Reclaiming Your Identity and Moving Forward

Today, we're talking about something profound: reclaiming your identity and moving forward.

Trauma steals from you. It takes your sense of self. It defines you. For years, you might see yourself only through the lens of what happened to you.

But today, we're talking about taking that back. About rebuilding who you are. About finding purpose in your pain

Transcript

Welcome And Weather Check

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome everybody. Appreciate you coming back. This is Terra the Triumph. I'm Alfonso Pelton. With me is my lovely co-host Storm. Storm, how you doing today?

SPEAKER_03 1:31

I'm fine, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Ah, I am cold, you know, up here in Michigan. It's still cold here. You know, it sometimes it tries to trick us. We have some good, nice warm days, and then we get hit with a cold blast out of nowhere. Like we had a 60-degree day a couple days ago, and then we got hit back down to the 30s. I was like, what's going on? But this is Michigan. And they say, if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes for the change. So how's the weather going on down there for you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

The same with Texas. You'll be hot one moment. I never forget. I went to bed. It was hot. It was a hot night. Woke up the next morning and it was 41 degrees.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

See, we haven't been fortunate here to have a hot night yet. That won't come until later on in the summer. So we can see the great differences between where we are in our regions in the country.

New Live Time And Weekly Schedule

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Today, I would like to let you all know this is our last 10:30 show. Okay. We are changing our time. We're going to 9:30 p.m. to try to reach you where you're comfortable at. I realize that a lot of you work jobs in the daytime and you can't catch Terra to Triumph during your off time. You're trying to catch it on your break or whatever. So we are trying to amend our schedule to make it more easy for you to reach us when we go live. So you can ask the questions you want to ask as we are live. So that's the first major thing. 9 30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We Tuesdays and Thursdays, I mean Tuesdays and Saturdays, we'll be going live. Tuesdays will still be our QA. And now we will have Storm being able to join us on our QA. So that's awesome, y'all. And then secondly, secondly, yeah, secondly, we'll be on Saturdays at 9:30 p.m. That's prime time hours. So after work hours, you can peruse and check us out at your leisure. That's gonna be awesome. And I can't wait to do that. But this is our last 10:30 show. So mend your schedules to address that. And right now, of course, we're broadcasting live on our Facebook platform on my personal page, uh Facebook backslash, uh Facebook.com backslash Alfonso Pelt. That's A-L-P-H-O-N-S-O, as my name is down here at the bottom of the screen right there. Yep. Put that in without any spaces, and you should be able to pull up my screen. I am broadcasting there. And we're also broadcasting on our YouTube channel. That's at the at sign, all capital letters, no spaces, tear to Triumph Live. So you can go there, check out our past videos, check out our shorts, and we got a whole bunch of information stored back there for you in case you missed anything, or if you're a new viewer. So just check that out. Check that out. We got some good stuff for you. And if you are a podcaster, you don't really get into the live video streaming thing, that's okay because we got audio podcasts for you too. You can check us out on Territotriumph backslash buzzsprout.com. That's B-U-Z-Z-S-P-R-O-U-T dot com. And we're all also on other major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, we're on iHeartRadio, Player FM, Deezer, Good Pods, Castbox, Castro, Overcast, Pod Chaser. Well, it's a lot. It's a lot. We're even on YouTube podcasting too. So if you want to just do the audio, you want to check out the audio version of this live broadcast, you can go to any major platform and look up Terror the Triumph, and we will be there for you to listen to. Okay.

Where To Watch And Listen

SPEAKER_00 5:45

So now that that's out the way, let's talk about something profound, okay?

Reclaiming Identity After Childhood Trauma

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Reclaiming your identity and moving forward. That's a big one for us survivors of childhood trauma. We have suffered a lot dealing with trying to fit into society because we feel like we're abnormal and we're trying to get into conversations where we feel like we don't fit into the conversations. We try to be a part of groups where we feel like we don't fit in. So we lose a part of ourselves trying to be things that we're not. And our own identity suffers because of that. Because we're trying to fawn and appease other people by trying to avoid conflict. We try to remove the part of ourselves that would do that. So we lose our own identity trying to fit into normal society. So we're talking about reclaiming identity and moving forward. Okay. Trauma steals from you, it takes your sense of self, it defines you. For years you might see yourself only through the lens of what happened to you. So today we're talking about taking that back. Okay. We're talking about rebuilding who you are. About finding your purpose in the pain. Okay. Storm, you ready to go?

SPEAKER_03 7:22

Yes, I'm ready to go. Let's go. Woo-hoo!

SPEAKER_00 7:25

We're about to get into it though. Okay, okay. I'm I'm I'm gonna take it down and not you know, I do get excited about these things because look, it's help, it's helping people out there. I mean, we got 74,000 views so far. That's just in the last in the last 30 days. So it's not like people are not watching or checking us out. The fact of the matter is, this information is helping people. So I'm excited about helping people. I I I love the fact that we're helping people because we didn't receive that help when we needed it. And now to be able to give back, to give something back to people who are in the spaces we used to be in is a great feeling. So without further ado, let's go forward.

Trauma Is Not Your Identity

SPEAKER_00 8:14

When you survive trauma, your identity gets fractured. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. You might see yourself as broken or damaged. Excuse me, eyelashes falling out here. Did that happen to you? I mean, your eyelashes just randomly fall out.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Uh randomly getting away.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

I'm saying, for real though. I mean, that's that's weird. Anyway, okay, you might feel unworthy or unloved. You might feel like you're a victim, which you are. That's true, you know, or you might feel like you're defined by what happened to you. But here's the truth that's not who you are. It's not who you are, okay. That's what happened to you. There's a big difference. Rebuilding self-esteem starts with self-compassion. You have to love yourself, you have to forgive yourself. So self-compassion means treating yourself the way you treat a friend who's been hurt. You love on them, right? You be there for them, you spend time with them, you care for them, and you have to do that for yourself with kindness, with patience, with understanding. Okay. It means saying I survived something terrible and I'm still here. And that makes me strong. Okay. So the steps to rebuild that self-esteem, you start by notice your self-talk.

Self Talk And Self Compassion Steps

SPEAKER_00 10:01

I know that sounds weird, noticing your self-talk. Oh, hello, Suresh. Mr. Varma, Vama is here hailing from India. Greetings, greetings, how you doing, sir? Appreciate you for following us on Terror to Triumph Live. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Mr. Suresh is is is seeming to become a regular on the show now. And I appreciate you for joining us. Yeah, that he was on Tuesday for the live QA as well. So we appreciate you, sir. If you have any questions, you feel like you want to ask something, we will try our best to find out for you, or if we have the answers, or if you want to ask us something personal, feel free. That's what we're here for, okay?

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Okay. So I'm gonna go forward. But thank you for joining us. I appreciate you. Notice your self-talk, okay? What do you say to yourself? Are you kind to yourself? Are you harsh? Do you talk bad about yourself? Do you down yourself? Are you very critical about what you do, the things you do? Are you judgmental? You know, yeah, I had to raise the hand on a lot of that because I don't really give myself kudos or props or things like that, you know, but I am harsh. I'm very critical of myself, I'm very judgmental of myself. So I saw you raising your hand over there, Storm. You felt that too, huh?

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

See. This is real talk, y'all. Real talk from two survivors, me and her. We're we're both real survivors of childhood trauma. And we're we're not pulling any punches with this show. We want we want people to find real healing. And you can't find real healing unless you are honest and upfront about what you've been through. So first step is to start noticing. Start noticing the things you say to yourself. Okay step two is you challenge the negative stories when you catch yourself thinking I'm broken or I'm just unworthy, pause. Ask yourself, is that really true? Or is that the trauma talking?

SPEAKER_03 12:41

The trauma.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Often it's the trauma talking, right? Yep, it's the trauma talking because it's the badness of the trauma that's making us feel like we're unworthy or broken. And that's a lie from the pit of hell. I ain't gonna even hold you up. That's that's a flat out lie. And the enemy steps in and he puts those thoughts in our head to make us feel like that. So we end up getting stuck in a repetitive thing. Step three: replace those negative thoughts with compassion. Instead of saying I'm broken, try saying I'm healing. Instead of saying I'm unworthy, try saying I'm worthy of love and respect. Instead of saying I'm a victim, say I'm a survivor. I made it, I lived through this, I'm strong. I know I can do better, I know I can achieve more. So small shifts, big impacts, okay. So, step four, rediscover who you are outside

Rediscover Joy And Old Interests

SPEAKER_00 14:02

of the trauma. And that's that's a big, big part, right? Because, like I said earlier, we lost part of ourselves because of the trauma, trying to fit in and trying to be a chameleon into our society, trying to blend in and be something we're not. So discovering who we are outside of trauma, who we were before the trauma began. What did we love to do? What made us feel alive? We have to rediscover these things. Maybe you loved art. I used to love to draw. I used to love to draw. I used to love music. I used to love to sing. I used to love to dance. Writing back then, writing really wasn't my big thing. You know, I honestly, I ain't gonna lie. I used to hate English. I used to hate English. I used to love math, but I used to hate English. I don't know, I don't know why. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

I'm opposite. Opposite. I hate math, but I love I loved English. I like writing because I wrote my pain into poetry. So that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Okay, okay. See, that's what we got to get back to. The things that we loved. And like, even though I didn't like writing, I remember my high school teacher, and then when I went off to college, my English professor, they both told me they they saw something special in my writing. I never thought it was special. I never thought it was special. I was like, they just words. What is that? You know what I'm saying? But they said you could you could really create a picture. I feel like I'm in there with you. So later on in life, I started writing to myself. You know, I started, I used to write as a this is embarrassing now, 54 years old admitting this. But I used to aspire to be a rapper. I used to want to be a rapper. I used I really did. And I used to write poetry a lot, a lot of lyrics and stuff I wrote back in the day. And that part of me was an expression of the anger that I have for my trauma. So that I didn't think about it in a that it would be therapeutic or that it would be something I could do to I don't know, speak to millions of people. That was just something I was doing because I was trying to achieve money. That was the end goal. I wasn't doing it for the fame, I wasn't doing it for recognition. I I wanted the money. So that's what I was doing it for. But I don't want to get too far off topic. That that was something that I developed into something that I liked later on. But earlier on, yeah, it was drawing, it was music, it was singing, it was all that, you know, but all that ended the day of the trauma. I stopped doing all that stuff. Well, I started backing off on all that stuff, rather. So you have to start building after you just rediscover the things that you want to do or that you used to do, that you used to love that made you feel alive. You have to build new identity markers. You're not just a survivor, you're also creative, strong, resilient, you're kind, you're funny, you're thoughtful, you're brave. So you have to reclaim those identities and live into them, okay? So once you discover or rediscover the things that you used to love to do, start doing those things. You don't have to wait and say, okay, you know, now that I know this, now what? No, start doing them. You might not have the energy or the desire or the drive to do them, but just doing them, the act of doing them, pushes you into a place where your creativity and your your liveliness will respond. But you can't get that to come back if you don't get into the place that you used to find your joy. You have to get your joy back by going to the places that used to bring you that joy. So do those. Do those. You don't have to do them all at the same time. Choose one. Start there. And lastly, the practice of self-care as an act of self-respect.

Self Care As Self Respect

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Self-care isn't selfish, it's a statement, okay? I matter, my well-being matters. When you take care of yourself, you're telling yourself you're worth taking care of. The truth, you're not your trauma. You are not what happened to you. You are who you choose to become. It's your life, the ball is in your hands.

SPEAKER_03 19:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Okay, Storm, and take the next segment.

Forgiveness Versus Letting Go

SPEAKER_03 19:48

All right, segment two: forgiveness and letting go. So we have to learn to let go now. Now let's talk about forgiveness. This is where people get stuck. There is a myth that forgiving is about the person who hurt you. It's not. Forgiveness is about you, it's about liberating yourself from the weight of carrying anger and resentment. But here's what's important: forgiveness is choice, not a requirement. You don't have to forgive your abuser. You don't have to forgive the person who hurt you. You don't have to forgive anyone. What you need to do is decide do I want to carry this anger forever, or do I want to set it down? So understand, you know, do you want to carry the anger forever, or do you want to set it down? Letting go doesn't mean forgiving. It doesn't mean what they did was okay. Letting go means I'm not going to let this define my future. I'm not, I'm not going to let this person have power over me anymore. How to let go? You acknowledge the pain, you feel it, you grieve it, you rage about it if you need to. Then you decide I'm ready to move forward. Not because they deserve forgiveness, but because I deserve freedom. You forgive yourself for surviving the way you did for the choices you made for not being perfect. That's where the healing is.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Why is that so? Okay. So we build this thing up, and I'm taking Sidebar here for a second because we build this thing up inside of us, but we keep thinking about the person, that resentment, the hate, the anger for this one person. But we don't often think about forgiving is for us. We think about why should I forgive them for what they did? They didn't think about what they did when they did it, you know, whether it would affect me, how it would affect me. You know, they just was a selfish act on their behalf to take what they wanted to take. So we have this thing balled up inside of us of unforgiveness, both for the person who harmed us or caused us the trauma, and for ourselves, because we have a problem with saying, I caused this, I made this happen, I put myself in this situation, I shouldn't have been in this place, and we put the blame on us. So it's like a dual-edged sword. We have to forgive them, but we have to forgive ourselves too. You know what I'm saying? So it's it's it's ooh, that's kind of deep. Because that's two major things, two major things to try to let go. Definitely try to forgive yourself, okay? You don't ever have to forgive the person who caused you to harm, but you do, you do need to forgive yourself. Yes, because you you did not cause that to happen. You can't lay the blame at your feet for what happened. You didn't force them to say, do this to me. You were innocent in the whole situation. No one ever goes anywhere to say, I want to go here so I could be raped. No one ever says that. No one ever thinks that. So you can't put yourself in that mind state to say, I'm gonna do this, that's what I want. No one does that. So forgive yourself because that was not something that you wanted to happen. That's not something you could have controlled, that's not something that you could say that you could have avoided because you never saw it coming. So we have to start forgiving ourselves, okay? Yeah, that's that's real healing. Putting it down. I'm gonna have to speed up. We got in our last five minutes, and we got like two more segments to go. So I'm I'm gonna start flying through this, y'all. So forgive me, but I want y'all to get this information, okay? The last piece, finding purpose and meaning.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

SPEAKER_00 24:50

It means your pain is real, your trauma is real, but it doesn't have to be wasted, okay? You can take that pain and transform it into something powerful, okay? Some survivors find purpose through creative arts, whether it's writing, music, visual art, or dance, or they do advocacy, they speak out, supporting others and creating change, like we do here on Terra to Triumph. Community building, that's also something we're doing here. We're creating a safe place for other survivors to come and interact and have an honest conversation. Helping professions. This is where we're trying to lead people to therapy, counseling, support groups, or peer support, and teaching, sharing what you have learned. We are doing that. We are doing that here on Terror to Tribe. So advocacy, community building, and teaching. That's how me and Storm are sharing our purpose to you. Okay. So depending on what you loved and things like that, you can use that to find a creative way to share or let pour into what you've been through, make it become your strength. Okay. When you transform your pain into purpose, something shifts. You're no longer a survivor or just a survivor, you're a creator now. You have a voice, a force for change. Your story matters, your experience matters, and when you share it, you give permission to others to heal too. So this is what terror to triumph is about: taking that terror and transforming it into triumph, okay? Not by pretending the pain didn't happen, but by deciding the pain is part of my story, and my story is going to help somebody else. That's power, okay? That's purpose, that's reclaiming your identity. Okay.

Storm On Triggers And Identity

SPEAKER_00 26:51

What does your identity look like now, separate from the trauma that you've been through?

SPEAKER_03 26:58

It looked different.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Storm, you think you can answer that question?

SPEAKER_03 27:03

Yes. Before I got derpy, my identity was messed up, you know. And after I got derpy, you know, I began. But it's still some times that I falter and I fall back, you know. But I have to remember that I have to, you know, if I have to, I have to take some more derpy sessions because I cannot let it, you know, take over me. But what I do tell people is don't tell me to get over it. Because until you have been in my shoes, you can't not tell me to get over it. But you can tell me that we're gonna get, we are gonna get through it, but you cannot tell me we're gonna get, you know, to get over it. Because until you have lived in someone else's shoes, you cannot tell them to get over it because it's a lot of things, you know. Well, I've been there, but did you go all the way there? But you all the way a victim, you know. So if you escape your situation and you didn't get dealt with, you know, then that's different. But when you have gone through the whole massacre and it's been on repeat, then that's another thing. Because mine was on repeat for years.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

So basically, what you're saying is your identity was lost because your trauma was repeating in your mind over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

No, the trauma was being repeated by other people. I was a victim from other people continuously.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Oh, but but the part, okay, yeah, that's that's actually very critical to your story. But what I'm what I'm getting at is the part where people are responding to you and telling you you need to get over that that part. What did that feel like to you? What where was that taking you?

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Oh it was a it was a trigger. It was a lot of like, you know, before the breeding and the one, two, three, it was a lot of words that cannot be pronounced, you know, because I feel like you was kind of like coming at me. So I had to voice my statement back, you know, because like my name states, Storm, still turning over Ranger Moments, you know, and that was a raging moment for me.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

So that basically you had the fight reflex, the fight response. Okay, so yeah, so that we tell people all the time, this stuff is real. We don't, we're not making this up. We deal with it in our own different ways. Like I found she fought. Okay. It would take a lot for me to get to the point where I would where I would fight, but immediately for her, she was right into the fight mode. So we have to look at our identities and say, that was the part of us that changed. And how it looks now, we have changed from that to where we at now. We look at ourselves, do we still fawn? Do we still fight every chance we get? Do we cuss people out readily or do we back down readily? You know, it's more of a for me, it's more of a, I still feel like I want to fun, but I direct contact. I look at the person, I talk to the person. Instead of trying to be something that makes them feel comfortable, I try to explain to them where I'm at. That's that's like my identity now, part of my identity now. I still haven't gotten all the other stuff back that I used to have. Uh, the drawing, the creativity, the critique, creativity and writing is coming back because I'm I'm writing a new book. I've already wrote one. It's in the process of publishing, but I'm writing on my second book now. So the creativity is coming back. But Jesus, we're out of time already. The time is going by so fast. Okay, I'm gonna cut it there. Storm, can you do the call to action so we can start wrapping this

Weekly Practice And Closing Message

SPEAKER_00 31:31

up?

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Okay, this week, practice one of your self-compassion. Speak to yourself like you speak to a friend, and notice what part of your identity you are reclaiming. Join us curiously on Facebook, you know, HTTPS, bash slash, bash slash, ww facebook.com, bash slash Afonso Pill, and on your our YouTube channel at TerraToTrump all together live at 9 30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for our interaction QA. So, you know, this is our new time. Head over to wwpillsimperium.com to buy merch and show your support to Terra Trump. I'm TTT Brand. Red merch so helps support our community and keeps these important conversations going. But remember, crystal corners do not, you know, support TTT. So everything on there except for Crystal Cornels. All right, embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Right, right. Okay. Quickly. Yes, Tara the Triumph is supported by Pell Symporion. Remember, we are all beautiful. Okay. You are not your trauma, you are who you choose to become.