When trauma strikes, it doesn’t just hurt us physically or emotionally—it challenges how we relate to ourselves. It’s as if parts of us are suddenly quarantined, cut off, rejected. This reaction might seem instinctive, even necessary. But in truth, it often deepens the wound.
I think about this in the context of a historical example that has always stayed with me: the comfort women of Korea. During the Japanese occupation, women were enslaved and brutalized, their bodies turned into battlegrounds. Afterward, instead of being embraced and supported by their communities, many of these women were ostracized, and treated as though they were the problem—as if their trauma had made them impure or dangerous.
That response always enraged me. These women had no choice in what happened to them, yet they bore the blame and shame for it. Their families, their societies—they didn’t just fail them; they punished them for surviving. Instead of offering healing, they isolated the wounds further, ensuring the pain lingered.
And yet, as much as this angered me, I realized I had done the same thing to myself. When trauma struck my life—whether through the surgery that changed my body or the assault that shattered my trust—I quarantined parts of myself. I labeled them as “bad,” as things to hide, as parts of me I didn’t want to see or feel. I abandoned myself in the same way those societies abandoned those women.
Self-Abandonment and the Path to Healing
It’s an understandable reaction. Trauma is overwhelming, and the easiest thing to do in the moment is to separate yourself from the pain. To say, “That part of me isn’t me. That part is broken, and I’ll just live without it.” But here’s the truth: you can’t heal while rejecting parts of yourself. Healing requires integration. It requires welcoming back the parts of yourself that you tried to abandon, even when it’s painful to do so.
In my case, I had to face the parts of myself that felt ugly, unworthy, and unsafe. After my surgery, I felt like my body had betrayed me, like it was something to be ashamed of. After my assault, I felt like my sense of safety was permanently broken. These parts of me—my body, my trust, my sense of worth—I wanted to push them away, to pretend they weren’t there. But that didn’t make the pain go away. It only made it fester, like a wound that’s never cleaned or dressed.
I realized that in quarantining these parts of myself, I was doing exactly what had been done to the comfort women: blaming the victim. Instead of seeing my pain as something that deserved care and compassion, I treated it like something to exile. And just like in those historical examples, that approach didn’t lead to healing. It only prolonged the suffering.
The Choice to Embrace, Not Reject
Healing began when I made a different choice. Instead of rejecting the parts of myself that hurt, I started to welcome them back. I started to say, “Yes, this part of me is wounded. Yes, this part of me is in pain. But it’s still part of me, and it deserves my love.”
This process is messy. It doesn’t happen all at once, and it doesn’t make the pain disappear overnight. But it’s the only way to truly heal. To embrace the parts of yourself that you wanted to quarantine. To say, “You belong here. You are part of my story, and I accept you.”
In a way, this is the ultimate act of creation: creating a space within yourself where all your parts—light and shadow, pain and joy—can coexist. It’s how you take the threads of your life, even the painful ones, and weave them into something beautiful. It’s how you become whole.
The Universal Lesson of Trauma
This isn’t just my story. It’s the story of humanity. When trauma strikes—whether it’s personal or collective—our first instinct is often to quarantine it, to push it away and pretend it doesn’t exist. But that approach doesn’t work. It isolates the pain, making it harder to heal.
The comfort women were a stark example of this, but the same pattern plays out in countless ways: in families that hide their secrets, in societies that stigmatize survivors, in individuals who abandon themselves. The lesson is the same: healing requires integration, not rejection.
Whether we look at this from a spiritual perspective or a psychological one, the truth remains: the parts of ourselves we try to exile are the very parts that hold the keys to our growth. The pain isn’t something to run from; it’s something to learn from, to transmute into wisdom, compassion, and strength.
From Self-Rejection to Radical Self-Acceptance
Ultimately, I see this process as an act of radical self-acceptance. To look at every part of yourself—even the parts you’ve tried to quarantine—and say, “You are worthy of love. You are part of me, and I accept you.”
This is the work of healing, the work of being human. It’s the mission of every soul on this Earth: to take the unresolved chords of pain, both personal and collective, and transform them into something higher. Whether through art, through connection, or simply through being, we create a reality where our wounds don’t define us—they become the foundation for something greater.
For me, this journey started with recognizing the ways I had abandoned myself. It continued with the decision to embrace every part of my story, even the painful ones. And it has become a mission: to share this understanding with others, to help us all see that healing isn’t about cutting away what hurts—it’s about bringing it back into the fold, with love.
Because when we choose to embrace ourselves fully, we stop being victims of our stories. We become the creators of our reality. And that, I believe, is the true purpose of this life.
<3 Ariel