Hi, Milo...welcome

Your question is one that I've been pondering for a long time. I'm 49 years old, was severely traumatized in infancy and childhood...have been working more or less consciously with my history and its effects since 1982.

My sense is that trauma marks us, somehow, permanently.

So does grace...

I'm at a point in my own journey where I'm discerning what can (still) be moderated, gentled, tamed (?) ... and what is not likely to change ... What do I have to simply accept and live with?

I went through a solid decade of therapy (1982 - 1992) and no longer experience flashbacks or intrusive memories. (Sweet relief!!) What I seem to have the most trouble with are chronic, lifelong symptoms of PTSD like major depression, chronic exhaustion, and hyperalertness. I am presently beginning to resolve a major depression -- the first in the last seven years, and a surprise.

I find, as a long-term survivor, that with PTSD, "Expect nothing and anticipate anything." I am generally settled into my personality, and that includes how I was neurologically marked by trauma in infancy. I'm learning, slowly (!), how to be kind to myself. I find that some of my retraumatization is at my own hands. Sometimes I think that I don't know how to live in a state of relative quiet. My brain seems to have been wired on "red alert." It's no surprise to me, as I spent my first three months of life in a neonatal intensive care unit, circa 1959

I think that anything is possible in the always surprising realm of healing. I tend to think that there is no "cure" for PTSD -- I don't believe that it is a disease in the way that cancer is a disease.

Healing I think of as anything that brings on a state of relative peace, presence, quietude...

I also turned 49 recently and I want to go into perimenopause as aware and prepared as I can.

A pivotal question for me now, 16 years after my long engagement with psychotherapy, is How can I best live with what I must live with?

I hope this makes some sense to you