The Root of Trauma is Grief, Not Fear

We've all heard it: Every moment is a choice between fear and love.

It’s quoted in spiritual circles like scripture. It sounds right. It feels right. But lately, I’ve realized—through a beautifully unexpected mirror—that it’s not the full truth.

While listening to Sukhdev Benning on TikTok (international mentor, artist, soulful voice of truth), he dropped a line that hit me like a full-body remembrance:

“The real journey is about going from grief to love.”

And suddenly, everything I’ve known in my years of healing work snapped into deeper alignment.

Fear is often what we see. It’s what we feel pulsing through our nervous system when we want to run, hide, lash out, or shrink. But fear is the smoke.

The fire?

Grief.

As someone who’s worked intimately with early trauma—particularly the emotionally overwhelming experiences that happen before we even have language to name them—I know how layered and sneaky our coping strategies can be. We develop sophisticated ways to survive: perfectionism, people-pleasing, detachment, hyper-independence. These become our personality. Our operating systems.

And while you can spend a lifetime managing each block of the Jenga tower (one trauma response at a time), I’ve always said you can also go straight to the bottom—pull the base block—and everything shifts.

What Sukhdev revealed helped me finally name what that bottom block always holds:

Grief.

Not fear.
Not anger.
Not even shame.

Grief is the original echo of separation. Separation from mother. From father. From safety. From self. From God. From Love.

It’s the rupture that came before the beliefs, before the defenses, before the habits. And once grief takes root in our system—unacknowledged and unprocessed—it creates a ripple effect we mislabel as fear. But what if the fear is just the gatekeeper to the deeper pain?

Grief says, “I was left.”
Grief says, “I was unseen.”
Grief says, “I lost something sacred and I don’t know how to feel whole without it.”

So much of what we call fear—fear of being abandoned, fear of rejection, fear of unworthiness—is actually ungrieved grief.

This changes everything.

Because when you realize that grief is what’s sitting at the root, you stop trying to “conquer fear” like it’s a war. You stop trying to override it with mindset hacks and nervous system tricks. You begin to tend to it. Hold it. Let it move.

You create space for the tenderness underneath the terror.

And here’s the alchemical truth:

When grief is felt, love becomes the only thing left.

The clarity of this is erotic to me. Because I believe in sexy healing. I believe in transformation that tastes good. And what feels better—what’s more seductive to the soul—than liberation?

Even in manifestation work, this lens flips the script. We’re taught to create from expansion, not from our wounds. But here’s the nuance I now see:

You don’t need to fix the fear.

You need to grieve what created it.

That’s the portal.

Grieve the original fracture.
Release the frozen sadness.

And suddenly, you’re manifesting from desire, not defense.

This will reshape how I lead. How I guide. How I love.

So here’s your invitation:

Next time you feel afraid… ask yourself:

“What grief am I not allowing myself to feel?”

It might be subtle. It might be ancient. But if you dare to touch it, it might just be the most erotic reunion of your life—with your own sacred wholeness.

In sovereign grief,
Sharon

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