Where the Ink Settles: A Reflection on Trauma and Grief

There’s a metaphor that’s been sitting with me lately.

Trauma is like an ink blot on reactive paper.

At first, it’s sharp.

Sudden.

All-consuming.

A dark bloom that feels like it might swallow everything.

But then it starts to bleed.

Not in the sense that it disappears —

but that it spreads.

The edges soften.

But its reach expands.

It begins to seep into places you never expected:

the quiet of a morning walk,

the taste of your favourite tea,

the laughter that comes a little slower than it used to.

The intensity might ease, but the imprint becomes more diffuse —

less obvious, but more interwoven.

It bleeds into colour, into connection, into the corners of your identity.

And sometimes, it drains the vibrancy from life altogether.

Joy doesn’t come as easily anymore.

You find yourself having to search for it.

To make space for it.

And even then, it can feel like joy has to be louder, brighter, bigger —

just to reach over the hum of everything the trauma has altered.

And when grief is part of that ink —

when love lost or longing joins the spill —

the weight deepens.

The ache echoes.

Grief threads through the paper too.

Sometimes softly, sometimes with a howl.

And together, they shape you — trauma and grief —

not just in the moment they arrived,

but in the way they continue to echo through the everyday.

It can be disorienting.

To no longer know exactly where the pain ends and where you begin.

To look at a sunset and wonder why you feel nothing.

To be held by someone and still feel alone.

But this isn’t failure.

This isn’t weakness.

It’s simply the shape of something precious having been changed.

And while the colours of life may look different now —

softer, maybe duller —

they are still here.

Waiting.

Ready to be noticed again.

Not forced.

Not fixed.

Just… gently returned to, in your own time.

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If this resonates, you’re not alone.

This space was written for you — the ones still learning to walk with their ink,

still learning to see the beauty beneath the bleed.

May you find moments of colour, even if they’re quiet.

And may you know:

you’re not the paper.

You’re the whole page —

and there is still space to write something soft and true.