Guest Post from The Altar of Becoming
Author’s Note: This reframe changes everything about how we see our pain. When I mapped The Reframes series, this wasn’t on the list. But I realized readers needed this foundation first: trauma isn’t random, it’s curriculum chosen by the soul. Before we explore how people are equipped differently for their lessons, we need this frame. It’s not gentle. The most foundational truths rarely are. But it had to come first.
And so we begin here:
What if your trauma wasn’t random? What if your soul chose it? Not as punishment. Not as chance. But as curriculum.
If that’s true, then the thread runs through everything. Not only our joys and triumphs, but also our betrayals and heartbreaks. Not only the easy blessings, but also the traumas we carry.
Because if there’s no separation between the human and the spiritual, then the hard parts count too. The ache, the abandonment, the loss — they aren’t detours. They’re part of the path itself.
Most of us have been taught to compartmentalize trauma, to see it as something outside the flow of life, something that “happened to us.” But if we take this soul view seriously, we have to let that frame dissolve. The truth is harder — and more liberating:
Our trauma isn’t happening to us. It’s happening for us.
Trauma as curriculum means every rupture carries a teaching. Every betrayal cracks something false. Every loss strips away illusions. Not because the universe is cruel, but because the soul is relentless in its hunger for growth.
Some carry lighter assignments. Some carry heavier. And some are what I call the Bare-Boned — souls who arrive without the off switch, who bear more than their share because they’re not only metabolizing their own pain but also closing loops left unfinished across generations.
But whether your lessons arrive as quiet disappointments or shattering betrayals, whether you numb or stay awake, the thread is the same: the soul chose this because there’s something in it that refines you, completes you, awakens you.
I know this isn’t easy to swallow. It can sound cruel to suggest that the deepest wounds were chosen on purpose. But it’s not about justifying harm. It’s about reclaiming power.
If trauma is random, then it makes us victims.
If trauma is curriculum, it makes us initiates.
That doesn’t erase the ache. It doesn’t excuse what others did. But it reframes the meaning. Pain becomes part of the soul’s education — a sacred classroom we didn’t know we’d entered until we were already seated inside.
And when we begin to see trauma this way, the shame starts to loosen. The anger starts to soften. Not because what happened was “okay,” but because we recognize it as part of the soul’s larger work.
Every loop we close, every pattern we interrupt, every scar we alchemize — it ripples out. It frees not only us but those who came before and those who will come after. That’s the real curriculum: to become the place where the cycle ends.
And that’s why trauma isn’t proof of a broken life. It’s the sign of a soul brave enough to take on the hardest lessons.
Because what’s breaking you isn’t here to end you. It’s here to teach you.
—Lisa
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