Category: Becoming Unleashed

Posted on

Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma :: Consent

On a good day, at our most stable mentally, emotionally, and physically, consent is a complex topic.  And when we add in the realities of the stress of our day to day lives, the impact of trauma, and the truth of living in a misogynist patriarchal culture… well the topic of consent can become mind boggling to say the least.

Often we think of consent in very dualistic terms: either it is yes or no, it is given or not given.  Yet life isn’t so simplistic as that neither is our consent.  Our consent is a living entity that can shift and morph and change given any variety of circumstances.  Add to this parts of us can give consent while other parts of us may not.  This is often the case, for example, when we choose to have surgery, a surgery that may even be necessary for our survival.  Our mind consents to this surgery and perhaps even our spirit, and yet all our body knows is that it is frozen (thanks to anesthesia) being cut open and likely having metal implements stuck inside it and pieces of it, our body, being torn away and taken out.  And so, even after having given consent with our mind and spirit, our body may have a trauma reaction post surgery, as a response to what it just went through and doesn’t understand was okay.

For these reasons, the very complexity of consent, it can be challenging to fully understand it.  When we add to this that we are raised in a culture that tells women our consent isn’t relevant, it is no wonder that we are often left wondering if we didn’t indeed ask for it or feeling like it doesn’t matter if we say no so why bother?

And yet.

The truth is that our bodies, our beings, our minds, our spirits are OURS, and ours alone.  These bodies we each walk around it, these bodies we live and love and grieve and rejoice in, are our birthright.  And as such it is our right to say yes or no or maybe or to change our minds a million times in the process.

Yet often we are so disconnected from what we want, from our boundaries, from our bodies that we don’t fully understand what consent even means on any given day.

This disconnection isn’t by accident or any sort of indication of our own character.  This disconnection is by design.  It is intentional.  It is the way our culture controls us, keeps us obedient, compliant and complicit.  It is how the patriarchy gets away with treating us as less than human, as objects.

And so.  I deeply believe that part of our own journey to understanding our consent is coming home to our body.  To moving from a place of disassociation to a place of embodiment.  To learn to sit in the discomfort and pleasure of being present  in our body, in each moment.

To learn how to be in our body so that then we can actually choose if we want to be in it or not.  So we can have the power of decision.  So we can be fully informed and take back our consent instead of having it taken from us.

I talk about consent even more in this 18-minute video below.  I hope you enjoy it.

This essay and video series is in part to share with you the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Body of Consent.  We begin on March 1 (the video says February, we changed the start date to March).  If you are interested, you can learn more and register right over here. xoxo

Or if you enjoyed this and would like to read more of my essays, you can subscribe for my weekly love letter right over here.

Posted on

Patriarchal Wounds

We live in a culture that hates women. We grew up in this culture. We were raised in this culture.

As were our mothers.

And their mothers.

And their mothers.

And so on, back a few thousand years.

And since we are all still alive, what this means is that a long, long, long, LONG time ago, our female ancestors figured out how to survive. How to play the game. How to act the part. And in doing so, they bought not only their survival, but their daughters’ survival too.

And.

This playing the game and acting the part and all the rest of figuring out how to survive had its costs.

It meant disconnecting. From their own bodies. From ancient traditions and rituals and ways of being and knowing. From other women. And even from their own mothers and daughters.

This disconnection brought survival, yes. And it meant our ancient mothers taught and trained their own daughters how to survive. How to disconnect. How to play the game and act the part.

And all this disconnection also meant a severing from the Self. From embodiment. From innate wisdom and knowing.

And this severing and disconnection was wounding. To the psyche and the body and the spirit. To relationships with self and others. And to society and culture and humankind.

These wounds are often called the “Mother Wounds.” I kinda hate that term. I find it to be a distraction. Because while the wounding is partially passed down mother to daughter, the Truth is, that this wounding is passed down by our patriarchal culture. It is passed down by men and women, by fathers and mothers, by the media, by the systems that are meant to keep us in our place and compliant and complicit and obedient.

So, I call these wounds Patriarchal Wounds. Because, that’s what they are. And our mothers and their mothers and their mothers and so on back a few thousand years all had them too.

Some of these wounds were and are physical scars from mutilation or abuse or rape. Some of these wounds were and are psychological from being gaslighted and demeaned and devalued and labeled as less than (human). Some of these wounds are spiritual as religions washed away the goddesses and their stories and rewrote spiritual history so that male gods gave birth to the earth.

All of us have these wounds. And we have internalized the messages that come with this wounding.

That women are evil and can’t be trusted.

That we aren’t good enough at anything.

That we are way too much and take up too much space and air and thought.

That we have no value or worth and make not positive contributions to this world.

And while all these messages have burrowed into our skin and muscle and sinew and being… and while they did the same with our mothers and their mothers and their mothers back a few thousand years… and while at times it seems a losing battle to fight this culture and its hatred of women…

Fight we must.

Resist we must.

Disrupt we must.

Unravel and dislodge and destroy and create new, we must.

Because our daughters deserve better.

Because our nieces deserve better.

Because our sons and nephews and brothers and husbands deserve better.

Because WE deserve better.

xoxo

I am offering a six month circle of unearthing, unraveling, exploring, examining, disrupting, dislodging, destroying and creating new. Nine months of looking at these wounds and how they have been passed down and how we can apply salve and heal them. So we can do and be different than our mothers and their mothers and their mothers back a few thousand years. So our daughters and nieces and sons and nephews don’t need to heal as much. So we can stop the passing down of these wounds. So we can connect – to our daughters, our mothers, our Self.

If you’d like to learn more and request an application go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/unleashingourself/ Space is limited to 9 women (CIS, Transgender and AFAB non-binary all welcome). I’d love for you to join us.

xoxo

Posted on

More on consent

Here’s a thing… Like most (all) people I wear many hats and have many roles and many ways of being in this life of mine.  And at the base of it all, I am a woman living in a patriarchal culture.

What that means, is like all other women, I have experienced sexual and physical assault, rape, been stalked, cat-called, and gaslighted.  It means that I too have internalized the stories of how women don’t matter, aren’t good enough at anything, always take up too much space, and are worthless.  How we know nothing, and especially know nothing about our own bodies (and therefore shouldn’t have rights to them).

I didn’t ask for any of these things.

Not when I went to that party.

Not when I wore that short skirt. 

Not when I flirted with that person at the bar. 

Not when I drank so much I almost passed out.

Not when I had the audacity to enter into a male-dominated career and profession.

Not when I walked down that street to class. 

Not when I laid there as still and silent as possible and left my body. 

Not when I screamed and fought.

Not when I made a scene. 

Not when I melted into the background.

Not when I took that class or chose that major. 

Not when I sat in that seat on the bus.

Not when I wore those boots. 

Not when I danced that way. 

Not when I initially said yes and changed my mind.

Not when I met with that professor.

Not when I invited him into my home.

Not when I was born with female genitalia. 

Not when I was pregnant.

Not when I was struggling to become pregnant again.

Not when I was writhing on the floor in pain.  

Not when I asked for help.

Not ever.

Not once.

I never gave consent to any of these experiences.  I never gave consent to the messages and stories of my worth and value to burrow into my skin and muscle and core.  I never gave consent when I was in preschool or elementary school or junior high or high school or college or graduate school.  I never gave consent because to give consent we have to be informed, we have to know we have a choice, we have the option say no or yes or maybe and to change our minds as many times as we fucking feel like it.

Like all women I learned at a very early age that my body is not my own.  My mind is not my own.  My spirit is something that can be trampled and disregarded.  Like all women I learned what I had to to survive.  Like many women, I am still unraveling it all and finding my own ways to peace and rage and using my voice.  Like most women I am a work in progress in connecting to and trusting my body, my instincts, my intuition.

Because we live in a world where we are told not to trust our own bodies and knowing.  That our “spidey sense” is illogical and should be ignored.

Because we live in a world that tells us we can’t take up space. Our bodies are to be small.  Our voices small.  Our impact in the world, small.

Because we live in a world that pits women against each other as competition.

And.

Because I am fucking done with this bullshit.

Because I will fight with every breath I have to dislodge these stories from my own body and to help you dislodge them from yours.

Because I will use every breath I have to prevent these stories from burrowing into my daughter’s skin.

Because the Truth is I have a birthright to my body.  I have a right to saying no or yes.

And you do too.

xoxo

 

Did you enjoy reading this?  If so then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.

Posted on

Blessing for 2017

May we

Disrupt the status quo, calling out injustice and doing our part in liberating all people.

Resist tyranny, gaslighting, and shame.

Breathe cleansing fire on all that is harmful to in this world and the people in it, burning it down and allowing the dormant seeds of hope and change to be activated.

Be on the front lines in our own communities, leading the way to change, offering protection and sanctuary when needed and wanted, creating sisterhoods and brotherhoods based in love, trust, and respect.

Strangle our oppressors with the chains they wish to bind us with.

Be motherfucking generals, strategizing and collaborating, listening to counsel wiser than us, and making hard decisions regardless of our own fear or what it means for our own personal comfort.

Kick ass in 2017, allowing ourselves to be bigger, brighter, bolder than ever before.

Amen.

**Part of this blessing was inspired by a tweet by K O’Shea @osheamobile.

Posted on

Patriarchal wounds and boundaries (and why I won’t use the term “Mother Wound”)

patriarchal-wounds-and-boundariesBoundaries and our ancestors and patriarchal wounds.  These things are so intertwined.

At some point in our human history, we, especially us women, lost sight of our boundaries.  We lost sight of the separation between us and others.  We lost sight of our needs and wants.  We lost sight of us.

I believe there was a time in our history when we were deeply connected to our Self.  A time when we lived in an egalitarian culture.  Then something happened or likely many things happened and over time patriarchy arose and with it came all the wounding: shame, misogyny, no longer defending our boundaries, or speaking up or out, or breaking any rules,  for fear of torture or death. (Anthropology seems to back me up in this.)

We, women, did what we needed to survive.  We still do.  We play the game, we follow the rules as best we can, until we just can’t any longer. Some of us never reach that breaking point.  Many of us do.

Our mothers did the same.  And our grandmothers.  And our great-grandmothers.  And so on back through our womanline for a few thousand years.

These women who came before us, they wanted us to survive too.  They loved us, their daughters.  They were terrified for us being in the world they brought us into.

So they trained us.  They taught us to obey. To be deceitful so we can get our own needs met, and in this deceit we learned to not trust our sisters (or mothers or grandmothers).  To play by the rules while still finding ways to hold onto our Self or to let go of our Self completely.  They taught us how to survive in a culture that didn’t consider us fully human, that considered us property, that saw nothing wrong with raping, beating or murdering us.

The ways they taught us to survive equated to playing small, to being silent, to being obedient and docile and doing as we were told.  It equated to not speaking up or out.  It equated to serving others, particularly men, with little to no regard to our own exhaustion or needs.

This training, this wounding, is often called the mother wound.  I’ve used that term, as recently as a couple months ago, and although I’ve used it, it has always bothered me.

It bothers me because it places the blame of our wounding, seemingly, on the surface, on our mothers.  On all mothers.

Because we as mothers don’t already carry enough of the responsibility of the ills of the world.  Hello Eve and Pandora, just to name two.

The truth is, this wounding isn’t from our mothers.  Our mothers, all our ancestral mothers, wanted us to survive. They loved us so deeply and wholly. And they were terrified for us.

How do I know?

Because I am terrified for my own daughter and the world I am sending her off into.  And this world I’m sending her into is much tamer and gentler than the world our ancestors, including our own mothers, sent their daughters, including us, off into.

So I have an issue with the term mother wound. Because these wounds we carry, aren’t really about our mothers.  They are about trying to survive in a culture that hates women.

All women.  Yes, some women more than others, absolutely.  Yes, the color of our skin and our socio-economic status and how high our education goes all play a part.  And whether we’re married or mothers or how many fathers we have for our children and what color skin our partners have and and and…. Intersectionality is vital in the work of unraveling all of this.

And.

All women are hated in our culture.  Matters of degree make little difference when we look at the statistics on rape or interpersonal violence or murder by boyfriends or husbands.  Those numbers cross all skin colors and classes and education levels.

This is not to say that we don’t carry wounds from our actual lived experiences with our mothers.  Of course we do.  We feel betrayed by them for trying to break us so we could live.  Our pain and wounds of our lived experiences with our mothers are valid.  And need to be processed and healed.

And.

While we need to heal our own micro-lived-experience-wounding, we need to remember the macro of the issue at hand.

It is our misogynist, patriarchal culture that is at fault.

Yes, our mothers are responsible for their actions. Yes, many of them did not do their own inner work so that they would not pass on this wounding and instead taught us healthy ways to survive and still feel comfortable in our own skin.  Yes, they screwed up.  Yes, they are human.

And by placing the blame fully on our mothers and our womanline, by putting them at the center of our wounding, we are continuing to be complicit and compliant to the misogynist patriarchal culture that created the environment for this wounding to even occur.

So I’ve decided to stop using the term mother-wound. Because it’s not entirely accurate. It’s misdirecting.  It only feeds our internalized misogyny instead of helping us dislodging it from our bodies and being.

This is actually part of my own boundary work.  Making the distinctions between what is mine and what is someone else’s and what is culture.  Unraveling the stories and training that my ancestors have passed down through word or action or DNA (or all three).  Learning to listen to my own body and knowing and getting to the root of something when it doesn’t feel right or feels off or doesn’t sit well with me.

This is part of connecting to our intuition yes, and it is also part of connecting to our boundaries.  Of acknowledging when something, particularly a commonly used or “known” something, doesn’t feel right to us. Of saying no when that not right feeling comes up. Of doing different so not to pass on something that doesn’t feel right to us in the first place and only causes more wounding and damage.

Boundaries are more than telling someone you aren’t going to let them take advantage of you again. Boundaries are about more than our relationships with other people (though, in truth, a lot of how our boundary work plays out is in our relationships with others).

Boundaries are also about saying No More to a culture that hates us.

Boundaries are about saying No More to passing on the training and wounding of our culture.

Boundaries are about knowing our Self, so wholly and deeply that we don’t question when something doesn’t sit right if that off feeling is valid or not and instead we dig into the why so we can understand ourselves better and then do different in the world.

Boundaries, I believe, are at the base of our ancestral healing of our patriarchal wounds.  As we learn more and more about our own boundaries, we heal the pain of our ancestors who weren’t allowed to have their own boundaries due to risk of torture or death.

As we lay claim to our bodies, to our minds, to our spirits, we are defining the distinctions between our own Self and the Self of others.  We can know intuitively and immediately when someone is projecting their “stuff”on us as opposed to some critique of our behavior having merit.

Boundaries are how we connect to our Whole Self.  Because without boundaries, we cannot define who we actually are.

As we do our own boundary work we learn that boundaries are not rigid nor are they static.  They are flexible and have an ebb and flow depending on the people, places, time and events that are invoking them. We may have a more rigid boundary with one person than with another.  We may need more physical space from some people than others.  And even these boundaries may shift depending on what all is happening in our lives, sometimes needing firmer boundaries with those we generally are pretty easy and loose with.

Even with this being true, that boundaries are more of a fluid thing than not, we must be able to sense these boundaries in the first place.

And, you can probably guess, I deeply believe we learn to sense our boundaries by deeply connecting to and embracing our bodies. By inhabiting them.  Feeling them.  Knowing on a visceral and deep level what exactly embodiment means.

So we can feel our boundaries and know immediately when they have been breached. And honor and defend them, as we deserve to be honored and defended.

It is deep work and messy work and there is much unraveling and untangling and dismantling that must happen.

And it is so deeply and truly and wholly freeing.

Our boundary work is all a part of becoming our own version of the Unleashed Woman. It is another layer in taking off the leash that was put on us at birth by our culture.  It is another layer of coming home to our Self.

And isn’t it time to do that? To come home to our Self? To take off this patriarchal leash? To become our own Unleashed Woman?

xoxo

 

Did you enjoy reading this?  If so, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter which includes all kinds of goodies right over here.