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It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed. — Ram Dass

Take a moment to reflect on those significant moments of growth in your life. Almost always, growth is forced upon us, versus something we created from whole cloth. We get stretched beyond where we are comfortable and in that crack of our awareness a new world is created.

When we look back upon those chapters of our lives where we have suffered a setback, or a loss we can feel it in our bones. Just past the one-year mark after the fires in Lahaina, we continue to experience the aftermath and the long recovery. If we look at our individual experience as a source of lessons learned, we gain perspective.

In fact, if we look at the long road we have traveled, we can almost always connect those moments of loss with some form of learning or growth. Some things, when broken or ruptured, come back stronger.

There is much conversation around the concept of post-traumatic stress. PTS has been defined as, “an acute emotional, cognitive and physical reaction that results from an exposure to powerful negative, terrifying, threatening stimulus, or to an overwhelming demand of circumstance.”

While the negative post-traumatic stress impact is widely known there is another result of post trauma that we would often overlook: Post-Traumatic Growth. Post-Traumatic Growth is a central dynamic in helping us understand what we have gone through, where we need to put our attention, and what we have learned.

After a distressing event — a disaster, the loss of a job, a bone-shaking loss of family, even the simple loss of our patterns of life and the hopes that we held — our immediate experience can range from numbing emptiness to searing pain. What is closest and clearest to our vision is what we no longer have that we valued and our hope in a part of our life is gone.

We are not often aware of how post-trauma experiences can have real impact upon our personal and collective transformation and growth.

Sometimes the growth is invisible to us, being integrated so deeply into our narrative, we almost lose sight of the gift we have been given.

Not the growth that returns us to where we were, but an expanded sense of identity, what we value and the preciousness of our relationships to others.

This is not a “look at the bright side of things” type of reflection. Let us pause and reflect on the capacity of loss to be an invitation to growth.

It is not an easy thing.

The term “Post-Traumatic Growth” was first coined by two researchers — Tedeschi and Calhoun — in 1996. After a post-traumatic event individuals report increases in psychological functioning.

A greater appreciation of their life: While loss occurred, there was a deeper gratitude for what they do have and what they did not lose. Life becomes more precious. All of us have lost and found gratitude through the tears. Gratitude seems deeply present.

Improved relationships with others: Bonds with others and with community are strengthened. Connections and relationships become more evident and of deeper value. More interdependency and comfort, relying on and supporting each other became evident. Who has not looked at family and friends and committed to seeing others in a new light? While there are indeed fractures, there is more honesty and awareness of our bonds.

As we recover, as we get our bearings and continue the journey, let us not overlook how we have
grown.

New possibilities emerged: When forced to release what is, we become more aware of what can be. The invitation of a new canvas means that we are open to create what can be.

Personal and collective strengths surface: We realize we are stronger than we thought. The value of our capacity as individuals and as a community become clearer to us after an event that required us to be stronger than we thought possible. We only know how strong we truly are when we have been tested. We see each other’s strength in a new way.

Spirituality and meaning: We can come away with a much deeper understanding of our vocation or call. What should we do with this one wild and precious life?

Think about your own individual journey. Review the episodes of triumph and of loss. The truth is that we learn very, very little from our successes. We learn extraordinary truths about ourselves, the relationships we hold, and what is most important to us in the aftermath of loss.

There is a skilled art in Japan — kintsugi. It refers to the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, creating an even more beautiful and more perfect work of art than the original intact creation.

In fact, because it was broken, it has more of a story than if it remained as it was. It requires great artistic skill and vision to put the pieces back together, to make something even more beautiful out
of the broken work.

“The story of kintsugi — this style of pottery — may be the most perfect embodiment of all our trauma-shattered lives,” says Jay Wolf, the co-author of “.”

“Instead of throwing away the broken beloved pottery, we’ll fix it in a way that doesn’t pretend it hasn’t been broken but honors the breaking — and more so, the surviving — by highlighting those repaired seams with gold lacquer. Now the object is functional once again and dignified, not discarded. It’s stronger and even more valuable because of its reinforced, golden scars.”

As we recover, as we get our bearings and continue the journey, let us not overlook how we have grown. What we have learned and been gifted by the loss. This does not mean that we do not grieve or pretend that we did not lose, but it means we are willing to pay attention to the fullness of the experience and what we can gather from the ashes of loss as we walk toward the future.