Healing from the Wounds of Childhood Trauma: A Journey of Restoration and Divine Grace

Healing from the Wounds of Childhood Trauma: A Journey of Restoration and Divine Grace

By Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

Trauma often carves its name into the soul without our permission. It shapes us subtly, quietly, over time until one day, we wake up to realize we’ve been living under its shadow far longer than we imagined. Childhood trauma, especially, leaves fingerprints on our identity molding us, yes but bending us out of shape, distorting our sense of love, safety, and self. The injuries it inflicts aren’t always skin-deep. Often, they linger in the background, woven into how we speak, think, feel, and even how we approach the Divine.

My earliest memories are laced with chaos. My mother’s marriage to my stepfather was not a union of harmony it was a war zone. Their relationship was marked not by tenderness, but by turbulence. The screaming matches, the crashing of objects, the violence it all became the soundtrack of my upbringing. I still remember the sickening heat in the air when boiling water was thrown, the hiss of hot grits hitting the floor, the thud of fists meeting flesh. I was a young boy caught in the crossfire afraid, confused, helpless.

My mother, a woman who loved without condition, gave her heart to a man who returned it with cruelty. His affection was transactional, his love a weapon he used to dominate and demand. I watched her give until there was nothing left, while he took and took without ever pouring back into her. It was as though her spirit shrank with each passing day, suffocated by the relentless emotional and physical warfare. I learned early on that love could be violent, and affection, dangerous.

This reality seeped into my spirit. I absorbed those lessons like a sponge. Love became synonymous with pain. Relationships became synonymous with betrayal. I was too young to process it all, but old enough to internalize the dysfunction. Eventually, I carried those twisted definitions into the wider world. I shielded my heart with silence, layered it in armor. I wasn’t just trying to avoid hurt I was trying to survive a belief system rooted in fear. Vulnerability became a threat. Tenderness became a risk.

I made a vow in the silence of my own mind: I would never be the kind of man who inflicted that kind of pain. But that promise wasn’t born from understanding it was born from trauma. I wasn’t only protecting others from harm; I was trying to protect the innocent version of myself that still believed love could be sacred.

But even as I distanced myself from violence, I didn’t realize how far I’d drifted from love itself not just human love, but divine love. The Creator’s affection felt foreign, unbelievable. How could an all-loving force embrace someone so broken? If love was pain, I wanted no part of it. I was wounded, and my perception of the Divine became clouded by the shadows of my childhood. I feared intimacy, even with God.

During my teenage years, things worsened. My stepfather’s wrath no longer stopped at my mother. I became the target his fury directed at my presence, my silence, my very existence. I was told I was nothing. And eventually, I believed it. The bruises faded, but the words etched themselves into my consciousness. They became an internal dialogue I couldn’t silence.

My mother, though loving, was drowning in her own suffering. Her emotional well had run dry, and there was little left for me. She did her best with the pieces she had, but her light was dimmed by years of surviving. I bore her pain alongside my own, quietly. No one noticed. I became a fortress strong on the outside, crumbling within.

The breakthrough came when I moved in with my grandmother, Celestine. Stepping into her home was like breathing air for the first time. There was no shouting, no walking on eggshells, no fear. Just peace. Real, grounding peace. She was a woman of unwavering faith graceful, intentional, and deeply rooted in the Divine. I watched her pray with a serenity that stilled the atmosphere, her words whispered like sacred melodies. In her presence, I felt something sacred: safety.

Celestine loved in a way that healed. She gave from a full heart. Her love didn’t demand it nurtured. It didn’t punish it restored. For the first time, I experienced what love was supposed to feel like. It didn’t leave bruises. It didn’t silence. It lifted. It built. Slowly, my soul began to unclench. Slowly, I started to trust that not all love leads to wounds.

Healing didn’t happen overnight. It came in whispers in small, sacred steps. Through prayer, through meditation, through moments of divine quiet, the heaviness began to lift. I began shedding the identities I’d adopted to survive. Each time I surrendered a piece of that old pain to the Creator, I felt a little lighter, a little more whole.

Yes, I still bear scars but they no longer have power over me. They are reminders, not definitions. Where I once saw my past as a chain, I now see it as a well of wisdom. Pain has given me depth, compassion, and clarity. It has sharpened my purpose. The Divine didn’t erase my past but He repurposed it.

One of the most transformative revelations came when I began seeing myself through divine eyes. For so long, I viewed myself as damaged goods unworthy of peace, of joy, of unconditional love. But the Creator saw something different. He saw my worth untouched by my wounds. He saw my soul, not my scars. And slowly, I began to align with that vision.

There is something powerful about knowing you are loved not despite your past, but with full awareness of it. There is freedom in knowing that brokenness doesn’t disqualify you from grace it qualifies you for it. Divine love doesn’t recoil at your pain; it draws closer. It sees the child behind the trauma, the light behind the darkness.

Spiritual healing is not about pretending the pain never happened. It’s about letting the Divine transform the ashes into something sacred. It’s learning to hold your wounds with reverence, not shame. It’s learning to rise, not as someone who has forgotten the past, but as someone who has transcended it.

Today, I walk with a different posture. Not one of fear, but of faith. I love with open hands. I lead with empathy. I no longer chase the illusion of being unbreakable

I honor my fragility as part of my strength. I still feel the pull of old wounds from time to time, but I’ve learned to meet them with truth, not fear.

Healing is not a straight path. It winds. It bends. But every step every tear, every prayer, every breakthrough brings us closer to who we were always meant to be. And along the way, we become living testaments that light can rise from darkness, that brokenness can birth beauty, and that love true, divine love never gives up on us.

That is the miracle of healing. That is the grace I live by. And that, I believe, is the deepest kind of restoration there is.