Making Your Mess Your Message
Written by: Betsy on February 6, 2025
I was born in Ibuye, situated in the Ngozi province in Burundi. I was the second generation to be born in that house, close to the border to Rwanda and built by my grandparents’ hands while he discipled a group of men in the art of building and following Jesus. My arrival was not met with fireworks but with the sounds of turbulence and riots which became the genocide across Burundi. Friends whose cars were packed to the ceiling with all their possessions, tried to escape but were shot dead next to us. My parents, brother and I managed to leave via Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, with each nation providing short term safety and support for my parents who were terrified. The memory of this became an unspeakable story of my early years that was never mentioned to me but discovered slowly with tiny snippets of memories being extracted from my parents by my adult children as they sought to find the treasure of stories of my childhood. My mum’s challenges to recover from this nightmare started my journey of determination to support missionaries with their journey of recovery from trauma. The passion is for those traumatised by such experiences to become the hero in their own story as they push through the pain, terror and turmoil of memories towards transformation and healing where they can look back and marvel at their courage, strength and determination to survive. Ultimately the normalised ‘pushing it down and getting on with life’ attitude that society encourages causes a problem that is brewing in the subconscious. Campbell describes this experience and the impact of it as 1‘the lines of communication between the conscious and the unconscious zones of the human psyche have all been cut, and we have been split in two’.
Joseph Campbell describes the Hero’s journey as a monomyth, which is almost a predictable cycle of life experiences that propel humans forward towards transformation. Within Cambells route map, he asserts that each new life starts as an innocent ‘blank sheet’ of freedom and innocence which is disrupted by a crisis that sends us into an exile. I would challenge the sense of uniformity of that fresh, new innocent starts with the knowledge that each human who has been traumatised in the womb starts their life on earth with essentially marks of the experience held within the depths of the unseen part of their humanity. The gene itself doesn’t change but the trauma changes how the gene functions. While some people can start their life with a positive womb experience of being nurtured with the sounds of singing, laughter, words of love and excitement, others knew a womb life that was full of trauma. Already we see the contrast for babies with vastly different beginnings on their paths of the journey of life, right from their first breath. The good news is that trauma recovery is possible, even at this genetic level due to our high levels of neuroplasticity and the knowledge from decades of research revealing methods of stimulating growth, change and transformation.
Campbells monomyth lays out the probably map of being alive which moves from birth to the sudden interruption of a crisis which sends the hero into exile where they must overcome the challenges and face their fears and the threatening possibility of failure, shame, abandonment, rejection and pointlessness. As the hero reflects on their desire to go back to their innocence and pretend this crisis had never happened, they face a threshold experience of doubt, dis-ease, panic and fear. It is here where the testimonies of others who have walked a similar path can bring comfort and hope that through the other side is the ability to have found meaning and return to their community with new capacities and rich experiences that have formed their sense of self and where they fit into the world. This model of pushing through the mess and darkness of disappointment, challenges and confusion towards growth and transformation is a theme within the Bible as writers urge us to stop avoiding the pain or moan about the obstacles in our path but instead view suffering as a temporary challenge that is incomparable to the ‘glory that is to be revealed to us.’ Philippians 3:10. Carl Jung coined the term ‘shadow work’ to describe the courage to face the hidden parts of the self, acknowledge the secrets, face the pain and process the experiences that were ignored or denied until a sense of acceptance takes place. The acceptance doesn’t deny the reality of the pain but is now able to propel the person into the transformative element of peaceful integration of their story into their sense of self.
The person who chooses to be the hero of their own story does not wear a cape and is not celebrated on large stages with fans, but is the one who chooses to allow the Creator to heal, transform and re build from the mess and darkness of difficult experiences, so that they can reveal the transformative power of the only Hero we have who deserves worship, which is Jesus. He modelled descending to the pit of hell to defeat darkness to empower us to see transformation of the pain and agony that faces many within the human life. The assertion that 2 ‘suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope’ is a prominent theme throughout The Bible and fuels the path through pain to find the purpose and meaning from within it. I had a book published in 2007 called, ‘Making Your Mess Your Message’ that details the journey of transforming the emotional pain, which is sometimes hidden within the depths of a humans soul and distant from their conscious awareness of self, but impacts decisions, behaviours and thoughts through its invisible filter. It has been a passion of my life to support those who support people walking through the depths of darkness towards the light of hope and recovery and able to make meaning out of their experiences. To do that work I too have to face my own shadows and courageously walk through my own pain and struggles through to a sense of integration, wholeness, honesty and authenticity which I hope leads to being more like Jesus.
PS. this has been written on my phone as I am away from home at a conference. Sadly the one laptop that I brought had a bottle of water spilt on it, so I’m using my phone which doesn’t enjoy spacing or footnotes. I apologise.
1 Campbell. Joseph. The Hero with.a Thousand Faces. Third Edition. Novato. CA: New World. 334
2 Romans 5:3-4
Hi there Betsy,
What a profound story of chaos, crisis and the unknown narrowly escaping death. I see you as a hero, Betsy. You were so young and not asking for this adventure, but I see your life today using the trials, growth and challenges to shape who you are today. Campbell says the hero returns with a new-found wisdom, and understanding, sharing the knowledge they’ve gained with others. You have done this and you passionately continue that journey of hope for others. I’m honored to know your story Betsy. What would you say blocks or challenges your progress on the journey?
Thank you Judith. If only the cycle of growth and transformation was a one off experience! I continue to experience different liminal spaces where I usually commit myself to more than i can in an area and soon realise the enormity of the task and want to turn back and give up, I am however propelled forward by the kindness and strength of Jesus towards new growth and learning. I guess the only certainty in life is death, challenge and taxes! We will always have opportunities to keep choosing the difficult path of walking through pain and challenge, humbling and learning to ‘rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hopeand hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’ Romans 5: 3-5.
The beauty I see here is that Jesus powers it all. That is the sense of all of it isn’t it. I appreciate you and your journey Betsy.
Betsy, congratulations on writing an entire article on your phone! This must have taken tremendous patience and perseverance tapping it out letter by letter on a virtual keyboard!
I’m curious about your statements on trauma and its effect on a person in the womb. Can you explain this further? How can it happen? How does it work? What evidence do we have for it? How can we respond to it?
It is a new area of research in many ways, but there are some fascinating studies around mothers stress and foetal health. The common focus is on the consequential attachment relationship but also physical health and generational trauma patterns. This one is interesting: Hidas G, Raffai J, Vollner J. Prenatal Bonding Analysis: The Invisible Umbilical Cord. Oxford: Taylor & Francis; 2022.
Here is a one liner from a brand new book from my friend Dr Graham Music:
‘Powerful shocks, physical assaults, drugs, and much else will not only affect the mother’s body but also the way the foetus develops. The opposite, thankfully, is also true, and a foetus can respond positively to soothing or enjoyable experiences.’
Graham Music. Womb Life. Wonders and challenges of pregnancy, The Foetus Journey and Birth. Mind Nurturing Books. 2024. 48.
The whole book explores it deeply with a delicious ten pages of references to further research.
Betsy, way to adapt and overcome the technology challenges!
I have used the analogy of the hero and cape with my leadership teams. Or the importance of leaving the dragon tied up in the cave and not having to face it. While flexing to these hero moments is essential, they are incredibly challenging and, in most instances, cannot be sustained over a long period. I have told my teams that the cape is always there if you need it, but it is essential that it doesn’t become part of the daily ritual. It’s simply not sustainable.
You mention your work supporting missionaries with trauma. I realize you have shared that you are working on programs in Scotland. Now, where has the scope of your work extended beyond the mission field? How has The Spirit led you in that pursuit?
Thank you Mike. I do think the only time a cape is appropriate is when we need courage to navigate through terror and pain of past or present traumatic circumstances. Something needs to provide the energy and motivation to push through! I agree that it can only be short time or it is unsustainable.
I have found myself training in thirty two nations. Those who ask for help range from charities that work with victims of human trafficking, missionaries, psychotherapists, teachers, social workers etc. The most exciting is having the privilege being on boards with leaders of nations where we aim to change the national systems for families, with current projects that are re-shaping the criminal justice system in two nations. I am shocked at where God has taken me and certainly never advertised my work!
Betsy, I am so interested in your thoughts about repressed memories. Do you believe the things hiding in the subconscious are true when they are brought out in emotional healing? In my journey I had many of these memories come up that still seem to be unresolvable or maybe not true, or at least an emotional imprint that my brain built a false narrative around.
This ties into the hero myth and threshold concepts in that these are the places that can be the dark and confusing threshold of our life. The desire is to be birthed out of that place of liminality and born into the light of greater wisdom and depth. There are these tunnels dispersed throughout my journey that I circumvented because I’m not sure that anything in them is reliable. How important do you think it is to walk through them for healing and growth? Do the brought up memories exist as truth or as myth that reveal a truth?
Hi Jess, thats a great question.
They can be true but there is also a coping mechanism called derealisation which is a subtype of dissociation. It is a complex and clever way of surviving and can cause a distortion of reality when the person is absolutely stuck in a situation where they are very distressed, terrified and powerless. It’s a survival strategy where they create a ‘other world’ as an automatic, non conscious way of coping. There is an exploration of this in my book, The Simple Guide to Complex Trauma and Dissociation.
I think it is so very deeply important to walk though the reason for the coping mechanisms and the distress, to find the gold that can never be found outside of such deep places. But only if the right level of safety and stability are in place.
Wow, what a story you have! That must have been a challenging experience to witness the riots that eventually spiraled into the genocide in Burundi. What was it like seeing someone die right in front of you? Do you still have a vivid memory of that, or is it mainly your parents who have shared that story with you?
Living in the United States, it’s hard to imagine something happening here like what occurred in Burundi. Your story is incredibly powerful and truly needs to be shared in spaces such as the USA. Thank you for being vulnerable with us.