Beauty From Rubble: My EMDR Therapy Story Pt. 2

In this episode, I share a powerful EMDR therapy experience from my grief journey after losing my son.

During the session, I saw my life as rubble — broken pieces scattered after the storm of loss. But as I began picking up those fragments, something unexpected began to form: a mosaic.

This episode reflects on the process of healing after trauma, how grief reshapes our lives, and how even the broken pieces of our story can become part of something meaningful.

Through faith, reflection, and healing work, we begin to see that beauty can emerge even from the rubble.

If you’re walking through grief, I hope this conversation reminds you that healing doesn’t mean erasing the brokenness — sometimes it means allowing God to create something new from it.

Even in mourning, we rise.

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EMDR therapy grief

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Can you love Jesus deeply and still need therapy? Today I'm sharing another story and how EMDR helped my PTSD after losing my son Alec. Welcome back, everybody, to Rise in Morning, Finding Jesus at the Threshing Floor. I'm your host, Kristen Hajar. I want to start off today by saying a little prayer. Lord, I pray that this conversation brings peace and clarity for anyone listening who feels shame or confusion about needing help. Remove that shame and confusion. Show them that you work in many ways, spiritually and practically. Amen. In my previous episode, I described my first EMDR session that was profoundly helpful to me. I also described what EMDR means and how it's used. So if you missed that episode, please go back and watch that one first. When you lose a child, grief and trauma can overlap. Grief says, I miss them. Trauma says, this isn't safe. Everything can disappear. For me, my nervous system was stuck in survival mode. Even when nothing was happening, my body felt on edge and tense. EMDR helped take that intensity down. It allowed my brain to stop sounding the alarm constantly. One session in particular completely shifted something inside of me. Before I continue, please subscribe if you want to become part of the soldiers and warriors here. We can lift one another up in Christ and in faith. Hit that subscribe button and you can follow me anywhere on socials at Rise in Morning. Thanks. So even though this session didn't take place in 2020, this was more like 2024, but I found myself visualizing our family in 2020. So the world was chaotic, as you all know, the pandemic and everything. But inside our home, we were safe. I remember thinking to myself, as long as we have each other, that's all that matters. During the session, I could see myself looking outside our sliding glass doors into the backyard, and I noticed this big, beautiful rainbow. I felt peaceful, joyful, content. It was just us. We were in our little bubble while everything outside was chaos. And then out of nowhere, this dark force, this like tornado-like type force started coming toward our home. And it completely destroyed everything. Our house was rubble, our life in pieces, everything we knew just gone. And I realized that's how I've been feeling, and that's how it felt like when Alec passed away. Life as we knew it was completely leveled. There was a beautiful before, and then there was devastation. Then in the session, I visualized myself amongst all the rubble. And I was kneeling and picking up pieces of what was left. I was just like picking up little pieces of rubble, pieces of our life, I guess. And instead of trying to rebuild the same house, I was laying the pieces down differently. And when I stepped back, it wasn't the same house. It wasn't the same life. It was cracked, it was broken, and it looked different. But it was still forming something beautiful. It was like a mosaic. And I remember realizing in that moment, my life will never look the same. But it didn't mean it couldn't still be beautiful. And aren't all our lives a mosaic in some way? Most of our lives are interrupted, and we've had to take detours, and we go through life experiencing very high highs and very low lows. We have things unexpected throwing thrown our way, and that is life. And a lot of our lives have been broken in many different ways and many different times and seasons in our life. And if you don't let those broken moments define you, and you step back and you look at the picture of your life and what you've rebuilt, it does become something very symbolic. You can choose to be stuck, you can choose to complain, you can choose to not do anything different with your life. And you can still be there looking at the rubble of your life and questioning yourself, like, how did I get here? What I deserve this, I deserve that, putting blame on everyone else. But in reality, life is gonna throw stuff your way. And God didn't promise us an easy life, but he did promise to get us through it if we stay faithful. And he did promise to hold our hand, he did promise to carry us, and we are living the life of endurance and uh getting to that finish line as gracefully as possible. But that whole session and was just so profound to me. And when I looked back and I realized that after I was picking up the pieces of our broken life and it was forming something of a beautiful picture that I couldn't really see yet, that was such a visual pivotal moment for me. And I, you know, said to myself, my gosh, like how true is this that our life is a mosaic? It's but it still can be beautiful. So I encourage you today to kind of step back and look at your life as kind of like a symbolic mosaic of sorts and whatever you want to envision your mosaic to look like. Will it be a big beautiful butterfly, whatever that is that you envision um that will get you through, then do it because I really feel, gosh, like life throws us things, but it's what we make of it in the end that matters, you know? And I didn't want to leave my husband and children and everything else that I worked hard for. My home is my sanctuary, and my home is my pride and joy, and my kids and my husband. And I was so blessed to have them, and I just didn't want to continue to see my life as a failure. I didn't want to be that person like looking back at my life one one day and say, gosh, I really wish I did live it. I really wish I did do this or that to change my circumstances or uh seek help or whatever. So anyway, that session was super, super visual and just impactful for me. So, again, as I like to do here, I like to bridge faith and grief and life and loss altogether. This reminded me of Isaiah 61, 3, and it says, to give them beauty for ashes. It doesn't say no ashes, it says beauty for ashes, and in 2 Corinthians 4, 8 through 9, it says, We are pressed on every side, but not crushed, struck down, but not destroyed. The tornado destroyed our home, but it didn't destroy us. The enemy didn't destroy us, the enemy didn't destroy us. He sure as heck tried. And I thank God that we are and we were strong enough to rebuild. So after that session, I immediately searched for um like mosaic making classes, and I found one and I invited my sister to go with me. We ended up at this like Turkish mosaic making lamp place, and we ended up making beautiful little mosaic lamps and having my sister there to support me and my healing and sharing the story behind our little crafting date that day was really meaningful to me. So thank you, sis. But every night I turn that lamp on in our living room and it's made out of broken pieces, it's made out of the colors I chose, it's different shapes, cracked edges. But when that light shines through it, it's beautiful. And it reminds me that even shattered lives can still carry light. Getting help doesn't mean you lack faith, it means you're stewarding your healing. Sometimes God heals instantly, sometimes he heals through a process, sometimes he heals through people, and sometimes he uses EMDR. Please comment down below if you've ever tried EMDR therapy. Thank you for watching or listening today. And remember, even in mourning, we rise.