Shared Experiences Don't Always Equal Shared Outcomes

​A friend asked me recently, and it's a question I get a lot living personally and professionally in the trauma world, but she asked me, why do siblings who grow up sharing similar challenging circumstances go on to live very different lives?

At the heart of that question, basically, is why do shared traumas impact individuals differently? Why would one sibling come out on the other side of a shared experience, especially a really difficult experience, in a healthier place than another.

One answer I've come to understand about that question is that even though many experiences might FEEL shared, they are often experienced quite differently. Our hearts don’t experience trauma as collective stories; they experience it as deeply personal gaps in our individual souls. It's not the situation itself, but how those gaps do or don't get filled in the aftermath that shapes who we become.

Dr. Bruce Perry, a trauma expert, beautifully articulates why this is true. He says healing from trauma is possible, but it hinges on relational experiences—being truly seen and heard by someone. It's not about simply enduring an experience; it's about connection. While siblings might share parents, they often don’t share the same connections, the same moments of attunement and love, with their parents or with non-parents who show up in their lives during or after adversities and traumas.

In my life, when the home felt silent and distant, I had grandfathers who filled those spaces with gentle presence and reassurance. They never needed to say much. Their presence whispered louder than the chaos. That quiet assurance—“everything will be OK”—provided an emotional anchor.

Looking back, I realize these two men unknowingly put me on a path toward healing I still fight to navigate every day. They were my first glimpses at experiencing the power found in changing what comes next.

Trauma thrives in silence, but healing thrives in the safety of relationship. The critical difference isn't what happened to us, but what came afterward. Were we met with silence - were our experiences stuffed into secrecy - or were we met with presence?

Did someone notice us struggling or did we learn early on that silence was our best friend?

I've learned in my own journey that our scars might shape us, but they don’t define our future. Healing isn't guaranteed by shared suffering but by individual moments of connection that break through isolation. If people have different outcomes from a shared hardship it often means one found that connection while the other remained locked in silence.

So, the key isn't to rewrite our past—it's to rewrite our relationships. That is certainly the current chapter of my own healing journey.

Sometimes the pain can still feel impossible, but I do know this: no trauma is beyond healing. We are not destined to live broken, but called to live connected.

Life is not an experience to conquer on the way to a place called healed; life is discovering that peace is best experienced lovingly helping each other conquer demons.

We heal not by changing history, but by changing what comes next. Especially when what comes next is someone showing up in your life wanting to embrace your struggles and not to help you bury them. Especially when someone shows up loving us in a way silence never could.