Tuff
This soft, light igneous rock might look perfectly innocent when you come across it in the field, but don’t be fooled: It’s formed with a blast and is a killer at heart. When volcanoes erupt, they spit out plumes of toxic ash, which falls to earth as tuff. Whatever it doesn’t smother, it poisons slowly or incinerates. It most famously buried the city of Pompeii over two thousand years ago, and we’re still digging out bodies to this day. Tuff isn’t all bad, though: As tragic as that was to the people of Pompeii, it’s allowed us to learn an enormous amount about our history. And once it cools off, tuff becomes a perfectly respectable building rock, known for being sturdy but soft and easy to work with, and it has been used to make beautiful things like the famous stone heads of Easter Island. If tuff is showing up for you now, it’s not a sign of warning, but of hope. Your trauma is not ahead of you, but in your past, which means it can be healed, learned from, and even made into something beautiful.
The Bottom Line
TRAUMA
“Even your worst hurts can be healed.”
One Or More Of These Messages Are For You
- You may have experienced trauma in your past, but you’re going to be okay.
- You may feel that your bad experiences have poisoned you beyond recovery, but don’t give up: Recovery can and will happen.
- Your traumas may have you feeling frozen or dead inside, but the real you is still whole and intact, so don’t give up hope.
- You can’t undo what’s happened, but you can start building a beautiful life now.
- You have the gift of creating beauty from pain.
- You certainly don’t need to ever feel grateful for what happened to you, but you can still create meaning from it.
- If you’re the one who’s caused trauma to others in the past, know that you can put a lot of good into the world moving forward.
- If you were thinking about a specific person when coming across this rock, understand that they may have experienced a trauma that’s impacting their choices and actions.
