You Are Still Enough: Finding Yourself Again After Trauma | Laura Bratton
In this deeply grounding episode, Jess is joined by international speaker, resilience coach, and author Laura Bratton. Laura began losing her vision as a teenager—and in the years since, she has cultivated a life rooted in courage, self-trust, and a deep commitment to living fully, even through change.
Together, Jess and Laura explore how true resilience isn’t about pushing through or staying positive—it’s about being honest with our emotions, validating our grief, and choosing to move forward in small, brave steps.
Whether you're navigating a season of uncertainty, rebuilding your sense of self, or learning to trust your inner voice again, this conversation will meet you with compassion, clarity, and strength.
In this episode, we talk about:
What real resilience looks like (and what it’s not)
How Laura navigated losing her vision in high school
The power of daily support, community, and staying present
Learning to trust yourself again, one moment at a time
Gratitude as a healing practice (even on the hardest days)
Why it's okay to hold grief and hope at the same time
Advocating for your needs—without apology
Chapters & Timestamps
00:00 – Welcome & reflection
02:15 – Life changed in seconds
08:49 – Resisting the pressure to “be strong”
13:34 – Grieving what was lost
19:42 – What helped Laura stay
24:05 – When you feel invisible
29:18 – Rebuilding life on new terms
34:41 – Healing beyond resilience
38:20 – Final thoughts + closing invitation
Resources & Links:
✨ Learn more about Laura’s work or get her book Harnessing Courage: www.laurabratton.com
⚠️ Trigger Warning
This episode contains discussions of trauma, abuse, and other potentially sensitive topics that may be activating for some listeners. Please take care while listening and pause if you need to. Your well-being is what matters most.
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Jess Vanrose (00:01.24)
Hi Laura, welcome to Life After Trauma. I'm really grateful to have you here. For anyone who has not met you, you are an international speaker, coach, and author of Harnessing Courage and you've transformed your experience of vision loss into a powerful message of grit, gratitude, and healing. I am wondering if we can start by talking about resilience.
When you hear the word resilience, what does that mean to you personally?
So through my lived experience, I've learned that resilience means sitting with our difficulty, sitting with our trauma, sitting with the change we're facing, having the resilience to acknowledge the change, and then choosing to move forward. So I used to think resilience was being strong, pushing forward, being positive all the time, just grin and bear it, somehow it'll all work out.
not acknowledging our true feelings. To me, the resilience that I've developed is acknowledging the grief that I went through and continue to go through as I experienced vision loss, while at the same time, choosing to believe in myself, to trust in the support around me, and move forward.
love that. It's not hiding or avoiding from what is actually happening within you. It's embracing it and learning how to get through that.
Laura Bratton (01:37.582)
Yes. Some days being resilient looks like me just being very sad all day and just even if I'm not sure why, just being sad, being tearful. And other days it looks like being joyful and moving forward. And some days it looks like both. So exactly what you said, it's not dismissing our feelings, it's accepting and validating all of our feelings, the good, the bad.
all of them and sometimes within the same day.
Yes, I think that is so important. Like when we do the opposite, when we kind of bury them because we're either afraid to feel them or we maybe feel shame around feeling a certain way, then has the opposite impact where that feeling stays with you longer.
Yes. And that was my lived experience. When I did acknowledge that I was anxious and depressed, that made me more anxious and depressed. My panic attacks got worse. My depression increased. When I gave myself the space just to acknowledge I'm panicking right now because I'm very fearful of the present and the future, my anxiety actually decreased. So when I turned towards the emotion and gave the emotion space,
you breathe, the emotion slowly decreases.
Jess Vanrose (03:08.098)
Wow, that is powerful. Do you remember one of the first moments in your life when you had to choose courage?
So the first start of choosing the courage was in high school after I was passed through the mindset of denial of, the blindness is not really happening. Once I was in the rally of, yes, I'm losing a significant amount of sight and yes, I want to move forward in life. That's when I had developed that courage to again, be resilient and to do both. To grieve the vision loss and to trust that support around me so that I
could move forward in a courageous way to accomplish the goals I want to accomplish.
Can you take us back to the season of your life when your vision began to change?
So the major vision loss and pretty much all the vision loss happened during those four years of high school. And as I mentioned, my first reaction, emotional reaction was denial. this is not going to be that long. By the time I graduate from high school, this will all be over. I thought if I just prayed enough, it'll come back. If I just manifest enough, it will come back. And then once I realized
Laura Bratton (04:27.276)
This is my new reality. That's when it was the support around me that taught me I could move forward because I didn't have the strength within myself. My mindset was, I can't do this. This is too much. It's too hard. The panic attacks and depression is too much. It's life in general is just too overwhelming. I can't do this. So it was the support around me that taught me
You can do this day by day by day, moment by moment by moment.
the community and the support around us is so important. How did you feel in terms of how others started responding to you? Did that change and did that have any effect on you?
Absolutely. So there were two responses. One response from my family, my friends, those who knew me well, it was support. Again, not through their words, but through their actions. And a lot of that support was just continuing to treat me normal. Obviously they'd make accommodations where I needed it, but just treating me as a full human.
with respect in our relationship, whether it's friendship or family, that support was incredible. The other reaction, of course, just either from complete strangers who didn't know I'd just lost my sight or just from people who didn't know me that well. Complete, I'm trying to think of the right word, was almost like I didn't exist. I was invisible. There was just no, no connection, no communication.
Laura Bratton (06:09.29)
I just basically disappeared in their life as far as they were concerned. So again, the gift was, yes, I experienced that one. was incredibly hurtful to feel that invisible and know, my gosh, I don't matter to that person anymore just because I can't see as well. They're talking to everyone else in the room but me. The gift was those people that were close to me and my family and friends.
Their support is what I had to focus on. Yeah. Because the other could completely destroy me.
And it strengthened those relationships with the people who were there for you.
Absolutely, because they too would notice. Why is that person talking to all of us and ignoring you? They're leading us to answer questions and you're standing right there. Yes, it definitely strengthened our relationship from my gratitude for them and also as they recognized how people were treating me.
What were some of the daily things you had to navigate as your vision shifted?
Laura Bratton (07:22.306)
The biggest adaptation was my mindset because as a high schooler, my friends are learning to drive. My friends are getting their permit, their driver's license. My friends are gaining independence while I'm currently losing independence. So for me, developing that mindset of, again, going back to resilience, no.
I cannot control that I'm becoming blind. What I can control is my mindset. I can control how I respond. Am I going to respond with victim expecting the world to pity me, feel sorry for me, or am I going to keep going forward, again, obviously making accommodations and choosing to still believe in myself and know that I have gifts and purpose and matter to this world?
Did you manage to change your mindset to a positive one?
So that only came through the support around me. As the support around me, for example, my parents would tell me in those days when I was overwhelmed with panic attacks and depression, my parents would tell me, we don't know the future. All we have to do is take it day by day by day. And as they told me that day after day, week after week, month after month, that's when I slowly realized,
I can just live in the present, even though the present is fearful. All I have to figure out is the present moment and then I'll figure out the next present moment. So all the support around me showed me, okay, Laura, you have incarnate support, yet there has to become that point where you choose that mindset, where you choose that grit for yourself, where you choose the gratitude for yourself. So yes, there are...
Laura Bratton (09:25.07)
countless situations. Just my brother, I have one older brother who's five years older. Simple just, this doesn't sound like healing, but it was incredibly healing. Him just continuing to treat me as that annoying little sister that he wanted just to get rid of and disappear. Him continuing to treat me normal was such a source of healing and support because all of a sudden he didn't start treating me different just because I couldn't see as well.
And that was such a source of strength because that taught me I can still believe in myself. I still matter to this world. I'm still me. I just can't see as well. It was the teachers who made the necessary accommodations at school. It was the friends who just continue to treat me as friends. We just listened to music like we always did. We enjoyed the same foods that we always did. So it was those normal everyday actions.
that helped me move from that place up. can't do, okay, I can day by day by day, moment by moment by moment.
I love that taking your life moment by moment, day by day, in those hard periods of life, sometimes that's all we can focus on is just what is right in front of us right now. And looking farther down the road is too much and that's okay. And at those certain points in life, right?
Right? And that's all we need to focus on. Because oftentimes, especially when we're in traumatic or any type of change, the present is so overwhelming, even processing the present is too much.
Jess Vanrose (11:10.082)
Yeah, it's survival mode. We're stuck in survival mode at that point. what do I need to do in this moment to survive this moment?
Literally this moment.
Yeah. So what were the little things that helped you rebuild your sense of independence or identity? I love that story you shared about your brother. Was there anything else that really helped you rebuild that independence?
regaining my confidence and accepting the new normal. So again, circling back to talking about resilience, being resilient enough to accept, okay, this is my new normal. It is what it is and learning to be confident and comfortable in my own skin. So my mindset during those high school years was
I was always comparing to when I had sight. So finally getting to that point of just saying, okay, this is just me and I don't have to talk about and think about all the time of when I used to have sight, almost to like validate my humanness. I just, am who I am. And so just learning to be comfortable in my own skin, accepting the new normal, that was a huge game changer for me. And that process all started
Laura Bratton (12:36.096)
when I got my first guide dog. Okay. I got my first guide dog in between those few months in between high school and college. And I vividly remember I was sitting in my dorm room, there's about 20 of us in class, and I was sitting in my dorm room and it was the day we were going to receive our dogs. And they told us all to go back to our rooms that they would bring our dogs individually to us.
As I'm sitting there alone in my dorm room, 3000 miles away from home, again, this goes back to resilience, feeling that panic of what in the world have I done? What decision have I made? Yet acknowledging that feeling and also acknowledging it's time for me to be that grit and to be that gratitude, not just.
depend on the support around me. So for me, making that decision was shifting my mindset to, yes, I understand that people around me are just supporting me to, okay, it's time for me to be comfortable in my own skin and adjust to the new normal. And that's a process for all of us in the midst of change. Sometimes that comes quickly, sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes it takes months, sometimes it takes years.
The amount of time is not important. What's important is that we trust our support system and then eventually trust ourselves.
Yes, yes. Trusting yourself is so important. And how did you actually rebuild or build that trust with yourself? Because I know that that is an area that a lot of people struggle with. I struggled with that myself for a long time, being able to trust myself. How did you build that?
Laura Bratton (14:32.034)
Day by day by day. Again, that goes back to what my parents told me every day in this high school of, we'll take it day by day. Trusting ourselves is literally moment by moment to moment, and it's not linear. What I learned through my experience of rebuilding my confidence and rebuilding my trust in myself of, it's not just waking up, okay, I trust myself today, let's go, let's go conquer the world. And every day, they're.
forward, we completely trust ourselves. Sometimes it was easy to trust myself. Sometimes I didn't, and then I would trust myself again. But the theme is where we started resilient. Trusting ourselves and in the days when we can't trust ourselves, offering that self-compassion. Okay, I didn't for today. Let's try again tomorrow.
Yes, it's not a completely giving up, I'm a failure, I can't believe that I trusted myself yesterday and I don't trust myself today. That's not how it goes. At what point did gratitude become part of your healing? Was there a moment that shifted your perspective?
Yes, so it was one conversation that completely changed my perspective on gratitude. So towards the end of high school, I was talking to my mentor. And at the end of the conversation, she said, Laura, I want you to start practicing gratitude. So every day, I want you to write down three either people or events from that specific day that you're grateful for. Not.
general gratitude, but very specific to that day so that you don't repeat, but it grows and changes every day. So I smiled and nodded and said, thank you. In my head, I'm thinking, oh, you are a terrible mentor. There is no way that I can be grateful. I'm severely depressed. panic attacks. I'm going blind. I have nothing to be grateful for.
Laura Bratton (16:43.47)
So I'm going to be your mentor and show you that was very bad advice to give. So I started to prove her wrong by writing down things I was grateful for and I proved to her I had nothing to be grateful for. The one day became three days. The three days became a week. A week became three weeks. And what I realized
where she was not teaching me, Laura, wake up and be grateful for your blindness. She was teaching me, wake up and say, I'm grateful to have a guide dog. I'm grateful to have a brother that thought I was annoying little sister. I'm grateful for parents that believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. So,
I thought gratitude was being happy, positive, thankful all the time, no matter what was going on. Rather, gratitude that she was teaching me and that I've developed is being grateful for what helps us navigate through the change. So again, it's not being grateful. I'm so grateful to be blind. This is wonderful. Rather grateful for what helps me navigate through the change.
think that is so important because we are always going to have hard days, but even in those hard days, there is always going to be something that you can be grateful for. And it's not about a toxic positivity mindset. It's about what are the things that are in my life that I can be grateful for. Like you said,
100 %
Jess Vanrose (18:33.624)
having a guide dog, having your brother.
Right. Yes. And I tell people laughing, but being completely serious, even if it's just, I'm grateful today's over. yeah. I'm grateful that I survived the day. If that's all you can think of to be grateful for, focus on that.
Yes, absolutely. Can you share a simple practice you return to that helps you recenter?
Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. And the key is keeping it simple. just the simplicity. It's not the gratitude of focusing on those huge monumental moments in our life. It's just those every day. It can be as simple as I'm thankful that the dishwasher worked today. I'm thankful that I had running water today. Just to walk outside.
Okay, I'm frustrated as rain today and I'm thankful that I can feel the rain, experience the rain. So again, it's not making gratitude those huge moments and those big accomplishments. Rather, it's those everyday tiny moments that we often don't think about, often don't consider gratitude. And again, start with a very small amount.
Laura Bratton (19:59.52)
If it's one or two perspectives, events, people that you're grateful for at the end of every day, that's enough. And just let that grow. The two become four and the four might become five. And then over the next couple weeks, might come seven. So again, just keeping it very, very small. So it's a habit that you eventually cultivate, not another to-do list.
Yes, yes, definitely. And you're so right though, it's those little things that we tend to overlook because in our day to day, we just become so used to it that we don't even really realize how grateful we are to have that. And what our life would be like without that thing. Yeah, and I don't know about you, it's
When I started practicing gratitude, I found that it actually helped me be more positive in general throughout the day. And it became a case for me where I was constantly watching four things that I could write down on my gratitude list. It was like, I can write that down on my list. So it just made me more
attuned to the positive things that were happening.
100%. I completely agree. And that has been my experience is again, it's not toxic positivity. It's rather using gratitude as our foundation. So as we go throughout the day, being thankful for those small moments, I'm thankful for that podcast I listened to that made me laugh or that was really insightful. Again, I'm thankful to able to charge my iPhone so I can listen to that podcast.
Laura Bratton (21:51.084)
those everyday moments that we take for granted. And that gives us a foundation that then helps us create that mindset of perspective. So that when the difficulty does come, which as we all know it will, we can experience it, acknowledge it, and have that deep foundation of gratitude that helps us recover quickly.
So you've had some pretty big wins in your life. You went on to become the first blind student to earn a Master of Divinity from Princeton Seminary, right?
Yes. And that perfectly illustrates the balance of the resilience, the grit, and the gratitude. Because being the first, they were not equipped or prepared. They had no idea what accommodations I needed. So it took the resilience on my part to say, to clearly communicate my needs, which again, takes self-trust and belief in yourself to be able to know what you need and to communicate it.
And then deep gratitude that they were willing to work with me. So was such a gift of helping me develop my resiliency, self-trust, and also deeply, deeply grateful that as I asked for what I needed with accommodations, they were willing to make it. So it was a perfect, it was a great illustration to me, a real life illustration of we can accomplish this together.
me communicating my needs and them willing to meet them.
Jess Vanrose (23:31.532)
wondering if we can talk even a little bit more about that, about the importance and the ability to be able to speak up for yourself and state what you need because that again I feel like, especially for trauma survivors, that is so hard to do to have a voice when a lot of times that voice has been taken away from you at some point.
So what my first mindset was, if I asked for what I need, that's selfish. If I asked for what I need, that's too much. And so I didn't ask for what I needed, right? Or I hesitated, or it would kind of be nice, or if you don't mind. I would ask it in a very not clear way, you know? That wasn't clear, it was like, oh yeah, if you want to, if you think about it.
where actually that wasn't what I needed at all. I didn't need you to think about it. Once I learned just to, again, state what I need and explain why I needed it. So again, a very, very practical life example of what I mean by this is I would say to my professors, I need double time on my test. And the reason I need double time on my test is because I use a screen reader on my laptop.
And so that makes the process slower. So I need double time. And I would literally take my laptop and show them what I meant. So that way there was a clear understanding why I needed double time. I wasn't just saying, give me double time, end of story, right? Making it very clear, I need double time and here's why. So I say that to say,
I learned that clearly communicating is saying what we need and saying why we need it.
Jess Vanrose (25:27.254)
Yes, that makes sense. Did you ever feel like trauma was something you had to hide or push past or was it something that you learned how to integrate?
You said it perfectly. I felt like I had to hide it. I had to move past it. A hundred percent. That was my experience. And another conversation with a mentor completely changed my perspective. So it was right before I started college and I was in an administrator's office and the very end of the meeting, I was literally standing up to get ready to walk out the door. And she said,
Laura, I just want to let you know that you think you've grieved, that you're through the anxiety, you're through the depression of your blindness, and now you can move on. I just want to give you permission that you will grieve the rest of your life. And that doesn't mean that it'll be intense as it's been. That doesn't mean that you are not moving forward. That does not mean you have not accepted your new normal.
It just means you can do both at the same time. You can grieve your vision loss and you can choose to move forward. And I share that in response to what you said because I thought I had to hide my vision loss, even though it's completely obvious. I thought I had to hide it, always justify myself. Oh, but I used to have full 2020 sight, so I'm equal. Once she gave me permission just to grieve, just to feel what I was feeling.
That gave me permission to have that mindset of, it's okay to be sad that I'm starting college and have to make all these accommodations and spend triple the time preparing where other college students are just joyfully moving into their dorm and showing up to class, never being their professor, never knowing where the building is, no accommodations needed. I can grieve that and choose to be grateful.
Laura Bratton (27:42.026)
for the experience that I should have. So yes, again, I share all that to say, again, just validating, yes, trauma is really, really, really hard. So when we accept that it is hard, that's deeply healing. And that gives us permission to work through the trauma, to heal from the trauma while still moving forward. And again, just like the self-trust.
It's not linear. And that's okay.
Self-permission is so important and the mindset of you can hold two things at the same time. Yes. That was a game changer for me when I finally had that realization like, wait, I can feel both things. I do not have to only feel positive or sad. Like I can feel both things.
I had no idea. Once I realized that, my healing was much quicker.
How did you begin to see yourself differently through that journey?
Laura Bratton (28:54.222)
As I learned to do exactly what you said, to acknowledge both truths at the same time, it was liberating. It was literally, it was grounding. I could physically breathe easier. I was able to take deep breaths rather than just those shallow anxious breaths. It grounded me in the present. It grounded me in my body. It grounded me in confidence.
Because then it was okay to feel sadness and then 10 minutes later, feel joy. And then an hour later, feel anger. That was all okay. And once I gave myself permission to feel all that within an hour, within a day, it was grounding, was centering. I became confident in who I was. But.
really powerful. Why did you feel called to write Harnessing Courage? Or what drew you to that?
So I was deeply, deeply, deeply passionate to write the book because of the support I had received. Because I received so much support that empowered me forward, I didn't just want to say, I received that support, good for me. I wanted to write the book to say, I received that support, now let me go be that support for the world.
that others could pick the book up regardless of the change, regardless of the trauma, they could pick that book up and it could be a source of strength for them as empowerment. So they could get the empowerment that I received so they can keep going just as I was able to keep going.
Jess Vanrose (30:44.32)
Yes, that's amazing. What is your hope then when someone hears your story for the first time? What do hope that they take away from it?
resilience and to know that in the midst of trauma, in the midst of change, we are still enough. And I say that because from my own experience, when the trauma, when the change is so intense and we're in that survival mode, we forget that perspective that we still matter. We forget that perspective that
We can keep going that one day the anxiety will be less than it is today. So just that, that resilience.
Yes, that is so important and I love what you're saying, especially about the emotions passing. Like, I've talked about this on several episodes, but I think it's a really important thing for people to be reminded of that when you are in those hard moments, you're feeling those intense emotions.
That is really freaking hard, but it will pass. It will pass. You can make it through the intensity. It will pass.
Laura Bratton (32:07.948)
Yes, and that's where the gift of mindfulness comes in. The gift of realizing thoughts and emotions come and go.
Absolutely. Is there any part of your story that we haven't touched on yet that you would love to share?
Again, just that through line of feel what you feel and validate what you feel. I cannot say that enough. Because in my first couple years, in those high school years, I didn't validate the pain. I didn't give myself the space to feel the grief, feel the loss, feel the anger, feel the sadness.
It was just push forward, be positive, be strong, push forward, push forward. So again, just to say over and over and over, validate the feelings that you're feeling in your change, in your trauma. Yeah.
What does life after trauma look like for you today?
Laura Bratton (33:14.208)
It looks like a mindset of courage and that that courage, that mindset looks like even within one day, sometimes I need more of that self trust. Sometimes I focus more on the gratitude. Sometimes I need more of that self compassion. So it's just that constant balance of.
feeling what I'm feeling and choosing to move forward, choosing to offer myself that self-compassion, that self-love, that self-trust.
Yes, I love that. Was there anything else that you wanted to share before we wrap this up?
just to remember that we all are enough.
Yeah. Laura, thank you so much for sharing your story and your heart with us today. This conversation has been incredibly powerful and grounding. Before we wrap up, I'd love for you to share where listeners can find your book, Harnessing Courage, and connect with you or your work if they want to go deeper.
Laura Bratton (34:21.976)
So the best place is my website, larabratten.com has all the resources on the book, the speaking, the coaching. So everything's there.
I will definitely have that linked in the show notes so everyone can easily find it.
Thank you for the opportunity and thank you for this platform you've created.
Thank you, Laura. I really appreciate that.
