Category: Fuck the patrirachy

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Consent, complicity & rebellion (the complexity of consent part 3)

The topic of consent has shown up over and over for me recently: in Isabel Abbott and Bronwyn Petry’s  course The Body Contains Multitudes; observing All Souls Day; in my work with my own therapist; in my ancestral work unraveling what the women and men who lived before me passed down to me and what is me and mine; in my constant work of dislodging and dismantling my own patriarchal training and doing all I can to not pass this training on to my own daughter (and failing, and doing better than my own mother did… sometimes progress is terribly incremental).

Consent.  The complexity of it.  How there is so much in our lives that we don’t consent to.  How so much lives in our own bodies that we never consented to–not only what we didn’t consent to in regard to our own lived experience, but also what our ancestors passed down to us, what lives in our cellular memory and our very DNA.

And while there is so much that lives within our bodies that we did not consent to, it is still ours to manage or heal or dislodge or unravel.  We have a responsibility to it, to ourselves, to understand all these parts and where they live and what messages they may have for us that are helpful and what messages they give us that are harmful.

We have a responsibility to untangle the web of stories and training and wounding and strengths that we did not ask for and are within us all the same.

Our bodies store it all. The pain and pleasures of our own lived experiences.  The memories that our mind doesn’t want us to remember.  The longing for freedom and truth and justice and love that our spirit cries for.  The trauma and oppression of our ancestors.  Thousands of years of gaslighting from our culture.

All of it. Our bodies hold it all.

Sometimes it’s hard to get past all this.  Sometimes the experiences and memories and longing are too much and we need to move out of our body, out of our being, out of our Self in order to escape the chaos and dissonance and get through our days.

That’s okay. We each need to do what we need to do to get by.

And.

Sometimes, we do need to connect to it all.  To hear the stories.  To know the truths.  To sense the injustices of our own lived experiences and those of the people who came before us.  To believe that we aren’t just making it all up, it isn’t all in our heads, it is, in fact and truth, very, very real.

This connection doesn’t have to look or feel or be big.  It doesn’t need to happen all at once.  We don’t need to dive in so deep that the weight of  it all crushes us.

We can move into this work of connecting to our bodies, slowly, quietly, peacefully.  We can get curious and quiet and give space for our bodies to tell us what they need to.  We can listen.

This is the work of re-membering our body.

Of putting all our fragmented pieces back together.

Of coming home into our Self.

Of becoming our own Unleashed Woman.

This is the work of reclaiming our bodies.  Or, perhaps really, claiming them for the first time.  Taking ownership of them.

This is the work of being able to say wholly, fully, confidently:  No or Yes or Maybe or No then Yes then No again.

This is the work of acknowledging all the ways we never gave consent.  We never gave permission.  We never consciously or in any informed way agreed to the disconnection, the dismembering, the disowning of our own Self – of our physical and corporeal and flesh and blood body.

And neither did our ancestors.

Lack of consent is part of how our patriarchal culture works.  Those in power don’t need to ask, and those without power don’t get to say no.

This is as true today as it was 100, 1000, 2000 years ago.

We, you and I, never gave consent for trauma to live in our bodies the way it does.  We never consented to the disease or disorders.  We never consented to our DNA being altered by the trauma and oppression our ancestors experienced.

We did not consent to the anxiety. The depression.

We did not and do not consent to the constant messages of how we are not enough, how we are too much.

We did not consent to the shame that is instilled in our psyches and being from birth.  From before birth.

We did not consent to having our boundaries disregarded, ignored, torn away from us, over and over and over again.

We did not consent to being told that we have no value, no worth.

We did not consent to the disconnection from our Self or our sisters or our community.

We did not consent to the gaslighting or torture or murder both we and our ancestors have experienced.

We did not consent to having all this patriarchal training living within us, burrowing so deeply into our blood and bones and being.

We did not consent to unconsciously and unintentionally passing on this training.

We did not consent to being complicit in this culture that hates women.

We did not consent because we were not informed.

We were not told we had a choice.

We were not told there was, there is, a choice.

We were told, taught, indoctrinated with the idea, that we have to follow the rules.  That we must play small.  That we should strive to achieve that never ending To Do list.

We were told, taught, indoctrinated with the idea, that to rest is to be lazy, weak, proves our worthlessness.

We were told, taught, indoctrinated with the idea, that we deserve all the pain we endure.  Because Eve. Because Pandora. Because all the “evils” of the world are our fault.

Psst… I wanna tell you something…

THEY FUCKING LIED.

xoxo

We do have a choice.

We have the choice to say No more.

We have the choice to say, No, that isn’t correct.

We have the choice to use our voices.  To access our power.  To demonstrate our strength.

We have the choice to stop following the rules, to stop passing on the rules, to stop being complicit in a culture that wants us gone.

We have the choice to do and be different. For ourselves. For our daughters and nieces. For our sisters. For our mothers. For all our grandmothers, long forgotten in our conscious memory yet still living within our cells and being.

And not only do we have a choice, we have a responsibility.

Now that we are aware of this training, now that we are unraveling all the ways we have been lied to, tied down, leashed, we have a responsibility to continue in this unraveling, in finding our truth, in taking off this leash that has choked and silenced us for generations.

We have a responsibility to do and be different. For our Self. For our daughters and sons and nieces and nephews. For our mothers and fathers.  For all our grandmothers and grandfathers, long forgotten in our conscious memory yet still living within our blood and bones and being.

 We have a responsibility to break the rules.  To defy this sick normal. To tear it all down, burn it to the ground, and build new.

New. Different. Creating a time and place where all of us are free and equal. Where we no longer feel shame. Where we embrace our sisters. Where we find deep connection with our Whole Self, with our community, with our world.

This responsibility can feel heavy.  It can sometimes feel like a burden.  We may sometimes want to put it down and wish we were not aware of the oppression, the hatred, the inequality.

That’s okay.

Even Jesus had moments of doubt.

And.

We can do this. Together.  In community. With each other.

Together.  Always.

days-ending-in-y-2Now, let’s go smash this shit to bits.

xoxo

The text of this essay originally appeared my weekly love letter on November 5, 2016 and has been slightly edited and modified to appear here.  If you enjoyed reading this, and would like to read more like it, you can sign up to receive my love letter right over here.

Isabel Abbott and I have locked arms and joined minds and are offering a six month circle unearthing, exploring, dislodging and embracing our consent and boundaries.  If you’d like to learn more and possibly register, click right here.