You're on your way.  It's a long journey and that journey can feel torturous.   But if you continue taking baby step after baby step, you will get where you want to go. 

Preparation for the journey
When we go on a trip somewhere there's a certain amount of planning that happens:  figuring out the mode of transportation, the things you want to see, how long you'll be gone, putting the mail on hold or arranging to have someone collect it, getting someone to look after the pets, and arranging for vacation time. 

These same kinds of tasks are there when we go on an internal journey of healing.  The only difference is that when we work inside ourselves the task is more about developing qualities of being.   

Preparing for any journey has us look to the future, anticipating any number of experiences: fun/exciting/fulfilling/nourishing.  Despite having traumatic life experiences we all have hope that life can be better. 

Growing up is a different kind of journey
Most of us didn't have an easy time of it as we grew up.  We weren't taught the skills to navigate our emotional inner world.  We were often left scrambled inside, unable to sort out all the confusing and overwhelming data coming up from inside or from the outside in. 

The most fundamental skill we didn't learn is that we have a choice about how we can experience life.  When our past intrudes into our present we often feel we don't have a choice.  We are catapulted into a morass of feelings, all threatening to take us down. 

Every trauma survivor knows how hard and painful the journey is.   It doesn't feel like there is a choice.  But there is. 

When we acknowledge that for all unfair reasons this is our life, and if we make the decision to deal with it, we are one step ahead of feeling overwhelmed.  We have made a fundamental shift in perspective.

The Choice: Hope for it to be better vs. Fear that it can never be better for you
Inside every person who hurts is a longing for life to be better, to be different.  There's a hope, sometimes secreted away, hidden deep inside.  But it's there; that hope, that longing is always there.  This wish for more is an inherent, innate quality in all of us that usually gets squashed when there's been a lot of suffering.  We hope, even in the face of everything going bad.  We might push the hope away and pretend we don't have it.  But I know because I've been there - somewhere inside, you hope.  We all hope for it to get better.  That it's there is a given.

Since this hope has been so squashed and mangled it often takes being in the presence of others who can hold the perspective that change is possible, during those times when you can't.  (That's one of the things I'm working on creating.  I'll be launching it in the next couple of months to address this hope for those who feel isolated and alone.)

Hope doesn't just spring forward unabashedly.  It requires cultivation and intention.  That's what you'll put into action in the practice section below.
 
Even as we hope for it to be better there is a tremendous fear that we've been left out of the goodness equation of life.  Others will get better.  But not us.  Not me.   This ever present fear can completely absorb us, leaving negative imprints on our psyche.
 
Parts of us that protect us, not wanting us to be hurt again, disappointed yet again, will not be able to relinquish the fear easily.  We gently need to understand their perspective.
 
Cultivating the capacity to focus the mind to move where you want it to go
When we set an intention to shift gears and cultivate a more positive or hopeful frame for our life we are laying the foundation.  Another way to see it is we are preparing the soil in which to plant the seed(s).  
 
In tending the soil, we care for its underground nourishment.  We gently weed the ground, making sure the tender seed is not encroached on, so it can grow.
 
Learning to tend to this process moment by moment we begin seeing the world with a different set of glasses, a different perspective.  The negative material gets balanced with the positive antidote:  I am really scared and   I am going to try to believe something different is possible.