Hi, Leslie...welcome...

Your post really resonates with my experience. I'm 49 years old; the first twelve years of my life were full of trauma, and I started my own path of resolution in 1982 -- 26 years ago now. I know I've come a long, long way...and there are injuries -- to my brain, mind, and soul -- that I'm coming to accept may never heal completely. This is most probably because I experienced premature birth to a mother addicted to alcohol and was in an infant-ICU for the first three months of my life (in 1959). It went on from there...and here I am. Sane for sure, battle-scarred -- all over. Still scared shitless and scraping the ceiling on occasion? You bet. AND -- I've come so far. I've worked my soul into a sweat at times. I think that healing -- to experience yourself as whole -- takes a lifetime...

The longer-term effects (like ours, measuring decades)...I feel them very deep inside -- as you wrote, "It feels like it's in my bones." I'm at a point now where my work is primarily to organize my life so that all that I'm left with can rest. I don't have any battle left in me, really. This does not mean that I want to give up or die; it means that I choose not to fight myself any longer. I am who and what I am in some respects...and in many, many others, change is always happening.

Leslie, take a look at the work of Peter Levine -- his book, Waking the Tiger, is brilliant and so helpful -- his work is very body-based.

Believe me, you're not alone in what you feel, or in the fact that 35 years after the fact, you still feel haunted. I believe that you'll be able to change or modify (I think of it as "gentling") some things, and that others are woven into your whole being --> so many survivors of trauma say things like "It's in my bones"; "It's in my cells"; "It's deeper than I can express"...there seems to be a real commonality to this experience. Towards those aspects, compassionate awareness and acceptance are the best medicine...

I'm learning to be kind towards myself, and to allow certain aspects to just be. Somehow, I've always held sacred my sense of wonder and awe about life. I'm dipping into that daily, because it reminds me of all that is good...and there is so much good in the world...despite the other side of things, which we know all too well.

You've found a good place here.

Roo