Innocence is sacred. Our natural desire to protect it is so strong that when it is shattered, something within us shatters too. Unlike innocence, naivete is not sacred. It’s a stage we outgrow.
We were naive because we trusted what we were told. Behind the naivete is stolen innocence. Recognizing this distinction can direct our energy toward true healing & rebuilding.
When we learn that unfathomable evil exists and is foundational to societal structures, we lose our naivete. We were naive because we trusted what we were told. Confronted with betrayal, our reflex is to try and fix what broke our trust. We demand that the world keep its promises, restore trust, and pay for what it’s taken.
But that impulse arises from the sting of lost naivete, not the heart of our grief. What we truly mourn is stolen innocence — and the world can’t give that back to us. Only we can navigate our way to what that innocence was and is, and why it’s so deeply important to us. A naive experience of innocence is gone to us. But we can be curious about what healing and wisdom can teach us about the true nature of innocence, about consciously reclaiming and protecting it, and about creating the inner and outer conditions where it can flourish.
Shelly
Dear friends and colleagues,
How we feel and behave in response to external stressors — including revelations of evil and psychopathic deception, corruption, misplaced authority, and lies — is a profoundly personal and unique process, and yet unmistakably universal as well.
It is unwise to endeavor to hack, minimize, or control this sacred, transformative, and supremely human process. But context and considerations can be supportive and I offer some hard-won findings here.
Innocence is sacred.
Our natural human desire to protect innocence is so strong that when it is shattered, something within us shatters too.
Evil that preys on innocence is devastating. It brings up in us such profound levels of revulsion, anger, and grief that words cannot express the depth of our pain and despair. It feels as if something essential has been lost beyond repair.
Unlike innocence, naivete is not sacred, but its loss will be a blow to the ego.
Unlike innocence, naivete is not sacred. It’s a stage we outgrow.
When we learn that unfathomable evil exists and is foundational to societal structures, we lose our naivete. We were naive because we trusted what we were told.
When false beliefs fall away, it can feel like a loss of innocence. But what is actually dissolving is naivete — the inherited narratives that once shaped our view of the world.
Naivete is not something to reclaim. It’s a developmental passage we move through on the path toward truth and wisdom.
However, its loss will still make a profound impact. It will be felt as a blow to the ego — the conditioned mind — and will trigger individual reactions around trust, betrayal, humility and other profound aspects of our sense of self.
This surge of emotion and awareness becomes a doorway to whatever is next up for awareness and healing. It’s a necessary step along the path; without addressing it, we can’t go deeper. But this is the thing: that isn’t actually the heart of the matter.
The real wound is not lost naivete. It is stolen innocence.
Stolen innocence is foundational to what we find so unspeakably devastating about evil. This is the actual reality of the traumatic events — the sacred ground upon which we grieve, heal and reclaim. This is not the same as our typical response to lost naivete, which centers on the information or politics of it.
Confronted with betrayal, our reflex is to try and fix what broke our trust. We demand that the world keep its promises, restore trust, and pay for what it’s taken. But that impulse arises from the sting of lost naivete, not the heart of our grief.
What we truly mourn is stolen innocence — and the world can’t give that back to us. Only we can navigate our way to what that innocence was and is, and why it’s so deeply important to us.
A naive experience of innocence is gone to us. But we can be curious about what healing and wisdom can teach us about the true nature of innocence, about consciously reclaiming and protecting it, and about creating the inner and outer conditions where it can flourish.
The fact that evil is built into systems of authority and power makes this process extremely messy and devastating, but if we don’t heal the wounds that kept us naive and face the pain of lost innocence, we don’t have access to the full measure of our divinely authorized power.
An implication here is that healing doesn’t occur from the mentality of “lock ‘em up” and “fix the system.” It comes from a deeper part of our being that only becomes available to us once naivete has fallen away. We must indeed remove the predators from our midst and rebuild our societies. But real and lasting improvements can’t happen without a deep reckoning that happens in our own heart, mind, and soul.
Many people model that true healing is possible.
In what can only be described as miraculous, putting oneself back together again is actually possible and is the outcome of dedicated trauma-healing work.
In fact, this healing work seems to be destined for all of us individually and for the human race collectively.
Such healing work leads us to a reintegration and reclaiming that is so deeply profound that it, too, is beyond words but it’s an experience that can be felt and shared.
Because each person is unique, each journey through trauma will be unique. We can only know for sure that every path will be non-linear and full of profound and unexpected setbacks and breakthroughs, emotions and insights. But we also know that the process itself is shaped by factors common to all of us. When we’re confronted with shock, disillusionment, disgust, horror, grief, and trauma, we enter a space of psychological and emotional processing that is inseparable from our ancient and divine physiology. We are wired in ways that directly impact our experience: how emotion and trauma register in our body, interact with our beliefs, and send ripples through our entire being.
People who have already gone through deep healing work and have successfully supported others in their process can lend insight and processing tools that can be of invaluable support. I have colleagues who specialize in this area and I participate in a working group that has been collaborating for more than a year on providing more widespread resources and support for people going through processes like the one happening on a collective level. More on that later.
Sincerely,
Shelly Thorn
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Wow. Appreciate this article deeply. Truly beautiful, wise, profound description of the difference between loss of innocence vs loss of naivete. May we be blessed as we all journey to reclaim our innocence.