I've been having a particularly hard time, this week, grappling with the ways trauma affects people's brains. Healing from the things that happen to us is really profound and brave and self-aware, but it also fucking sucks. It's draining and exhausting and tedious. I find it so frustrating to come to terms with the fact that the people who hurt us - physically, emotionally, verbally - get to then take that piece of ourselves with them forever. They don't just hurt us in that