No More “How Are You?”

Whether you’ve experienced a traumatic moment or not, Jane Rubietta offers practical help for soul healing.

Elisa

No More “How Are You?”

By Jane Rubietta

The back story, so you can understand my issue with the question, “How are you?”

I zipped into a down coat for a brisk early walk in late December.  Commuters and school buses trundled past as I fastfooted down Church Street. (Yes, that really is the street’s name.) Now, finally, after the pandemic and a move, the world reopened to possibilities. Possibilities that did not include being struck by an SUV on that walk. Nor my first conscious awareness in the Neuro ICU in mid-January with no clarity as to why I lay in a hospital bed with a neck brace, attached to tubes, unable to form thoughts let alone complete sentences.

Weeks would pass before I grasped any slight measure of reality. Part of my skull missing, multiple fractures, and vision impairment. Full-blown damage. Thus began the long road through trauma.

Trauma is the ongoing impact of a crisis or event, not the event itself. The Greek word for trauma means “to wound” and is related to the word pierce. The impact of trauma pierces. Whatever the piercing, we’ve all been sideswiped at the corner of Trauma and Faith. From that juncture forward, recovery is rarely a straight road, and often with no definitive end. We’re thrown into a life we did not expect.

Here’s a tiny access ramp for the detour you didn’t choose …

When someone asks you, “How are you?” how often do you answer with, “Fine, thank you”?

Do you ever ask, “Do you really want to know?” What would be your most honest answer? Just FYI: acceptable responses do not include, good, great, super, or how are you doing?

A more finely tuned question that maybe no one ever asks would be, “Where does it hurt?” So ask yourself those questions. Hurt may be an unspoken reality for people in the merge lane of life. Sometimes discouragement rules.

With the original word for trauma related to pierce, too much of our lives seems like Botox for the soul, pumped up for appearances and easy to pop. With this Christian girl deflated by fatigue, by the one-more-thing news from doctors and scans, a therapist suggested I do my own body scan. Include the happy and the hard—from head to toe.

I thanked my brain for remembering today. I know my zip code! The missing-cranium swelling has gone down. I thanked my fractured bones for their invisible healing, and my eyes for their tenacity in trying.

Those are physical workings of my body. The emotional stuff is a different scan and another story.

Your turn. Regardless of your type of wounding, try that. Not to pretend things are good. Just to notice how hard your body and soul work, and the fact of your surviving. You’ve white-knuckled the wheel to get to today.

Then try it with the hurts. Scalp to sole, and soul enroute. Include any hurt that appears: relationship fractures, hard shifts in roles and expectations, diminished abilities. If it feels too much, too heavy, stop there. There is no reward for a flattening by brokenness. Reality can be crushing.

What if we take this inventory of hurting fractured parts, and offer God our broken pieces and places? Not denying any of it but presenting it to God. “Here I am. Here’s my answer to the ‘How are you?’ question. Here’s me with a broken head, and eyes that don’t work together, and bones hollowed out by bed rest. And here’s me, frustrated and sad. Here’s me angry. Here I am. Human. Hurting.”

Again, your turn. Make a list. Dictate it to your phone if focus and writing hurt too much. Wait there and feel. Whatever the hurts, your body and soul know. They keep a running tally, chicken scratches on the walls of our lives and relationships.

But wait, that’s not the sum total of this scan. A closing word of affirmation in this lifting up of pain: “And here you are, God, with me. You can transform this broken state into a holy place. Whether I feel you or not, you are here.”

God can gather broken places and pieces into a mosaic. But without honesty, there is no big picture.

It’s okay if there’s no “glory hallelujah” in your vocab today. Hope is not just long-haul trudging with head down and fake praise, bless-bless-bless. No airbrushing allowed. This is a mosaic of your very real life, broken pieces and small patches of wholeness.

That is beautiful, because you are real.

To the next “How are you?” question, we could answer, “Real.”

Maybe Today . . . I could, just for a moment, cup my hands. Pour my hurts into them. I will lift the bowl upward and offer the pain to heaven.

Adapted from Merge: The Road After Trauma Meets Faith by Jane Rubietta, copyright 2026. Used with permission. For more information, visit JaneRubietta.com.

Jane Rubietta lives and writes and adventures from the Windy City, aka Chicago. Her latest book is Merge:The Road After Trauma Meets Faith. She is also the author of the recently released novel, The Commuter, With humor and depth, Jane speaks internationally, loves to play with words, loves people, doesn’t love goals in January, and actually loves rooting about in the dirt. Find her and her 23 books at JaneRubietta.com, and on social media.