Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Love is a word

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It’s [love] a human emotion.
No, it’s a word.  What matters is the connection the word implies.
~Matrix Revolutions

Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
…
Maybe there’s a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and its a broken Hallelujah
~Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
~Elie Wiesel

Love is just another four letter word,
But that never stopped nobody.
~Hey Violet, Like Lovers Do

What does it mean to love?  To love another.  To love yourself.  Romantic love.  Platonic love.  Parental love.

How do we define the ideas of mature love and immature love?  

How do our attachment wounds and trauma come into play?

How do we not have expectations, demands and assumptions and still have our boundaries, wants, and needs met?

How do we know when we are in love?  How do we know it’s actually love and not simply a repeat of a well known (and ultimately harmful) pattern or cycle?

How do we know when our relationships are helpful and not harmful?  

What is passion?  Is it a repeat of harmful patterns?  Does it really boil down to chemical reactions (dopamine, serotonin, ocytocin)?

When we love a person, be that our Self or another, how do we treat them?  How do we want to treat them?  Are we willing to do the work of love to make the shift?

I deeply believe the work of breaking our inter-generational patterns and cycles is an act of love.

But what does that mean?

Love is caring. 
Love is boundaries.  
Love is connection.
Love is being seen and heard, exactly as we are. 
Love is seeing and hearing another, exactly as they are.
Love is being accountable.  To ourselves.  To others.  
Love is holding others accountable.  
Love is encouraging growth, expansion. 
Love is beginnings and endings.  Love is allowing the beginnings and endings.
Love is not forced, however, love is work.
Love is a verb.  An action.
Love is freedom, liberation.
Love is change.  
Love is release.  Letting go.  

Love is not flowery words or poetry.
Love is not forever and ever if the cost is stagnation.
Love is not promises we can never keep simply because we are human and we cannot foresee what the future holds.  However, love is commitment. 
Love is not ownership.
Love is not confinement.
Love is not punishment or retribution
Love is not lies or dishonesty to “save someone’s feelings”.  With our Self or with others.
Love is not safe, in that love is a risk, love is vulnerable and vulnerability.
Love is not comfortable.  In fact, love encourages discomfort.  Because discomfort is a sign of growth and change.
Love is not pain.  (There is a distinct difference between pain and discomfort).
Love is not isolation.  
Love is not about winning or getting rewards. 

These are some of the ways I’m finding myself defining love at the moment as I look at my relationships, with others and with myself.  As I consider my own wants and needs.  As I consider my own attachment wounds and tender spots.  As I open and acknowledge some of the places I could focus some processing and healing.  As I open and acknowledge many of the patterns and cycles I have broken and disrupted.  

Love is an emotion, sure.  Love is a feeling, absolutely.  And in so many ways, love is non-verbal and indescribable.

And.

Love is not an excuse for breaking boundaries.  Love is not an excuse for harm (i.e. I’m doing this because I love you or for your own good).  Love is not hierarchies or striving or needing to prove our worth.  

Love is a willingness, and the ability, to do the challenging, uncomfortable, work of breaking the patterns and cycles that have been passed down to us and of healing our own wounds and processing our own traumatic experiences.  

Love is not easy, but the choice to love can be.

/../

This essay was originally shared in my weekly newsletter on April 19, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Breaking patterns, disrupting cycles, & accountability

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Healing can only happen when people are willing to shift.  ~Iyanla Vanzant

Much too often, our minds are used to somewhat efficiently excuse and justify old patterns, when the same energy and efforts could go towards the creating of new ones. Our society is, meanwhile, deeply enamored with technological creation, invention, and marvels. Many of these technological advancements assist with life as it is, however, the creation of new patterns of behavior and ways of life remains largely unexplored.  ~Sabina Nore, 22 Triggers

True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impact your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again. ~Mia Mingus

Looking back on my thirteen years of motherhood, there is so much I would do different, if I could go back in time and start all over again.  There were so many mistakes.  So much I got wrong.  So many patterns and cycles that I continued.  So many I am still working on breaking.

And.

There is so much I got right, and I would do it the same way again.  There were patterns I have been able to break, cycles I have been able to disrupt.

It is the both and.

All our relationships are often like that.

There are moments we look back on and wish with every fiber of our being we had made another choice, done something different.  And then there are the moments that we look back on and breathe a sigh of yes, that one, that I got right.

Hindsight is nearly always 20/20.  Looking back we have a clearer view of those moments, the ones that mattered, the ones that didn’t.  The ones that were defining, the ones that weren’t.  The ones that didn’t feel significant at the time, but turned out to be.  Those moments we didn’t know would be the last, the times we thought we would always have another chance, more time, but it didn’t turn out that way.  

We all carry within us patterns and cycles passed on to us by our families of origin, by our genetic ancestors, and by our culture. We have a choice, to a certain degree, to break and disrupt those cycles, to create change, to do different than what was done to us, to do different than what was done before.

I say to a certain degree, because we can’t break a pattern unless we become aware of it.  This requires not only our ability to look back at past generations, but also an ability to look objectively at ourselves.

We need to be able to see the ways we have perpetuated these cycles.  The ways we have continued the patterns.  

This requires us to have a certain level of self-awareness.  I believe it also requires us to have the ability to give ourselves self-compassion, to not dive into shame spirals and defensiveness.  To be able to explain the whys of the harm we ourselves have participated in, but not make excuses for it.

There are no excuses for causing harm to others, or ourselves for that matter.  Regardless of what was done to us in the past.  Regardless of what was done to our ancestors.

In order to break these patterns and cycles we need to be willing to hold ourselves accountable.  

Accountability, has four basic components.**  These are:

  • Self reflection
  • Apology
  • Repair
  • Changed behavior 

**From Mia Mingus

We need to be willing, and able, to do all four.  It requires our ability to be wrong, and to actually change our behavior in the future. And in order to change behaviors, we need to do the work of unraveling, untangling, and processing the trauma that lives within us.  

It is not glamorous or fun work.

It is work most people avoid doing.  I get it.  I understand why.  It is hard and brutal to process the trauma that lives within us.  To do the accompanying grief work.  To move into liminal space and unknown territory of doing different.  Of making change.  

Of actually breaking and disrupting, and not repeating and perpetuating, old patterns and cycles of harm. 

Even in the this work of doing different, we will still get some things wrong.  Which is why self-compassion is so important.  Which is why accountability, and our own willingness to go deep within ourselves and look at our own shadows, is so important.  Which is why we need to remember that we are all only human, to make space for forgiveness when appropriate (and I do not believe it is always appropriate). 

I have spent the last thirteen years practicing accountability with my daughter. Believe me, there have been ample opportunities for me to practice! And almost daily there are more opportunities. I practice it with my son.  I am learning to practice it with my friends and lovers.

Accountability is vulnerable.  It is a vulnerable space to move into admitting we have caused harm and taking ownership of it.  It requires that we be able to hold the disappointment, hurt, and or frustration that we caused, of someone we love; and it requires that we process our own grief that comes with it.

It all takes intention, practice, and time.  Life will give us plenty of opportunities.  A vital piece is remembering the importance of doing our own work of breaking the patterns and cycles still alive in us, in between each new opportunity.  

This is how we create change in the world :: by doing our individual work and the work of healing and creating a loving relationships with those in our lives.  It means we will each be in the wrong, and this needs to be okay in the sense that we accept our responsibility and do the work of repair and change.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on April 12, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

We’ll be exploring these ideas in the seven week course Embodied Writing :: Relating, Relationships, & Trauma. You can learn more and register here.

 

Activated, softening, or both

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The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.  ~Willa Cather

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.  ~Camille Paglia

Many of us across the globe are staying home in an attempt to flatten the curve of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We aren’t leaving for work or play.  We are within our four walls every day of the week, almost every single hour – with the occasional exception to leave and get groceries or other necessities.  

This can have us all a little stir crazy.  Developing “cabin fever” as we are also trying to manage the stress of the present along with any old traumas that may be activated right now because of what is happening both out in the world and with our own friends and families.

The stress, frustration, and grief centered around the present moments mixed with the same around our past wounding, can lead us to not always being our best selves.  

We don’t have much control over the current global pandemic.  We can each do our own part to try to flatten the curve and stay home as much as possible and to practice physical distancing when we are out and about.  And that is all any of us can do.

This lack of control may have us agitated.  

Add to this all our usual distractions aren’t available to us – sports broadcasts have halted, bars are closed, as are restaurants and retail stores. The ways we avoid, ignore, and stuff down our feelings; the ways we avoid dealing with our past and current hurts, pain, and trauma – they are mostly gone.  

This leaves us almost no other choice than to sit with our own stuff.

This too, can be highly agitating.

In our own agitation we may find ourselves being short with others.  We may find ourselves picking fights. We may find ourselves stuck in a cycle of blame and shame – blaming another for how we are feeling and acting while also feeling shame around how we feeling and acting.

We are in an unprecedented time.  This can be a time of healing – if we allow it to be.  This can be a time to begin to learn to sit with our own uncomfortable feelings (emotions and their physical sensations) – if we allow it to be. This can be a time of learning and practicing breaking life long and generations old patterns and cycles of harm – to ourselves and others — if we allow it to be. 

Many of us are in a heightened state of activation.  This true. It is also true that even with this, we are still responsible for our actions. For the ways we treat those close to us. For the ways we show up, for ourselves and for others.  For the ways we use this time, when all our go-to distractions are unavailable.  

And while many of us are in a heightened state of activation, it is also true that many of us are in a heightened state of softening.  That our hearts are breaking open even more, that the remaining bits of our hard armor are falling away, that we are in this time gently shifting into new ways of being with each other and with ourselves. 

And it is true that for many of us, we are moving back and forth between heightened activation and softening.

As we move through these challenging and unprecedented times, I invite us to come back into our bodies, to be present to the myriad of conflicting and complimentary emotions and physiological sensations we are experiencing.  I invite us to seek out new ways of being with ourselves, to find ways to break old harmful patterns and cycles.  I invite us to soften, to become gentler, with ourselves and others.  I invite us to find ways to inner peace within the outer chaos.  I invite us to nurture, to provide loving care, to ourselves and others. 

I invite us to a new way of being in the world.  One that gathers together in community, even when we cannot physically gather.  One that cares for one another instead of only looking out for ourselves.  One that shares in the abundance instead hoard out of fear of scarcity.  One that guides us to peace and love and joy as well as creates space for feeling, processing, and allowing the flow of upset, loss, and grief.

Let us all be a part of a global revolution of change.  To acknowledge our fear and to do it anyway. To step into the unknown, with open hearts and open arms -for ourselves, for others, and for our planet.  

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 4, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, subscribe here.

In Embodied Writing :: Relating, relationships, and trauma we will be exploring how trauma impacts our relationships and ways that we can begin to break (often generations old) patterns and cycles. You can learn more and register here.

The importance of connecting during isolation

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A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection to a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  ~Albert Einstein

When people go within and connect with themselves, they realize they are connected to the universe and they are connected to all living things.  ~Armand Dimele

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.  ~Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

As most of us across the globe are in physical isolation to help flatten the curve of the COVID-19 global pandemic, we are all adjusting to new and different ways of connecting with those we care about.  Zoom has seen a massive uptick in usage, as well as phone apps like WhatsApp and MarcoPolo.  We are learning the importance of these connections as the option to see folks in person is not advisable or safe.

We humans are social beings.  We are meant to live in community and to connect to each other regularly.  Our very survival once depended on it and our brains and epigenetic memory haven’t forgotten this.

For some of us, we normally live in relative isolation.  We only go out once or twice a week, if that often or we rarely socialize outside of work.  This means that having this already limited time of interaction with others removed as a possibility for an unknown period of time can have our feelings of isolation and anxiety skyrocket.

I know this has been true for me.  

I like to be “alone with people.”  This looks like me going to my favorite pub, sitting in a booth alone and working (and eating and drinking too), while others around me talk and laugh and socialize.  It gives my introverted self a sense of connection and community and protects my INFJ self from needing to partake in small talk.  I also go to the beach and usually see a couple people, we wave at each other or say hello and go about our business. It is very limited interaction, and yet I find it an important part of my own connection to humanity and it helps with my own sense of belonging and community.

(This is not to say I don’t go out with friends, I do, and not all that frequently because introvert and life is just full).

Having this very limited amount of community removed as an option for me has been intense.  

What this has meant is me pushing myself outside my own comfort zone.  I have joined two different online groups; groups with people I have never met.  And I am actually making myself participate.  I’m joining the calls.  I’m connecting the FB groups and on the group Marco Polo.  I’m putting myself out into the world in a way I don’t normally.

It is uncomfortable as hell.

And it is absolutely totally necessary for my own mental health.

Connecting to others, in whatever ways we can, is important.  We can still maintain our boundaries, we can still honor our introverted parts (for those of us who have them). 

And presently we need to be finding new and different ways of connecting.  What the looks like will be different for each of us.  What is important is that we are connecting.  That we are having our needs for a sense of belonging met.  That we are finding ways to sooth our anxiety and co-regulate.  That we are connecting with faces and voices outside our own four walls (whether we live with others or not).

It is vital in this time of physical isolation to remember and be reminded that we are part of a greater world. That our global community needs us active in it.  Human interaction is important to help us with processing our own attachment wounds and complex trauma – and not just therapists, but in finding our people who we can come together with and have our needs for connection met.

We need to be in relationship in order to find ways of healing our relational wounding and exploring new ways of relating.  We can’t heal our attachment wounds in isolation.  We can’t process our complex trauma alone.  We can’t experiment with new ways of being in relationship if we aren’t relating with others.

May we all find our ways to social connections during this time of physical isolation that are nourishing, fulfilling, and meaningful.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on March 30, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most current essays, you can subscribe here.

Moving into softness

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If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation.  ~Sharon Salzberg,Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Attachment is a unifying principle that reaches from the biological depths of our being to its furthest spiritual reaches.  ~Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory

Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?  ~Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

As we adjust to our “new normal” and social distancing, many of us staying “safe at home”, our anxiety may be running rampant.  As we are either in close quarters with those we normally live with or are alone because that is our normal, we may find ourselves feeling frustrated and our attachment wounds being activated.

This can have us turning to all kinds of unhelpful or even harmful behaviors.  Behaviors that we developed at a young age that were meant to either keep us alive, or are meant to try and get our attachment needs met (in perhaps a very backwards sort of way).

We may find ourselves picking fights.

Pushing people away.

Feeling “clingy” and demanding.

Allowing (untrue, harmful, and hurtful) narratives about others or about ourselves to run rampant in our heads.  

Falling back into ultimately harmful relationships (and remember, a relationship doesn’t need to be outright abusive for it to be harmful, any relationship that keeps us stuck in repeating hurtful patterns and cycle and doesn’t encourage our healing and growth, is harmful).

Our anxiety may be over the top.

Our fear of abandonment may be going wild.

So much is happening in our minds and bodies right now as we move through this unprecedented and totally unknown space.  

We can find ourselves becoming rigid.

Hard.

Immovable.

Ultimately stuck, stagnant, repeating patterns and cycles that hurt us and others. 

Now is the time for us to slow down.

To find ways to calm our systems, take a half step (or more) back, and to consider situations from a more rational place.

A time to examine if the reaction we are having is based in an old trauma, the present situation, or some combination of the two.

A time to consider how our past pain and hurts are impacting us in the present.

A time to find new, helpful ways, of soothing our systems.  Of managing our overwhelm.

A time to shift into softness.

To connect to compassion, for ourselves and others.

To find ways to be more vulnerable, with people who are safe enough.

To explore our own wants, our needs, our desires, for our relationships, for our world, for our Self.

To nurture our own bodies and minds, those we care about and for, our planet.

To consider what fulfills us, what ignites our passions, what gives us a sense of abundance.

To expand, to transform, to evolve.  

To move into softness is counter-intuitive when our fear response is activated.  It is challenging to do even in the best of times.  We live in a culture that encourages us to disconnect, to judge, to be harsh and hard.

Moving into softness can be challenging.  It requires self-awareness and a willingness to shift, to grow, to transform.  It asks us to come home into our bodies, to learn to sit in the discomfort of our emotions and their bodily sensations, to expand our windows of tolerance so we can respond to situations with love for ourselves, others, and our relationships.

We are in challenging and complex times.  Finding ways to calm our systems, to rest, to allow the space for our own evolution is vital.  We are at a precipice in the collective, a time for us to decide if we want to continue on in the harmful ways, destroying our relationships and planet, or if we want to shift into a nurturance culture, one of caring, of compassion, of coming together and lovingly encouraging each other to expand outside our comfort zones, to break generations old patterns and cycles, to revolt against all that keeps us apart and to evolve into the people, and the society, we have always dreamed of.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weeklyish newsletter and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Last weekend Sarah Martland (Founder of Trauma & Co) met to figure out ways we can support our community right now.  We have changed the pricing the the Trauma & Co Community to make it more accessible to more people, and we’ve also made some changes to what all will be offered in it.  We have also brought an offering planned for later this year forward, as well as added an extra pricing level.  You can learn more about Resourcing for Complex Times: Supporting Ourselves Through Challenging Experiences here.

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