Welcome home

Welcome home, cojourners. I'm glad you're here for another episode. I'm Dr. Tama here to facilitate

your journey back home to yourself. I'm a licensed psychologist, ordained minister, and sacred

artist, and I am so glad that you are here for this journey. In addition to the

Homecoming podcast, I encourage you to check out my books, Homecoming, Overcoming Fear and Trauma

to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self, the Reclaim Yourself Workbook, as well as the latest book, Matters of the Heart,

Healing Your Relationship with Yourself and Those You Love. On today, we're going to talk about

being in relationship with a trauma survivor, giving us some coping skills and a framework for being a partner,

a romantic partner, being a spouse of someone who has survived trauma. And we'll start this week

as we do most weeks with a reading. And today's reading is from the book, We Birth Freedom at

Dawn, Volume 1 by Jaya John. And this piece reads, Today's Love Poem for You. Look at You, battered and bruised, worried and weary, and yet.

And still, you keep choosing beauty in all your forms and fragrance.

You must be a flower.

Yes. You must be worthy of endless sweet arrivals.

Ah, oh, so beautiful.

Such a reminder that even with our scars and setbacks, with our challenges

and wounds, that we are deserving of sweetness and of beautiful things. And so I want to share

some important pointers and reminders for those of you who

are in a relationship with a trauma survivor. And also I want to acknowledge that sometimes both

of you may be trauma survivors. So you want to think about these tips for yourself, as well as the ways in which you

relate to your partner. When we have a traumatic experience, it's an overwhelming experience

that could have created feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, horror. It overwhelms our usual capacity to cope. It can

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