At Crystal Waters Counseling Centers, we believe in the power of storytelling to illuminate the path toward healing. Today, we are honored to feature a deeply moving guest reflection from Evelyn Palattella Henderson, a writer whose personal journey through trauma and recovery speaks to the resilience of the human spirit.

Evelyn’s life was forever altered after being deliberately targeted by an arsonist in three separate attacks—two of which destroyed her home entirely. What followed was not only physical loss but an emotional reckoning with shame, fear, and grief. Through her writing, Evelyn explores these themes with striking vulnerability and spiritual insight, offering a raw yet redemptive meditation on what it means to heal.

In her essay, “A Meditation on Shame, Trauma, and Disruptive Grace,” Evelyn invites us into a sacred practice of mindful presence, one step and one breath at a time. She models what it looks like to turn toward pain with compassion rather than avoidance, and how, even amid destruction, we can make space for grace.

We are grateful to share her voice with our readers as a guide toward healing, hope, and self-compassion.

Meditation on Shame, Trauma, and Disruptive Grace

written by: Evelyn Palattella Henderson

Some thoughts came to me while walking mindfully, as Thich Nhat Hanh teaches — placing each step with attention, letting breath and body return to one another.

I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, to live in the here and now. Because this is where life is lived. Not in the wreckage behind me. Not in the imagined future filled with dread.

But here. This breath. This footstep.

Separation (3), Edvard Munch

I’m learning to invite Dave’s shame — the man who set both fires that upended my life — into my consciousness.
His shame became my suffering. His terror became my trauma.

And I’m learning to sit with it, on my terms.

For a long time, I let his darkness shape my light. His fear became the lens through which I viewed the world. I lived in the past, bracing for the next loss. I lived in fear, scanning for what might come burning through my life again. I lived in worry, rehearsing outcomes I could not control.

That way of living welcomed the second arrow — the Buddhist image of how suffering is often doubled.

The first arrow wounds us. The second is self-inflicted: our resistance, our avoidance, our reliving.

I let the second arrow stay lodged for years.

But ignoring pain doesn’t heal it.
Pretending it doesn’t exist only buries it deeper.
So now, I try something new.

I invite it to coffee.

I look shame in the eye. I speak gently to my trauma.
I ask, Who are you? What are you trying to protect?

I sit with the self I was before it all — the woman I left behind in the ashes.
I hold her.
I tell her she didn’t deserve it.
I thank her for surviving.
I love her.

And then, I wish the pain well.
And I ask it to leave.

This is not easy. And it is not linear.

Some days, I am back in the fire.
Some days, I’m grieving the time I lost. The woman I used to be.
And I’m still getting to know the woman trauma helped form.
Some days, the coffee gets cold.

But more and more, I am learning to sit down — without fear, without shame — and simply be.

This is disruptive grace.

Not a suffering handed down by a God trying to teach me a lesson.
Not divine punishment.
But a rupture.
A holy interruption that cleared space for something I’d never made before:
Grace for myself, in the only place life happens — here.

(https://medium.com/@evelyn_44382/invite-it-to-coffee-2f94945433dc)