Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Healing in Community

By

Community is such a large concept. Often we hear people talk about the lack of community; the lack of communal support he or she feels. Looking at society I can see this lack of support as families have pared down to the “nuclear family,” losing the beauty of multiple generations and extended family under one roof or at least within close proximity. Neighbors no longer knowing each other’s names. There is a great tragic loss in this lack of community. Honestly I see this loss of community as a trauma in itself – isolating us more and more, having us burrow further into our own pain and not being able to look out at others and notice theirs. Not being able to reach out for support, love and healing.

Peter Levine writes about how healing trauma must always happen in community, with at least one other person present to bear witness to the traumatized person. The reasoning for this is simple: trauma happens when we are alone. This is not to say there are not other people physically present, or there is not another person or persons actually creating the trauma event in our presence. It is to say that we are alone – the only witness to ourselves in the trauma. Our bodies absorb the trauma and we tend to isolate after – either by choice as a survival mechanism or because we are manipulated to by an abuser. Trauma equals isolation. In order to come out of the trauma, to come out of the isolation we need a safe community.

This community can be one person. It could be a hundred people. It could be a therapist or counselor. It could be a spouse or partner or close friend or other family member. It could be a teacher, a mentor. It could be a stranger. It could be anyone. However that other person or persons, the one who is to bear witness to our trauma, needs to be firmly grounded or else he or she will do us no good. James Finely describes bearing witness to a traumatized person as keeping one foot firmly grounded outside the circle the trauma, and the other foot firmly yet gently steps inside the circle. The traumatized person needs the other to be grounded, this is possibly the only way the traumatized person can find her or his own grounding, perhaps the only way he or she can get back into her or his own body. The traumatized person also needs to feel the other person within her or his trauma, to feel truly heard and seen and understood.

We need community. However we need that community to be grounded. Knowing the extent of trauma in our world, finding these people who are firmly grounded can be a challenging task. So what do we do?

We seek. We look for those who have gifts to offer to help us in our own grounding process. To help us get back into our own body. To help us heal. Then we pass these gifts on. The beauty of these gifts, of learning how to become mindful, how to ground and stabilize our body, mind and soul, is that we can pass the gifts on AND keep them forever. It is the non-dual beauty of healing – realizing life isn’t about either or, rather it is about and. It is raining and cold  and I can be warm and cozy. It is dark and I can see light. I can be angry at you and love you with all my soul.

We can heal ourselves and heal within community. As we shift, as the trauma releases from our body we will be able to see more and more community available. In the beginning though we have to be vulnerable and risk further hurt. Not further trauma, but potential pain. And in being vulnerable and open, we can see the pain in others and perhaps give them some community to heal.

Bearing witness to our own pain. Becoming and remaining grounded. Healing ourselves. Being healed by our community. Healing our community. Finding strength and grounding. Offering strength and grounding. Offering and receiving in the same breath.

I’m thankful for my ever-expanding community. Many of the people in my community are strangers. Strangers who probably don’t know how much they have impacted me, how much their existence has helped me heal. Others are close friends, my husband, my daughter. And a wide range of friendships and acquaintances in-between. Each person giving light to my darkness, whether he or she knows it or not. And hopefully, prayerfully, I give a little light to their darkness too.

Fall Sun, photo by me

Enjoy reading this? Then sign up for my weekly love letter right here.

Entering a place of Abundance

By

One of the things I’ve been working toward is leaving this sense of lack I seem to have. The clearing I’m doing in our home is a piece of that. There’s this odd sense of anxiety that was once very prominent in me, and slowly, with time, is becoming almost non-existent. The anxiety is completely lack related: we don’t have enough of this or nice enough of that. Our home isn’t fancy enough. Our clothes aren’t nice enough. Our car isn’t expensive enough. On and on the list once went. I have come to the place with many things of being good with what we have. No, we don’t have a new or big or fancy car. We have a little eleven year old honda civic, that is often dirty both inside and out. Our little car gets us from point A to point B. She’s a good car. She’s what our family needs. More importantly, she’s what our family WANTS. She fits us as we fit her. This is true of many of our things: they may not be the biggest/best/fanciest, but they fit us, as we fit them.

On the road to unschooling I’ve had my share of bumps. I recently started hyperventilating a bit because my daughter is turning five this spring. You know, kindergarten age. And I see friends, both near and far, struggle with figuring out all the schooling options out there for kindergarten. Because, as society tells us, if we don’t get our kids into the right kindergarten we are dooming them for a life of homelessness and or a career at McDonald’s. Hell, if we didn’t get them into the right preschool, that is what we have set them up for.

That’s the thing. Why, would a decision made when a child is FIVE YEARS OLD ruin opportunities for them more than a decade down the road? Opportunities, mind you, that we cannot even begin to fathom because of the rapid pace technology and science are moving at. [Read more…]

Clearing

By

I don’t make New Year resolutions. Instead, around my birthday in October I reflect on my life and think about the things I would like to see different. How I would like to grow and change as well as how I would like to rearrange the furniture or replace our dinner plates. All pieces of me are opened up and looked at, examined, given value and then I decide if I’m ready for the shifts needed to make the changes I want. Sometimes, like in the case of new dinner plates, it’s easy. Other times, especially when it comes to my personal growth, it can be a lot more challenging.

I didn’t do that reflection this year. I turned forty and instead of thinking about what I wanted to change I basked in the glow of what I love about my life. It felt good to have this shift. I had an amazing party, surrounded by friends and all our children and honestly, I think it was the best birthday party I’ve had to date. I felt whole. I felt loved. I felt my community and my family. There was nothing missing, nothing in the days and weeks surrounding my birthday that I wanted to change. Life was just as it needed to be in those moments.

The holidays came and went, with much activity on my part and the my family’s. Revelations were made about past traumas. I found comfort and safety in my little family. I had some growth. Life was good for the most part, although I was finding little things I wanted to change or shift, but I wasn’t sure how to make the shifts that I wanted to see. These shifts I wanted to make revolved around a sense of fear, a sense of feeling incomplete and empty, and a sense of feeling unsafe in the world in general.

January came and a few friends posted and talked about their new year’s resolutions of purging and cleansing and clearing. Getting rid of stuff. Not feeling overwhelmed by stuff or schedules or life. Letting their bodies and minds and souls heal a bit more. I was inspired. I needed to clear. I needed to cleanse.

[Read more…]