Why Did This Happen to Me? What a Rescued Gecko Taught Me About Reframing Trauma

Meet Sprinkles.

I found him on the sidewalk in the middle of a cold spell. Half frozen. Bruised all over. Not moving.

He'd almost certainly been dropped by a predator. Something bigger had him, then let him go, and left him for dead in the cold.

I scooped him up and brought him inside. I didn't know if he'd survive the night. He did. But he's never fully recovered. He's neurologically damaged in a way that means he struggles to hunt on his own. In the wild, that's a death sentence.

So I built him a mansion. A full enclosure with obstacles to climb, tunnels to explore, places to hide and places to feel brave. He doesn't have to hunt anymore. He gets the best worms I can find, delivered right to him.

He's living a better life than he ever would have had if none of it happened to him.

The question that follows me

Here's what I keep coming back to. If he had never been caught, never been dropped, never been left in the cold, I would never have found him. He'd either still be prey animal number whatever, or he'd be dead. Instead he's safe, fed, loved and living in a house built just for him.

I think about my own life the same way. I went through things that were genuinely hard. Most of it I'd call traumatic without hesitating. And if none of that had happened, I wouldn't have ended up where I am now. I wouldn't have met my husband. I wouldn't have built the life I have.

I want to be careful here, because I know exactly how this sounds.

I've been on the other side of this sentence

Years ago, someone said to me, "What if you chose your mother? What if you chose all of it, before you got here?"

I was livid. SO angry. My first thought was, what an entitled thing to say to someone! Nobody chooses to be hurt. Nobody chooses a childhood like mine. It felt like they were standing outside my life, looking in, and deciding my pain had a tidy explanation that let everyone off the hook.

I still think that anger was fair. If you're sitting with anger right now reading this, that anger is allowed to just be anger. It doesn't need to mean anything else.

For me, later, that anger turned out to be pointing at something. Not proof that the idea was true. Just a signal that I wasn't ready to look at what it was asking of me yet. That took years, and it was mine to work through in my own time, not something anyone was owed from me faster than that.

The actual question

I'm not saying everything happens for a reason. I'm not saying I know why any of it happened, or that suffering exists to teach us something, or that I've got it figured out.

What I am asking is this: if you could see your entire life laid out in front of you right now, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, all of it at once, would you still choose to walk through the ugly parts if you knew for certain they led you to the beautiful ones?

I don't think there's a right answer. I think it's worth sitting with the question anyway.

This is a lot of what past life regression work is really about. Not proving anything. Just creating enough space to ask what a piece of your story might be for, without judgment, without rushing to a conclusion, and without anyone telling you what your anger is supposed to mean.

If that question has been sitting with you, that's usually a sign it's worth exploring, not explaining away.

If you're ready to actually sit with it instead of just thinking about it, Quantum Journeys Hypnosis is where that exploration happens. No pressure to find an answer. Just space to ask the question honestly.