Using Poetry to Overcome Trauma: Quina Aragon’s Testimony of Faith & Healing

Dawn Damon: My guest today is an author, editor, and spoken word artist whose poems take readers on a journey from peeling oranges and tangerines from her mamita's trees to experiencing extreme trauma to then a husband who rubs her aching back in the ER room and holds her hand after yet another false pregnancy test. Using story, scripture, and personal poetry of love, please welcome my guest today, Quina Aragon.

Hey, good to see you!

Quina Aragon: Thank you so much for having me.

Dawn Damon: Absolutely. Welcome to The Bravehearted Woman Podcast. We talk about women doing brave things and we know that sometimes being brave means you're just willing to show up and that can be brave.

I want to talk to you today about your story. I love what you do. In fact, spoiler alert, maybe we'll ask you to do a small poem for us before we let you go today.

Quina Aragon: I bet.

Dawn Damon: You are a new Christian and then at the tender age of 16, you tragically experience some extreme trauma and it begins to shape the rest of the trajectory of your life.

What do you think God's plan was? Talk to us and tell us a little bit about you and your story.

Quina Aragon: Oh, great question. It’s a great way to start it out.

The Lord saved me when I was 16, I was, you know, living my life for sports, living my life for academics, finding my identity, and those things doing well. And it, you know, If you guys have read the book of Ecclesiastes, any readers out there, um, have read that in the Old Testament, you know, you see this, this constant refrain of it's meaningless. It's meaningless. It's like chasing after the wind, right? And so that was my experience. It was from a high schooler's perspective. I had everything. We were financially well off, had the boyfriend had, you know, all the accolades, and yet I felt such a deep sense of this is empty and this is meaningless.

God used that coming to what I thought was success in high school and finding at the end of it just the nothingness, haunting me, God used that to really draw me to himself. So, it was that plus hospitality, and what I mean by that is there was a girl in my English class and my volleyball team who I befriended. I was a setter on the volleyball team and she scored all the points because she jumped really high. So of course, I liked her. But besides that, she was just such a nice person. She didn't talk the way that we talked and there was something different about her. And so, you know, I hung out with her after volleyball practice at before games, hung out at her house and they always invited me with open arms. Of course, this family was a Christian family. So I got to see, you know, the mom and dad forgive each other, the mercy and grace that the family extended to each other. I was like, what is this? This is different. I was just very drawn by that.

I remember she told me that I could have a relationship with God and just even that paradigm, that idea of having a relationship was like totally new for me. I had never put relationship and God in the same sentence. And so through various means, but at one point I just had a breakdown in my room by myself and I prided myself back then on not crying, you know, I'm a tough one. I'm you know, and so, I was there by myself crying, breaking down and it led to that, that haunting feeling, that haunting sense that I was mentioning about, man, this is all meaningless. If I'm rich, I die. If I'm poor, I die. If I'm wise, I die.

I had an aunt and uncle and have an aunt and uncle in the Philippines that I'm part Filipina so they have some family there and they would send me a Bible frequently and I just would, you know, throw it on the shelf, not care about it. So I look at my shelf. There's the Bible. It's collecting dust. And I'm like, let me just open this thing. I don't know. I thought it was a book of rules. I thought it was old English that I couldn't understand anyway. I opened it and much to my surprise, the poetry of the Psalms is what grabbed my heart. It was Psalm 69. It just happened to be, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know the chapter verse. I didn't know any of that, but it was Psalm 69 which saved me. “Oh God, the waters have risen over my head. I have more enemies than hair on my head. You know, answer me with your sure salvation.” It was that language, that invitation of God to say, you're allowed to feel this way.

And I just go, that's how I feel. This is crazy. What? There must be more to this. So, me being nervous to talk on my feet and yeah, as I've, you know, historically been a little bit nervous to do that, I'm better off in a corner writing out my thoughts. So I wrote out a letter to my friend and said, listen, I don't. It was way too long-winded. It was like a four or five-page letter all to say, can you basically explain more of this God stuff to me? Of course, she was more than willing. So on a bus ride to an away game for volleyball, she sat down and used one of those old-school gospel tracks that just broke down the simplicity of the gospel.

That night I prayed, you know, the little prayer on the back and was like, I know that that was when the Lord saved me. There was like a clear moment. You know, after that, she and her family started to mentor me and disciple me. But I knew based off of scripture and I knew from what I was being taught that to follow Christ meant to take up your cross and die daily. I knew that. So when suffering just began to hit and hit and hit. I mean, and I share it in my poem, which I'd be happy to share, but you know, a mentor died, a friend died, you know, we dealt with the addiction of a loved one. Sexual abuse was happening at the same time. I just, and I didn't even know that's what it was until I was way older. All this shame and, and just, just some of, a lot of my ignorance too, of just as being a new believer. I didn't know the importance of community. I didn't know I should probably tell people what was going on in my life and at home. My parents got a divorce. It was just one thing after another.

And to actually answer your question, I look back now and I go, Oh I've given maybe the last five or six years by God's grace to lament what a lot of those things to grieve what those things were. While at the same time, holding space for the fact that I'm so, so grateful that God had saved me prior to all of that happening. Because I can say with confidence without the Lord, without God on my side, and without Jesus in my life, I would not have survived just that season, let alone all the other trials that have come in seasons in my adulthood. But that introduction to the faith was literally picking up your cross. I did it so imperfectly and so lots of zeal, not a whole lot of knowledge, but I was just hungry and I wanted to know God and that part hasn't changed. And I'm so thankful for the journey that God takes us on in that.

Dawn Damon: I love your story and it's so powerful and I just have to make a few comments here. First of all, you know that a 16-year-old can say that life is meaningless. None of this matters. I can see the trajectory of this, having enough, not having something die or live. It's all meaningless. Like what else is there? I'm so thankful to the Holy Spirit who doesn't look at our gender or age or ethnicity, but that Holy Spirit was speaking to you, whether you're 8 or 80.

You know, God has a plan and a purpose for our life. Your purpose was then ignited because there's a poet inside of you. God created you and put a poet inside of you. That poet was unleashed and ignited when you read the poetry of the Bible, the calling and the gift like went padau. So I love your story.

I agree with you that if you weren't anchored in Christ, Thankfully, and as God would have it, you were anchored in Christ when trauma begins to hit because isn't it true that we can come up with a whole lot of explanation about what's going we fill in the blank. We make our own story we come up with our own narrative. I like what you're saying two things can be true at the same time. I can love God and I can be a Christian. I can also be experiencing this suffering, which is not from God.

I had the same experience as a 16-year-old girl. At some point, then you did begin to have some doubts though, and some struggles. How did that catch up with you?

Quina Aragon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the function of the trials that I think, I think is first Peter, if you, in some translation, it could say that God hurls at us like a curve ball, all the curve balls of life, right? Like those things are meant to strengthen our faith. But I don't think, just based on what I see in the Psalms, based on what I see in the book of Job, book of Lamentations, for example, and even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross, the things that are said from men and women of God and the Son of God are God. Why there's not a doubt in a sense of, I want to walk away or I'm trying to walk away from God, but there's a, as a Psalmist says, I pour out my complaint to God. So there's this like need to express to God. God, this feels like you're being cruel. This feels like I'm a cosmic joke. This feels like just wrong. Like God, are you really just? Are you really? Who you say you are, are you really love? And they're in the wrestling.

We may walk away like Jacob did with a broken hip, right? We may walk away with a limp that causes us to depend on God, but we also walk away with a new name. And we walk away with a changed identity from being willing to get on the wrestling mat, if you will, with God. Because at the end of lament does come praise eventually does come joy as the Psalms say like weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. It's that progression that I see in scripture and that I've seen over and over and over again in my own life going into the pit. Then he redeems my life from the pit crying out to God in my sadness and in my weakness and then he becomes my strength.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. So many times I think as Christians, we want to have like a spiritual bypass. Like, can I just go, you know, I've experienced the death. Can I just have the resurrection? Do I really have to descend into the dark place? Do I really have to go there? Do I have to feel? Do I have to process my story and yet lament, grieving, honoring what was lost or stolen? The emotions that we experience are so vital to our health and really our testimony long term because it's not sustainable. Is it just to say, Oh, I'm okay. Everything's fine. And just continue on.

I mean, I tried to do that for many, many years. It was in my thirties when I finally discovered, no, you have post-traumatic stress syndrome. You actually have so much grief from your childhood, sexual abuse, and ongoing abuse. If you don't process and tell your story, at least to yourself, for starters, then to God or the other way around, you're going to just be really shallow and not really feel. So I'm just curious. So you have gone on to experience that lament and then you started writing. You're a writer. You're a poet. How did that start to emerge? And then eventually it took the form of a book. But tell us about your writing journey and how that all began for you.

Quina Aragon: Wow. And I love what you just said.

What I see God doing constantly in the story of scripture is taking the materials that are already there, whether it's in a culture, whether it's in a person's story, you know, think of Moses murdering the Egyptian, right? He has a sense of justice, but it's misguided. Then God ends up using him later on after he's done some, you know, formation in his heart in life to use him as an instrument of God's justice to redeem his people out of slavery.

So, I constantly see over and over God taking those materials. So to answer your question, I've always enjoyed writing. I've one core memory of me being in fourth grade or something. Everyone got to go to recess. We got to go to recess, but there was an essay that we had been assigned in the class prior. I needed to tell whatever story I was telling and really feel it. finish it. I remember just making that conscious decision that I was not going to go to recess because this is more important to me writing this, whatever that piece was.

Dawn Damon: You're one of those writers.

Quina Aragon: One of those is a little overachieving on that side. And so God took that material, even though I didn't know him, you know, he took that material and. Turned it into this creative expression of what has been my walk with Christ.

So the funny part of that is in terms of creativity, right? Like I could do academic writing all day. That's fine. I used to love presenting all of that, but God took those materials with writing, and I was terrible at poetry. I, my friend that had shared the gospel with me, she was like, yeah, I remember, you know, like back in 10th grade, we had the poetry section. You were so bad at this. The one test that I actually, I was an honor roll student in high school, like the one class one test I actually failed in high school was the poetry section in AP lit.

It's again like God has a sense of humor, but God used me just genuinely and imperfectly walking with Jesus and putting my prayers onto the pages of a journal, my thoughts, and my struggles onto the pages of a journal, and out would just come poetry. Just not even intentionally, it would just come out that way. So for me, it's been very clear that. The poetry especially is really a gift. I mean, all of it is, but like, it's a gift from God to be used for God. And so I've, I've tried to stick with that.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, we would love it. Would you want, you have a poem handy? I'm sure you have one by heart, but we would love to hear some of that.

Quina Aragon: I'll read this one. This is Welcome to the Faith since we were on that topic.

Welcome to the faith

at 16. and

back then,

I’d have run through a rod

for my God.

brand new believer

Welcome, Quina.

you’ll never be the same.

and I wasn’t.

but, then again,

back then,

I saw no face

to mirror

my emotional conflicted-ness

at my parents’ split

just months

after I prayed

my first true “Amen.”

back when,

I didn’t know

I should maybe mention

home was swallowing me whole

and the only touch

that seemed safe

touched me in ways

that shoveled me

under my shame

bearing Your name

but sneaking hands

where they shouldn’t be

Welcome to the faith, welcome to secrecy.

back then,

You were new to me

yet

You were my everything.

I knew to follow meant

carrying cross, yet

staring at addiction’s grimace—

the way it makes

the finest face

shrivel and sink

deflating the ability to dream—

at 17, I admit,

I didn’t expect that.

back when,

I’d cringe in class

as kids laughed and rapped

about crack

cocaine, like it didn’t just disintegrate

everything around me

like it wasn’t the enemy

no, back then,

I thought maybe this was it

maybe this was Your plan for me, my purpose

to never get out, so . . . I quit

(to my forever chagrin,

it seems)

volleyball dreams, my student-athlete

trajectory

back when,

my high school coach,

(who’d known a bit about my home)

for some reason

made it his mission

to torment me

all season, antagonizing

my newfound faith.

then pulled me aside

to tell me a lie

I’d spend the rest of my life

trying not to believe

(but I believed it then)

he drew a chart on a paper,

pointed to its peak and said,

“this is you now. almost 18.

this is the best you’ll ever be.

it’s only downhill from here.”

back when,

I’d already seen

my friend die

my mentor die

my life tear

at the seams.

back then,

I didn’t know this was all called

trauma

that my brain would

black out memories

my body would keep

my nightmares would

later remind me

of

back when,

I began

this great migration

away from hoping in my own

fleeting sense of success

to hoping in the resurrection

yes, back then

my childhood experienced

its own sort of death,

welcomed to the faith

with pain I still feel today

but, back then,

I remember,

I refuse to forget

yes, I refuse to forget:

I’d lay my head on the pillow

and pray to this Jesus

I’d found myself

in love with, this

Jesus, who, I knew,

had changed me

was changing me within

and, back then,

You gave me a vision

in the screaming silence

of my loneliness:

there You were, holding me

with scarred hands, you’d rock me

in the night

’til finally, I’d

fall asleep.

Welcomed to the faith,

I’ve never been the same.

Dawn Damon: Wow. That's incredible. That's beautiful. It's heart-wrenching. Thank you for sharing your story woven into that poetry.

You know, you reference often an African proverb that says, share the facts and I'll learn and tell the truth and I'll believe, tell a story and I'll be forever changed. And that is what you've just done, that storytelling in scripture and in your own life, that has really been a means of transformation for you, hasn't it?

Quina Aragon: Absolutely.

Yeah. I've, I mean, what you were saying earlier, I think is so needed in our spiritual formation in the church is this marriage and was what I try to kind of do on an introductory level in this book is this marriage of biblical theology, understanding the overarching storyline of scripture. What is God doing from Genesis to revelation? And the marriage of that? With story work, which is, you know, being willing to engage your story. If you really believe that the ultimate author of scripture is God, right? That means He's the author of my life and your life as well. Then He wants to take the raw materials that have consisted of whatever your life has consisted of the themes, the characters, the plot twists, the settings. He wants to take all of that and not discard it.

That's not what it means to be the new creation of the 2nd Corinthians 5. That's not what the new creation means. It means he takes what's already there and he resurrects it. The same way that he took the body of Jesus, that was theirs, a real human body. He didn't discard it and then create a completely new body for the resurrected Christ. He took what was there and then he made this resurrected glorified body. He wants to do the same thing with our stories. He is the same author of that storyline of scripture of your life.

So, the more willing we are to engage our stories in light of scripture story, it empowers us. To have that agency to sort of co-author to steal a phrase from Dan Allender, but to co-author our stories with God, to be partners with him, as Adam and Eve were in the garden, to be partners with him in bringing about redemptive acts in this world for the new creation to form. Flourish all around us, but we can't do that unless we're willing to look back at those dark chapters, those chapters. We don't want to talk about that. Our family doesn't want to talk about it, we have to do it with God's help, with Jesus, alongside us the whole way. And then sort of exchange of wounds. Jesus, here's my wounds. Here's my story. Here's where I say, ouch. And he's like, yes, I want to sit there. That's your heart. Pour out your heart before the Lord. Psalm 62. Like I want that. That's what I want. I don't need your performance. I don't need, you know, your ministry credentials and all the notches in your, but I don't need all of that. I want your heart. And when you are willing to pour out your heart before me and exchange that wound, I'm willing to invite you as he did Thomas in the book of John. Touch my wounds. So then we now have this exchange of wounds and this, as Paul says in Philippians through this fellowship with Christ and his suffering so that we can experience the power of his resurrection.

Dawn Damon: Yes and Amen. So powerful.

Those dark chapters that we don't want to see those dark chapters are actually, you know, like the material of which God creates this amazing reflection of, okay, without that. I don't know that I'd be this. I like to say it's my history, but when I give it to him, it's his story. Then it's this redemptive piece of beautiful artwork or whatever. God uses my life now. I don't want to have gone through what I've gone through, but since I did and everything is allowed by God to touch my life, I belong to him. You know, nothing comes to me that God doesn't say, I'm not the author of that, but we're going to allow that. It's going to work for my good. It's going to work for your good. You're going to give it to me and I'm going to redeem it. Your new book, Love Has a Story, 100 Meditations on the Enduring Love of God. And that's what we're talking about right now. That includes your personal poetry, and biblical stories, in which you are just a rich fountain, my sister girl, of these beautiful, amazing stories. You have questions. For reflection, actionable steps. You've already said, you know, the Bible is meant to be experienced and embodied, right? And so how can Christians respond to this and react to God's love? Talk to me for a moment as we kind of wrap this up about the God of love.

Quina Aragon: Oh, yeah. No, let's take another three hours, please.

No, I think the beauty of God's love is that it's who he is. The apostle John, the disciple who Jesus loved as he puts it in the book of John, says in 1 John, one of his letters, he says, God is is love. This is not just like a New Testament reality that just sort of happened when Jesus came. This is who God has always revealed himself to be. When you think of, like, for example, Exodus 34, one of the most important scenes of the Old Testament in which God reveals his name and his goodness, his glory, right to Moses. When he hides him in the cleft of the rock, he says, I am a God, compassionate, gracious, full of hesed, full of steadfastness.

Now the word chesed in the Old Testament in Hebrew is not a word that can be perfectly translated into any language. We try to translate it as maybe like steadfast love, enduring love, faithful love, and loving-kindness. But there's really no perfect translation. So how can we understand what is the love of God? What is chesed? What is this chesed about that's repeated throughout scripture?

Well, Jesus is like, God is like, let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story because this is how you're gonna see what does really means. What does it mean that God is love? So pay attention to the story, you know, obviously, my book is a resource to help you get some sort of footing on what is like the 10,000 foot view on this big picture story of the Bible. How do we see God's love in it so that when we are reading scripture, we're able to place ourselves in that story?

Hopefully to better understand and interpret it better and then therefore better apply it to our lives. But on another sense, there's like just start where you are, you know, if what you have today is a complaint before God. If what you have today is to give thanks before God, whatever you have, start there just remember right now. Thank you, Lord. Jesus's invitation to come to me, those who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. He says he's gentle and humble of heart. Like his heart is gentle and humble, right? His heart is full of Hesed. His heart is full of love. And so just start where you are. That's literally the invitation to come.

Dawn Damon: Amen. I must say that anyone who's listening today to this episode of The Bravehearted Woman, maybe that's where you find yourself. Maybe you haven't given your story over to God. Maybe you've run from the chest, the love, the all-knowing love of God. Maybe you don't want to be known. Maybe that shame feels too powerful over your life and you still feel the need to hide. You know what? I've been there. I experienced that and when I found out that God knew, saw, and loved in, in spite of, and even because of my story, I am, God is a safe place. His invitation is beautiful for you. You meant to write this book in 10 months. It took four years. What are you? Slow writer or what?

Quina Aragon: Probably a slow writer and slow reader.

So again, God has a sense of humor. I mean, it was supposed to be a 10-month project to write about the attribute of God's love. I just was enjoying the beginning. I was going to a coffee shop. I lived in Tampa at the time. I'd go to a coffee shop down the road studying God's word. Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you, Jesus. It was genuine. It was real. A lot of that content is, you know, finds itself in the book now. You're welcome.

But then I woke up one night in excruciating back and rib pain and chest pain. Long story short, ended up getting hospitalized. Multiple times told I might die, you know, battle with stage four endometriosis, which was unrelated to that, but just so many health complications, five surgeries, the loss of six organs. So you can imagine my focus had to become, it was literally like John and my husband and I always say, it's like this season for quite a few years where God had us take several seats. You're so busy in ministry. Look at you. You're leading a Bible study. Look at you. You're speaking at this and that conference. You're doing this. Now, my only job was just to find a doctor, get massages, and go do what I needed to do to survive today.

In that darkness and mystery, you know, in the moment, you really barely ever see it, right? That's why it is the valley of deep darkness in Psalm 23. It's like you don't see it But in hindsight, there's a way in which you know, I look even at my book. I know when I wrote that poem I know when I wrote that or what when I learned the content of that meditation and a lot of it is out of those dark places. That's where his rod and staff have comforted me to quote Psalm 23 again. It is in hindsight, often that we see the movements of God in our lives if we're willing to reflect with him on it. And so the second half of writing this book came after we relocated to Orlando. God had brought breakthroughs even financially and physically. There was just a million different ways going to trauma therapy. Then finally finding a great Jesus community here in Orlando that we have just been so blessed by and the juices started to come back. I just couldn't stop writing and by God's grace finished and thanks to Moody Publishers for being extremely gracious with the timeline on that But yeah, it just it just You know, I could not have written the way I did apart from that, those sufferings.

Dawn Damon: Well, we are so thankful and grateful that you did. So grateful that you survived and recovered. I don't know what you're, if you're walking in complete wholeness, or if it's still a day-to-day situation for you, but so grateful and thankful that you are here, and that you are allowing God to pour through you. You are a vessel. You're a beautiful girl. I love your whole vibe, actually. I know God's using you in powerful ways and the name of the book is Love Has a Story: 100 Meditations on the Enduring Love of God.

Again, our guest today, Quina Aragon. We would love to know where we can send our listeners for your book. Amazon? Where do they find you?

Quina Aragon: Yeah. I mean, anywhere you buy books, you can get it online. Target, Barnes and Noble. I usually get my stuff on Amazon, and Moody Publishers, or you can just go to lovehasastory.com and see it all there.

Dawn Damon: Lovehasastory. com. Can they write you a note? Or send you a word to you that way as well.

Quina Aragon: Absolutely. Yeah. So you can on there, it'll say subscribe to my email list on sub stack and you can subscribe and write me from there. We'd love to hear from them.

Dawn Damon: Beautiful. Do all the things bravehearted women. Wonderful to have you with us again. And listen, we're going to have all those details in the show notes for you.

And again, as always my book and my FREE chapter of my book, just by going to resources or themakingofabraveheartedwoman.com and I'm gonna leave you like I always do amazing, beautiful women. This is your moment to find your brave and live your dreams!