Shared by Grace at the Young Adult Retreat. This site is yours to keep — what we talked about, what the stone and the cup mean, and where to go next when you're ready.
You gave your attention to something difficult, and you held space for people around you who were doing the same. That's not a small thing.
The ground rules didn't end when the session did. What people said in that room belongs to them, not to the group chat.
This site revisits some heavy ground. Read it when you have room for it — tonight, next week, or not at all. Nothing here expires.
If parts of the session landed close to home, that feeling is shared by more people in that room than you'd guess.
You left with two objects, and they're meant to do two different things. One is meant to be let go. The other is meant to be held close.
You wrote something heavy on it. A struggle, a wound, a shame you can't shake, a fear that keeps you up, anger you don't know what to do with. Holding it let you feel a fraction of the weight you've been carrying quietly.
Here's the invitation: you don't have to carry it forever. When you're ready — maybe tonight, maybe next month, maybe a year from now — you get to release it. You could:
There's no timeline and no pressure. Releasing it doesn't mean erasing your story — it means you're no longer letting it decide your future.
And this is the part the stone was really pointing at. Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28–30). You bring the stone to the cross and you leave it there — not because the weight wasn't real, but because it was never yours to carry alone.
And here's what happens on the other side of that: "As you come to him, the living Stone… you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:4–5). The same hands that take the dead weight from you make you a living stone — your story becoming a testimony of God's love and mercy to a world that badly needs to hear it.
On this one you wrote your gifts and talents — the God-given things in you, the resilience you've already discovered, and the strengths that came out of what you survived.
A cup is meant to be filled and then poured out. That's the point of writing them there: God can heal what's been weighing you down, and you get to step into the fullness of those gifts unburdened — living wholly, and becoming a blessing to other people too, as living stones built together.
This one you keep. Put it somewhere you'll actually see it:
Not because you'll forget it on good days — but because shame is loud on hard days, and on those days you'll want your own handwriting to argue back.
ACEs are Adverse Childhood Experiences — potentially traumatic things that happen before the age of 18. The original study, run by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente in the 1990s, grouped them into ten categories.
Emotional abuse · physical abuse · sexual abuse.
Emotional neglect · physical neglect.
Mental illness at home · substance misuse at home · parental divorce or separation · domestic violence · a household member in prison.
The research is honest about the cost: the more ACEs someone carries, the higher their risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD, chronic physical illness, substance misuse and relationship difficulty. Trauma researcher Dr Bessel van der Kolk put it plainly — "The body keeps the score." Our bodies remember what our minds try to forget.
But the same science carries the hope. Brains change. Neuroplasticity means new pathways, new patterns, new ways of being are genuinely possible — which is why a childhood story written on your nervous system is still not the final chapter.
Not one magic breakthrough. Not one powerful prayer, one therapy session, or one worship experience. Those can be catalysts — but the healing Grace described was a constellation, and it's still ongoing.
Friends who didn't need her to have it all together — who sat with her in the mess without trying to fix it or quote a verse at it.
Mentors who re-parented the wounded parts. Unconditional presence, slowly teaching a nervous system what safe, consistent love feels like.
Belonging that didn't depend on performing well. Being known by name, and building a new story of what "home" could feel like.
"I'm a therapist, and I have my own therapist." Space to process, to understand how the past shapes the present, and to grieve what was lost.
Trauma gets stored in the body. Running, yoga, hiking, dancing — processing what the mind couldn't yet name, and finding the body as a source of strength.
Relearning how to play and create without guilt. Play and art aren't frivolous — they reconnect us to parts we shut down in order to survive.
Retreats, spiritual direction, and journaling as a lifeline — holding the rage, the questions and the doubt, and becoming a record of faithfulness she couldn't see in the moment.
In therapy we talk about "parts" — the different aspects of ourselves. Here's the part worth taking home: the pieces of you that developed to survive something hard often carry real strengths inside them.
Whether you're carrying an ACE story of your own, or walking alongside someone who is.
Not from love, not from purpose, not from healthy relationships, not from being used by God. Your ACE score is not your identity.
Grace tried that, and it didn't work. Healing happened in community — through friends, mentors, therapists, church, and God meeting her in all of it.
Going to therapy, taking medication if you need it, telling a trusted adult what happened to you — these are acts of courage and wisdom, not failure.
Healing isn't a finish line where pain never touches you again. It's the presence of support, tools and hope in the middle of it.
Two frameworks that give language to what many of us carry without a name for it.
ACEs are potentially traumatic events that happen before the age of 18 — abuse, neglect, and household challenges such as substance misuse, mental illness, parental separation, domestic violence, or a household member in prison. Accidents and natural disasters count too.
The Singapore Mental Health Study (2016) found the most common ACEs locally were:
If your experience is on that list, you are in very ordinary company — this is common, not shameful.
Prolonged stress can overwhelm a child's capacity to cope, raising the risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD, chronic illness, substance misuse and self-harm in adulthood — and patterns can pass down generations.
And the same research points to what protects: secure attachment, stable environments, open communication, and professional support when it's needed.
Singapore's National Healthcare Group explains ACEs, their short- and long-term effects, and how families can build protection against them.
Open NHG HealthTen yes/no questions about life before you turned 18. It takes a few minutes.
Before you start: this is an awareness tool, not a diagnosis. A number can't measure your resilience, your relationships, or your future. Do it when you feel steady — and consider having someone safe to talk to afterwards.
Take the ACE quizA way of understanding why you sometimes feel too much, and sometimes feel nothing at all. Your window is the zone where you can think and feel at the same time — and trauma makes that window narrower.
Fight or flight. Anxiety, anger, panic, racing thoughts, flashbacks, unable to rest or sit still. It can come on fast and be hard to come back from.
You can feel and think at the same time. You're present, able to be curious, able to feel empathy, able to handle what the day brings. Emotions arrive, but they don't take over.
Freeze and shutdown. Numbness, exhaustion, brain fog, disconnection, memory gaps, feeling far away from your own life.
After trauma, more situations feel intense and harder to manage, because there's less room between "fine" and "flooded". Something that looks small from the outside can tip you straight into hyperarousal or shutdown.
That isn't weakness or overreaction. It's a nervous system that learned to respond fast because it once had to.
This is the hopeful part, and it connects to everything in the Resilience section. Regulation practices, safe relationships, movement, rest and therapy all gradually widen the window.
Simply noticing "I'm above my window right now" is itself a step back toward it — naming it gives you something to work with.
A fuller explanation of the Window of Tolerance, the three zones, and what widens the window over time.
Open PTSD UKHealing wasn't one breakthrough — it was a constellation. These are the doors it came through.
The protective counterpart to ACEs — the good things that buffer the hard ones, and that can still be built now.
He wasn't absent from the story — He was in the therapist's office, the journal page, and the friendship that stayed.
Friends who didn't need me to have it all together — who let me be honest without trying to fix me.
Mentors who re-parented some of the wounded parts of me, slowly rewiring what safe, consistent love feels like.
A place I belonged — not because I performed well, but because I was family.
I'm a therapist, and I have my own therapist. That's not a contradiction — it's wisdom.
Trauma gets stored in the body — moving helped me process what my mind couldn't yet name.
Relearning how to play, create, and access joy without guilt.
Retreats, spiritual direction, and journaling as a lifeline — a record of God's faithfulness when I couldn't see it.
Eight stories from Salt&Light, a Singapore Christian publication. Different struggles, different routes through — all of them honest about the hard parts. Sometimes the most useful thing is simply seeing that someone got to the other side.
The things young people with mental health struggles wish the adults around them understood.
Read on Salt&LightChronic stress, then depression, then suicidal thoughts — not from wanting to die, but from wanting the pain to stop. She now serves on a Christian mental health conference committee.
Read on Salt&LightWhat caregiving cost him, and how he now uses that experience to help other people recover.
Read on Salt&LightA pianist asks whether she can still live out her calling after compounding loss — and finds her way back through worship.
Read on Salt&LightRecovery, two relapses, and a doctor who said she wouldn't judge — an honest account of how non-linear healing actually is.
Read on Salt&LightA lead pastor on the panic attacks and sleepless nights of his first year — and why church leaders need care as much as anyone.
Read on Salt&LightWhat it took for a church to start talking honestly about mental illness, and to build real support around it.
Read on Salt&LightAn ACE story with a long arc: the wound, the healing, and the work that came out of it.
Read on Salt&LightThese stories belong to Salt&Light and to the people who told them. The summaries above are ours; every link goes to the original article.
No pressure, and no timeline. But if something in the session opened a door, here's where it can lead — starting with the two church counselling services closest to us.
Counselling that integrates professional clinical practice with a biblical understanding of wholeness — mental, emotional and spiritual.
6250 6787
counselling@brmc.org.sg · 48 Barker Road, Singapore 309917
Visit the Care CentreRunning since 1991, with full-time counsellors and trained lay counsellors. Open to people of all faiths and backgrounds — you don't need to be a member, or a Christian.
6837 9214
mailbag@wesleymc.org · 5 Fort Canning Road, Singapore 179493
Visit Wesley CounsellingThere are around 46 Family Service Centres across Singapore, staffed by social workers and counsellors who help with emotional, family, relationship and financial difficulties.
Counselling and casework at MSF-funded FSCs is free, you don't need a referral, and you can walk in. If money is also tight, the same social worker can help you apply for support in the same conversation.
Search the MSF directory by postal code, or call the ComCare hotline and they'll match you to your nearest centre.
ComCare — 1800 222 0000
Search the MSF directory24-hour support for anyone in distress or thinking about suicide.
1767
CareText via WhatsApp: 9151 1767
Visit SOSFree, 24/7, anonymous mental health support — by call, WhatsApp or web chat, with trained professionals.
1771
Visit mindline.sgSingapore's national psychiatric hospital, for assessment and treatment.
6389 2000
Visit IMHFree, confidential mental health checks for anyone aged 16 to 30 living in Singapore — which likely includes most of the room. Based at *SCAPE, walk-ins welcome.
Run by IMH, designed specifically to be a low-pressure first step if you're not sure whether what you're feeling "counts".
Visit CHATThe step Grace named as the hardest and the most important. A trusted friend, a mentor, a leader, a counsellor — the point isn't finding the perfect listener, it's ending the silence.
If naming it aloud feels like too much, you can start by showing them what you wrote on your stone.
Dr Bessel van der Kolk's book on trauma and the body — the source of the line Grace quoted in the session.
A fuller explanation of the model in the Burdens We Carry section.
Read moreEssays from Grace on therapy, parenting, and building with a conscience.
Read on SubstackGrace is a social worker, trauma therapist and play therapist. If you'd like to ask something the session didn't cover, or want help working out where to start, you're welcome to write.
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