Night Bloomers. Michelle Pearce

Darcy found herself spending more and more time drinking with John and his friends. They introduced her to marijuana and soon she was drinking and smoking weed several nights a week. Many times she would black out from drinking too much. She had twinges of feeling like she was getting off track in life, but the excitement of living with fewer rules and dating an older man overshadowed what felt like minor concerns.

      Then she started noticing unexplained bruises and scratches. She chalked it up to being clumsy when she was drunk. That is until one night—her twenty-first birthday—after having a celebratory drink with John at a bar, she woke up in his bed with him on top of her. She remembers feeling like she was drugged, and couldn’t understand why she felt like this after having consumed only one drink. She lost consciousness and several hours later woke once again to John forcing himself inside her. This happened three times that night. Finally, she regained consciousness and, finding John asleep beside her, she texted her best friend to pick her up and quietly left.

      She never reported the rape to the police, nor did she see John again. But the memory of him drugging and then raping her replayed in her mind like a nightmare on endless repeat. She was tormented by the fact that this may not have been the only time he had done that to her. She came to see me at the end of the semester. She was depressed, anxious, traumatized, and having frequent panic attacks. She was also cutting herself and drinking and using marijuana to cope with her emotional pain. She feared she’d never feel good again. The world was no longer a safe place, and although she longed for love and a romantic relationship, she was paralyzed with fear whenever she thought about dating again.

      Darcy worked hard in therapy. We began by establishing a sense of safety in her environment and in her body, and then we processed the trauma and its aftereffects. After discussing the idea of blooming in the dark, she began a deep reflection on who she wanted to be and how she wanted to live her life going forward. Then she began the hard work of turning her blooming intentions into reality. She joined AA and stopped drinking, using marijuana, and cutting. She removed herself from her friend group, so as not to be tempted to engage in these destructive behaviors. She realized that she had chosen a major that didn’t suit her, and so she courageously dropped out of the computer science program and enrolled in a creative writing program. She joined a poetry group and developed a new set of friends, including good guy friends. She got reconnected to her spirituality and her calling to be a healer in the world.

      And she started writing. And writing. Besides blogging and journaling, over several months she wrote fifty-nine poems about the trauma, her brokenness and pain, and her path to healing and resilience. Through her beautiful and sometimes heart-wrenching poems, she narrated how she eventually found meaning in the devastation and darkness: “I found the gift in the darkness,” she said, “and that gift was me.” Indeed, the woman who emerged after the trauma was an even more beautiful and empowered version of the woman she was before going through this dark and painful time. Recently, she published her collection of poetry, dedicating it to anyone who has ever felt alone, broken, violated, or abused, to bring them comfort and hope in their healing process.

      * The researchers suspect the effect was due to a change in participants’ expectations, but since they did not specifically measure expectation change, they were hesitant to use this word.