctor. Instead of just nodding along with what we’d always heard, she said, ‘Let’s do a sleep study.’ Guess what? Our daughter has obstructive sleep apnea. Her trauma is real, but it wasn’t the whole picture.

That whole thing reminded me how easy it is to let one explanation, even a good one, color the way we see everything. When you think you already know what you’re looking at, you stop actually looking.

I’ve Done It to Myself Too

This isn’t something I’ve only done with my children. I’ve done it to myself. For years, I could explain so much about myself through trauma. I have abandonment issues. I have rejection issues. I need someone. Being alone made me squirm. I’d jump from one relationship to the next; it didn’t matter if it was a friend or something more. I needed somebody. And interestingly enough, I didn’t like literal darkness either.

I always had a nightlight. A hallway light. A television. Something. I was not about to sit in the dark. Somewhere along the way, I got more comfortable with the dark, too. I realized I didn’t have to run from every uncomfortable part of myself. I could sit with it. Look at it. Learn from it. And I could still see that wasn’t all of me.

Seeing the Rest of the Picture

I had a therapist who did something in every session. Every time I said something bad about myself, she’d come right back with something good. Every. Damn. Time. Looking back, I understand what she was doing. She wasn’t denying the negative thing. She wasn’t telling me my pain wasn’t real or trying to slap a happy sticker on it. She was just reminding me I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. And I think we need to remember that with children who have experienced trauma too.

If we’re always looking for trauma, eventually trauma is all we’re going to see.

We see the lying.

The stealing.

The anger.

The fear.

The pushing away.

The meltdowns.

The behaviors.

But what else is there?

What about the child who is hilarious?

The one who is incredibly creative?

The child who notices when someone else is hurting?

The one who loves animals?

The one who is curious, determined, artistic, intelligent, tender, stubborn, compassionate, or brave?

Those things didn’t just pop up because healing started.

They were there all along, even in the dark.

The trees were always green, whether I could see it or not.

Light Doesn’t Create What It Reveals

The other morning, I was looking at a crescent Moon. Only a tiny portion was brightly illuminated, but I could still faintly see the outline of the rest of the Moon. The whole Moon was there. I simply couldn’t see it all at once. Then, as morning came, I watched the same thing happen around me. Sometimes the sun itself wasn’t visible from where I was sitting, but I could see a patch of mountain suddenly glowing. I could see the underside of a cloud turn pink. I could see the trees slowly emerge from the darkness.

And I had this thought:

You don’t have to see the source of the light to see what the light is touching.

I think people are like that too. Sometimes we don’t know where someone’s light comes from. Sometimes they don’t know yet either. But we can see it when it shows up. Perhaps our job isn’t always to create someone’s light. Maybe sometimes our job is simply to notice it. Because the light didn’t create the mountain. It didn’t create the clouds, and it didn’t make those trees green. It revealed what was already there.

Learning to Love the Light and the Dark

For a long time, I thought healing meant getting out of the darkness. I don’t anymore. I think we’ve got to learn to see the beauty in both the light and the dark. Darkness isn’t always something broken that needs fixing. Sometimes darkness just means there’s stuff we can’t see yet. Things we don’t understand yet. Things we haven’t stumbled across yet.

Trauma is part of my story. It isn’t my entire story.

Trauma is part of my children’s stories. It isn’t the entirety of who they are either.

If all we do is stare at the dark, we’ll never find the light. And if we’re only hunting for the light, we miss out on what the dark has to teach us too. Both belong. These days, some of my favorite moments happen before the sun comes up. I sit with my tea while everyone else is sleeping and watch everything wake up. The same woman who used to need a nightlight just to get through the night now drags herself out of bed early on purpose, just to sit in the dark.

Funny how the more I got okay with the dark, the more I got okay with myself. I don’t need the sun to be shining to know the mountain is there. I don’t need daylight to know those trees are green. I also don’t need every single part of me to be healed, fixed, or explained to know there’s light in me somewhere.

The same is true for our children.

All children deserve to shine.

So do I.

So do you.

We all do.

The trees are still green in the dark.

Sometimes we simply need enough light to finally see them.

And one final clarification: When I say I’ve learned to sit comfortably in the dark, I mean that both emotionally and from the safety of my home or porch. I live in Colorado. We have bears, foxes, and coyotes. Six coyotes were spotted near my house recently. There is healing, and then there is getting your ass eaten by wildlife. Please use discernment.