Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Our shame narratives

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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.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare. ~Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

We all carry with us narratives from our families of origin, narratives from our communities, narratives from our greater culture.  The stories of how we are too much this or not enough that.  The stories about how we should feel shame for what we want, what we do, who we are, that we even exist in the first place.

These narratives didn’t come to us out of the blue.  These are stories that have been cultivated for generations and generations, by a greater culture that sees humans as a commodity to be used, but not respected.  These stories stem from capitalism, authoritarianism, patriarchy, misogyny.  These stories stem from those in power wanting to stay in power and doing whatever they can to keep everyone else in line and doing their bidding.

That is where those stories come from on a meta level.  That is how they seep into our communities.  Into our families. Into our relationships.  Into us.

It is true that our own experiences of abuse feed these stories.  Complex trauma only makes those voices louder, only makes the stories seem more true.

And.

I would argue that the abuse of children – sexual, physical, neglect – all stem from this meta source.  

Why else would children be beaten if not to be forced to fall in line with the status quo?

Why else would children be molested if not because the abusers were indoctrinated in the idea that children exist to serve others, in any and all capacities?

Why else would children be neglected if the adults weren’t so busy trying to stay alive within a culture that wants to kill them?

I am not dismissing the responsibility of the abusers for their own actions.  Regardless of our own experiences of oppression and abuse we are always responsible for how we treat others in the world and whether or not we perpetuate harm.

What I am saying is that these narratives are fed to us from many, many different places.  Hearing these narratives is inescapable.  If it’s not our family, or our Self that’s telling us how we are too much or not enough and should feel shame, our greater culture definitely is.  

These stories are fed to us, from birth.  These stories seep into under skin, into our muscles, our sinew, our bones.  These stories keep us small, quiet, complicit, compliant.

These stories keep us stuck in harmful (to us and others) patterns and cycles.  

These stories impact the ways we relate to others.  They have us judging.  They have us expecting.  They have us assuming.  They have us demanding.

These stories keep us disconnected from our Self.  Our true self.  Our tend, broken open heart, Self.  The self that knows, in its very being these narratives are total bullshit.  The Self that asks over and over, why do you keep believing these lies?

Because a truth is, we are not too much.

A truth is, we are exactly enough.

A truth is, we get to take up space.  And there is plenty of space for everyone.

A truth is, we get to state our wants, whatever they are, without shame. 

A truth is, we get to have our boundaries respected.  

A truth is, we are exactly enough just as we are.

A truth is, we can do the work of untangling all this cultural indoctrination and trauma.

Let’s do it.  Let’s undo the generations of training we have living in our bodies and minds.  Let’s begin to feel good in our own skin.  Let’s find our ways to connection, real connection, without losing pieces of ourselves in the process.

We can do it.  I know we can.  

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on January 14, 2020. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring these narratives in my seven week writing course Embodied Writing :: Too much, not enough, & shame. We begin Monday, January 27, 2020. To learn more and register, click here.

Reclaiming our Self, reclaiming our life

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What makes you come alive? What keeps you going ? Is there hope in your heart still or has the weariness of the world attached itself to you like a limpet leaving you afraid and passionless? Do you wake up with a smile and stars in your eyes after restless, feverish soul-searching in the night? Do you dream, dream beyond what is possible and beyond the narrow confines of your jaded existence? How old do you feel? How much in love can you fall? How much step is there in your dance, o how many notes left in your song? Have you decided to sit by and watch others dance or weep at the dying notes of your own swan song?

Shake your lethargy. Come alive to innocence once more. Believe past your own jaded cynicism. Pretend you are young once more. Jump up with a spring in your feet, fall breathlessly in love again. Let the colors of the world wash over your walls, brushing the greys away. Let the sunlight of hope flood through your doubting self, o let the music play.

Dance till you ache and drop, laugh till you cry. Sing till your lungs burst, and journey till the very road ends and dream by the moonless starless nights. Sleep with a secret smile on your lips, your body flush with the imprints of lips. Come alive, my dearest …reclaim yourself from the living dead. ~Srividya Srinivasan

After a very traumatic year (2017), followed by a year of trying to find my footing again (2018), I welcomed the new year of 2019.

As 2018 came to and end and 2019 began, I felt a huge shift within me that, if I’m honest, started in the spring of 2018, but that I wouldn’t begin to recognize until October of that year, and wouldn’t fully acknowledge or accept until that mid-December.

This is what our personal change and growth can look like.  The changes can be happening within us, without us being fully aware or wanting to fully admit them.  And yet, they are there, they exist, they are happening, and in so many ways we can’t stop them.

Entering 2019, I felt I was on the other side of the traumatic events of 2017.  I had a sense of calm and peace and happiness that I didn’t know if I could say I had ever truly felt before in my life.

Getting to this place, accepting that I was in this place, was a process.  Acknowledging that I actually felt freedom, calm, joy… it had been a process of reclaiming who I truly am.

Over the years, I can see how I got lost in adulthood.  In motherhood.  In wifehood.  In the idea of what it means to be a “grown up” and do “grown up” things.  I knew that parts of me were being lost in this process, and told myself, that is just part of becoming, being, an adult.

It was a good story.

A truth is, we don’t have to lose who we are in order to become an adult.  We don’t have to sacrifice the things we like and love about ourselves in order to be “good parents” or spouses/partners, or employees.

True growing up doesn’t look like stuffing those parts of ourselves that we love, that actually truly define us, down.  It doesn’t look like “playing a role” because that’s how we think adults/partners/parents “should” act.  

True growth, and growing up, looks like celebrating who we are.  Yes, our interests will grow and shift. Yes, there will be times when we need to prioritize others and put our own wants and needs on hold for a period of time (as in, not forever).

We all lose ourselves from time to time.  It takes courage to acknowledge this, and even more courage to begin the process of reclaiming who we are, what we want, what we love.  

Coming home to our bodies is part of that process.  Relearning who we were and who we want to be is part of that process.  Reclaiming our own truth, our own wants, our own needs.

Reclaiming is part of our process of personal change and growth, and also part of our trauma processing work.  Reclaiming who we are, at our core, reclaiming our life as out own, so that we can stop surviving and begin thriving, can be intense.

And I would say, this is what truly being an adult is about.

/../
This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on January 28, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, subscribe to my newsletter here.

We will be exploring reclaiming parts of our Self and life in the seven week program Embodied Writing that begins on January 27, 2020. To learn more and register, click here.

Trauma & releasing shame

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Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. ~Brene Brown,I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

Shame is a soul eating emotion. ~Carl Gustav Jung

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent. ~Ellen Bass, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

One of the ironies of trauma, is that for those of us who have experienced it, particularly relational trauma, we feel shame.  We, the victims, the survivors, the ones who were harmed, feel the shame of the experience.  We carry the burden of being “tainted” or “damaged” or “broken.”  

This shame often leads us to silencing ourselves, even if the perpetrator didn’t specifically tell us not to talk about what happened.  We don’t tell when the abuse is happening or immediately after the assault occurred.  We don’t tell the story because we are afraid of what people will think, what they will say, how they will respond.

We don’t tell because we somehow think what happened was our fault.  That we somehow encouraged the other person to harm us, that if only we’d done x or hadn’t done y.

When we are living in shame, and unable to share our stories, we are also unable to deeply connect with others.  We don’t allow ourselves to be truly
seen and so intimacy, deep emotional intimacy, isn’t possible.  

Sometimes though, it’s not only others that we can’t share our stories with.  Sometimes we can’t admit our own stories to ourselves.  Or we can admit parts of them, but not others.  Or we can acknowledge the stories but are unable to examine them, explore them, become curious about the ways these events from our lives are still impacting us today. 

The events from our past do impact us in our present, and will continue to, until we are able to dig into our own unconscious and automatic reactions, including the stories we have about being too much and not enough.  

Shame runs rampant in those stories.  I think most of us can make a long list of all the ways we aren’t enough (not smart enough, not pretty enough, not vocal enough, not articulate enough, not successful enough…) as well as all the ways we are too much (too loud, too sexual, too smart, too large, too picky…).  We are never “right;” there is always something “wrong” with us, something that needs to be “fixed.”

Trauma does this to us.  Our culture does this to us.  And often times, intentionally or now, our families of origin do this to us.  Unearthing, unraveling, examining these stories is no easy feat.  And doing it while remaining present in our bodies can be even more complex.

Shame comes with trauma.  Releasing the shame takes intention, time, practice and requires us to come into our bodies, examining our histories and our stories and seeing how they impacted us, and how that isn’t our fault.

Because what was done to us, what happened to us was not, and is not, our fault.

And.

Changing patterns, cycles, and harmful behaviors we have because of these experiences is our responsibility so we do not continue to pass trauma on to future generations.

/../

This essay was originally published to my weekly(ish) newsletter on January 14, 2019. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

We will be exploring our stories of being too much, not enough, and the shame that comes with all that in the seven week program Embodied Writing :: Too Much, Not Enough, & Shame. We begin on Monday, January 27, 2020. There is a sliding scale fee. Learn more and register here.

The space between stimulus & response

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Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. ~Rollo May, The Courage to Create

Creating that space between stimulus and response is not an easy feat.  It takes practice and intention.  Those of us who live with trauma and highly activated sympathetic nervous systems (fight/flight), have a very clear understanding of how challenging it can be to create that space.  To shift our ways of being from a wounded animal who simply lashes out at anyone or thing that comes near them to a more self aware and thoughtful response that is not fully based on our triggered emotional state. 

Creating this space isn’t about not feeling our emotions and sensations.  Instead it is about slowing down how we react to these emotions and sensations.  It is slowing down when we are in a state of overwhelm and considering what all is contributing to those feelings, what we actually have control of, and how we want to be in these moments.

Most of us living with complex trauma not only have activated nervous systems that are either on extra high or extra low alert (or alternate between the two at rapid pace), we also have a visceral sense of not being heard.  Those of us who experienced childhood trauma either were convinced to keep the “secret” by our abuser, or we told people and either they didn’t believe us, told us we were making it up, or told us to not complain and that it ‘wasn’t that bad’. 

So not only do we have activated systems that see almost everything as a threat, we don’t know how to express our feelings – emotions and sensations – in a way that can be received by another.  We either snap and yell or we totally shut down and “cut off” by not speaking or interacting with the person who we feel caused us harm.  These reactions are automatic in some ways and they can be slowed down, we can slow ourselves down, and shift from the automatic reaction to a more intentional response. 

It takes time and a willingness to practice self-regulation skills to come into your body.  It won’t happen over night.  We will all fall back on old habits from time to time.  And these shifts in being can happen.

The shifts in our ways of being in the world aren’t always neat or easy or even pleasant.  Sometimes the slowing down process can be incredibly uncomfortable.  

We need to be willing to sit a bit in the unknown of shifting and transforming.  To have the courage to move from the comfort of what we know into the possibilities of what is unknown to us outside of our imagination. 

We were all raised in environments that taught us how to interact with others, either by example of how the adults treated each other or by how the adults treated us as children.  These patterns and ways of being were likely passed down through generations.  These cycles are entrenched in our psyches as well as our cellular memories.  They run deep.

And.

We can break the patterns and cycles that have been passed down to us.  We can shift our ways of being.  We do not need to allow what has happened to us to define us or how we are in the world.

Yes, there are things we cannot change.  Yes, this is not easy work.  

And.

We can learn to calm and regulate our nervous system.  We can learn to create that space between stimulus and response.  We can learn to experience our feelings and to express them without causing harm to ourselves or to others.

It takes time, intention, and practice.  It requires a willingness to live in that unknown in-between space that is so uncomfortable.  We need to develop our self compassion.  

Because at the end of the day we all need each other.  So learning how to be in relationship with others, while maintaining boundaries, is an important part of our work.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on July 8, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

Breaking open

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To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.

To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust

These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.

They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love. Relating. Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last couple weeks. It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship. It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships.

The other day I watched this IGTV by Jeanette LeBlanc. I sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed some more.

When my marriage was crumbling, and even shortly after it ended, I didn’t believe I would ever love again. I didn’t believe I could ever open myself to that kind of heartbreak again. I didn’t even know if I was capable of loving again, not in the ways that I had loved my ex-husband.

I kept my walls up. My armor was on secure and tight. Once I decided I wanted to have sex with another person, I had partnered sex, but there was no intimacy. I wouldn’t allow it. There was no sleeping over. There was no sharing of my life and there was no listening to them talk about their’s.

I wasn’t ready for and frankly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R). I didn’t want to “catch feelings.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.

And I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind.

Until I did.

It is ironic to look back at the very beginning of this relationship. We texted for a week and I wasn’t overly interested, though in text we seemed like a good match. I almost canceled our first date. But then I wanted to get out and we had plans, so I went.

And I met him.

As soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart. I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open? I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever. I had (and still have) lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part. I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house). I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s. So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, because all things come to an end at some point, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I wrote this the other day on IG ::

Sometimes we meet people who have profound impacts on our lives and our Self. Just by being them they create space for us to unearth some lost pieces of who we are. They show us what it is to be loved and adored. They teach us what freedom is. We may want these people to be in our lives forever but that may not be how it works out. They may only be with us for a short while & yet their impact is massive & our hearts shatter when they leave.

Hearts are meant to shatter I believe. And then to be put back together. We are meant to love & lose that love. Nothing is forever.

And sometimes relationships come back & start again. There are those in my life who I can literally go a decade without talking to & when we see each other it is as if no time has passed.

There are people who light us up regardless of time or distance.

We can’t “keep” these people though. People are not for keeping. People are for loving, for caring for, for experiencing life with. In whatever time allows us to have with them.

“All we have to see, is I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” ~George Michael

I am in a time of grief. It is true. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I left the door open for the future, and who knows what will happen in a week, a month, a year, a decade. And also, in these moments now I need to accept the ending of what was.

This hurts like hell. My chest literally aches. I cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m not miserable though. I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear. I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time.

I will eventually move through this grief. It is true. While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

Here’s a thing though, our love, our wide open hearts, our vulnerability, our authenticity, aren’t only meant for romantic love. They are meant for friends. For (chosen) family. For colleagues. For comrades. For our grocery clerk. For total strangers.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces. Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.

The world needs our wide open hearts. The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over. By lovers, friends, family, and strangers. With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those). It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us harm in the name of Love. It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts. I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart. With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work. Our own internal work. Of healing old wounds. Of processing old traumas. Of becoming self aware, self reflective. Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt. Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own black holes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves. We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry and utilize the master’s tools. We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles. We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love. Each other. Our Self. Our world.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 17, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays along with stream of conscious writing prompts, self-regulation exercises, and more, you can subscribe right here.