November 16, 2016January 8, 2017

The complexity of consent -part 1

consent-part-1 Five years ago, while still in graduate school, I had a day surgery give me a bigger understanding of trauma and the impacts it has on our body. That semester I fought to be in the Crisis & Trauma class, it was the last time it would be offered by one of my favorite professors and there was a screaming within me that I needed that particular class at that particular time in my life. I had to fight with my academic advisor and demand over and over to be let into the class. I didn’t understand the warrior within me who was battling so hard for this class, there was no logic at that time which said to take it now and that I couldn’t take it later. And yet I knew, my body knew, that taking the class later was not what I needed. I needed to take it now. I eventually convinced my advisor and he got me into the class.

Let’s go back a bit.

When I was 18 I was diagnosed with endometriosis. In the months leading up to this diagnosis, I had horrible and debilitating PMS and periods. Debilitating to the point that I missed many days of my senior year of high school because I was curled up in a ball on our bathroom floor, dripping cold sweats or tightly curled in my bed moaning and crying and screaming because of the pain in my abdomen, my uterus, my womb. This pain led to multiple ER visits and one of them finally led to me being fully admitted and having the surgery that discovered and removed, the endometrial tissue growing outside my uterus causing all the pain.

The whole of that hospital experience was awful. The surgeon, may he be burning in the depths of hell, completely disregarded me. He wanted me to sign a “consent” form that would allow him to remove my uterus and ovaries if he saw fit (I did not agree to this, but only because my adopted mom was there at my side advocating for me; I was so doped up on pain medication I would have signed anything). When I asked him if the surgery would leave scars he let out a smug laugh and said in a condescending voice “Of course it will leave scars!”. After the surgery, a week or two after, in the follow up appointment he told me I would never be able to have children due to the endometriosis, that I would never be able to get pregnant and if I did by some miracle I would never be able to carry a child to term. These words, his authoritative words, led to some rather risky and stupid behavior during my early 20s and honestly I am lucky that I survived that period of my life as relatively unscathed as I did.

Fast forward to five years ago. We had been struggling to bring our second child into the world for years. Four early miscarriages. Twice with hopes so high that we finally did it. Visit after visit to more doctors and being told the miscarriages were “normal” for my “advanced maternal age”. More smugness. More not being heard when I said, NO! This is not normal. Not for my body. Not for my family. There is something else at play. More being disregarded and dismissed.

Each month was a roller coaster of hopes and prayers and disappointment and tears. And then the symptoms came back. More cold sweats while curled in a ball on the bathroom floor. And now, projectile vomiting added to the mix. After three months of this, it was my husband who observed this was happening right before my period would start. And so back to my doctor. My doctor who had been with me over the last almost two decades. My doctor who had been with me through cancer scares. Who treated me. Who knew that I knew my body better than her. My doctor who I trusted.

When I told her all the symptoms, and all the fertility struggles, and all the All Of It, she asked if I thought my endometriosis was back. I sat quietly for a moment and said Maybe? She sent me home and later that day called me with the contact information of the best gynecological surgeon in Seattle and she had a referral into her for me. I made and appointment the next day. And this surgeon, this woman surgeon, listened. And knew. And knew that I knew. And we came up with a plan, including a surgery, to help heal me.

Here’s where consent can get tricky. My mind consented to this surgery. Wholly and completely. But my body, my gorgeous amazing body never gave her permission. And so post-surgery the trauma symptoms, that I have lived with since I was a child, intensified.

Back to my Crisis & Trauma class. In this class, I was learning how trauma lives in the body. How we can help trauma move out of our bodies. What we can do as therapists to help others and ourselves heal from this deep wounding that isn’t only about the stories that run through our minds. It is also about all the ways our bodies scream out and relive the experiences over and over and over again and how we don’t listen to them.

So, thanks to this class, I was able to piece together that my body was traumatized by the surgery. That we can actually experience trauma even when we give consent to what is happening to us. That our body doesn’t always understand things in logical ways. That our body only knows it is frozen on a table and being sliced open and having metal shoved into it and pieces of itself being cut and torn and burned away.

Our bodies are wise and hold much. And also, they don’t understand the world or our experiences in the same ways our mind does. And so, in order to heal trauma, we need both mind and body to be connected and listening to each other. We need to not try to rationalize what our body is experiencing because the logic and rationale of the body is not the same as that of our mind.

We need to listen and heal.

That class on trauma saved me in many ways. It showed me how I need to listen, we all need to listen, to the messages of our bodies. And that our bodies will respond to having its consent disregarded, our consent disregarded in the ways it knows how.

Where this has all left me is in a place of questioning and wanting answers. I want to know the facts and figures and statistics for women who have been sexually abused or raped and the correlation to “women’s health issues” like endometriosis, ovarian/uterine/cervical cancers. I want there to be research on the real health impacts of abortion on women. I want these numbers and this research not to have further reason to take our choices away, but rather so we can have more fully informed consent.

Without all the information, how can any of us ever truly give our consent?

I understand, as well as anyone, that sometimes our mind must make decisions to override the consent of our bodies. If I hadn’t had that surgery five years ago, and the follow-up medical treatments, I would not have my son today. I also would still be losing a week every month to debilitating pain and agony. There are times when logic, when our mind, must prevail.

And in those times, after the consent of our body has been disregarded, we need to come back to her. Back to our body and reconciling with her. Back to our body and soothing and healing her. Back to our body and letting her know in all the ways that in this moment, she is safe. We need to let her know we hear her, we feel her, we respect her, we honor her.

Our minds and bodies and spirits are separate parts of our Self, and they are deeply connected to and intertwined with each other. This must be remembered. It must be remembered that we cannot heal our body through the power of our mind only. We must do other work, body work, to help her heal, to help her release, to help her feel safety and comfort.

By connecting to her, listening to her, hearing our body, then we can heal. We can heal our own pains and traumas, planned or otherwise. We can shift from spaces of anxiety and depression (because the health of our body affects the health of our mind) to spaces of calm and peace. We can feel the interconnectedness within our Self and within our greater world.

xoxo

PS – The first draft of this essay was written a week prior to the presidential election here in the US. I have debated posting in now, and instead focusing more on the outcome and fallout of the election. However, consent, consent in regards to our bodies as women, hangs in the balance again. Having claim to our bodies, having total authority over what happens to her is now in question, again. And so, I have decided to post this, as the first in a series I have written on consent and our bodies, as it does directly relate to all that is again hanging in the balance.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, and oh that warms my heart if you did, you can read more of my writing by subscribing to my weekly love letter right over here. xoxo

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.

November 8, 2016November 7, 2016

Finding comfort

In my bed with with flannel sheets and big heavy and fluffy blankets and many pillows.

In a cup of chocolate hazelnut milk.

Sometimes in a bag of potato chips. Crinkle cut with lots of sea salt.

In a cup of warm herbal tea with some medicinal syrup of one kind or another.

In a cold cup of coffee that has been sitting most of the day because of all the doing and no chance to sit and drink it hot.

In his arms. Always. My head to his chest hearing his heart and its irregular rhythms and knowing despite it all he is here now and I can’t worry about whether he will be here tomorrow.

With them in my arms or lying on my chest and sometimes even crawling all over me.

With her and her and her and her and the telling of our truths and wisdom and knowing that the miles don’t hurt our friendships and sisterhoods.

With her and her bff and the knowing that there generation will have something so much different than ours.

In her office and the telling and revealing of the stories and the dislodging and healing the trauma of my own lived experience that lives in my body.

In her office and circles where the ancestral and culture healing occurs.

In the words. Always the words I come back to and write and write and write.

In the writing of the words and stories and the truths.

In the liminal spaces, the unknown, the uncontrollable.

These are some of the places I find comfort.

And while all of this is true, I now find my greatest comfort in my body. In her knowing. In all she has done for me. In all she has endured. In feeling her, my, heartbeat and in noticing her, my, breath and in her, my, ability to pick him up and soothe his toddler tears and to wrap her, my, arms around her turning-into-a-woman-body and comforting her frustrations and pre-teen tears and giving her me as a place to come home and find comfort.

I find comfort in the knowing that it wasn’t always like this and that my relationship with my body, with me, has been hard won.

And yet, it has been won.

The battle to feeling at home in my body, finding comfort in her was not easy. And it was a battle. A battle of healing and resistance and fear. A battle with exhaustion and wounds and getting up the next day anyhow. A battle, that at times, was slow and peaceful (can a battle be such a thing?) and at other times tumultuous, frenzied, and chaotic.

Getting to this place of feeling at home in my body, of finding comfort there, was and is filled with discomfort. With tears. With acknowledging things I may not want to. With feeling things that I may not like. With learning things about my self and life and history I may wish I didn’t know.

These battles have been the work of reclaiming my body. Remembering her. Connecting to her through breath, through yoga, through various body-centered mindfulness exercises. Getting to know her by learning to feel her quiet whispers and rumblings. Trusting her stories and wisdom.

Reclaiming her. As mine. Mine to decide who touches me and who doesn’t. Mine to heal and nourish in the ways I see fit. Mine to love and honor and be angry with, as I need. Mine. Mine. MINE.

We live in a culture that does not like women laying claim to their own bodies. We live in a culture that thinks consent is not relevant to any conversation or transaction. We live in a culture where women’s bodies are still not considered their own, as the right to choose hangs in the balance on this election day, as at least three women today will be raped, as at least three women today will be physically assaulted, as three more women today will be murdered by their intimate partner.

Yes, I find comfort in my body. Yes, I feel at home in her. And what this looks like is acknowledging the very real fear I feel having this body. This female form. Knowing that my confidence in her could be taken as some sort of comment on some other person’s being. Knowing that my confidence in her, my using her voice. my daring to stand in my strength, my power my light could get my physically attacked.

Yes, I feel at home in my body. And I am fully aware of how truly risky that is. How risky it was for my mother and grandmother and all my grandmothers back a couple thousand years. Feeling at home in my body also means feeling at home in the trauma and discomfort and dis-ease that she, that I, carry in my blood, my bones, my DNA.

Feeling at home in my body, finding comfort in her, is not all flowers and sausages.

Yet I would have it no other way. It is through the discomfort and dis-ease that I learn more about my Self. About my own power and strength and daring. About consent and where it that lives within me. About how our culture doesn’t want any of us to claim our bodies or minds or spirits as ours.

I find comfort in my body. Because she holds the stories. She holds my history. And with her, I am learning to be and do different in this world, so my daughter and granddaughters will have a different world. A world where they truly feel safe. A where where they truly are safe.

xoxo

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

This post inspired by Isabel Abbott and Bronwyn Petry‘s The Body Contains Multitudes. If you have a chance to participate in either of their offerings, I encourage you to jump at the chance. xoxo

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016

Where I live

I live in the in-betweens, those back alleys that aren’t really a place of their own but clearly have who we were at one end and who we will become on the other. While looking back everything is relatively clear, distinct, sharp, looking forward is often filled with fog, hazy, not clear.

I live, physically, in a small apartment with my kids and husband. It too is an in-between space, where we landed as we figured out our next steps. Now we are here, waiting and doing what we need to move onto our next planned step, not knowing what will come our way to change our course and seeing clearly all the choices we made and didn’t make that brought us to this space now.

These in-between spaces are my life. The older I become the more I know, deep in my bones that these in-betweens, these back alleys that lead us into our next ways of being, our next iterations, our next phases of life, are life itself. Those unseen destinations ahead of us are often mirages that shape-shift with our whims and choices and non-choices and with the wind and with things far beyond our knowing or control.

These liminal spaces were once terrifying to me. My need for plans, for knowing, for having the false sense of control and safety was strong. I lacked resilience and would fall to pieces if the slightest thing went seemingly off track. It would take days or weeks for me to recover and even in the recovery of the disappointment or frustration there lived a deep resentment and deeper fear of the fallout of things not having gone “my way.”

In time I learned the value in having fall back plans. This brought comfort in that if Plan A didn’t work out exactly I still had plans B-ZZZZZ to work through. These fall back plans were my safety nets. They both helped me learn to build resilience and also stunted my resilience. I still needed control. I still feared the unknown. I still could not bear the dissonance of the in-between spaces.

I’m not entirely sure I can pinpoint when it all changed. When these in-between spaces, when these gates into the Underworld, began to feel like home. When my resilience grew back wholly and completely. I can not tell you the date or the exact steps I took to land here. I know part of it was coming into my body. I know part of it was seeing an amazing therapist (or three). I know part of it was becoming a mother and wanting more and better and different for my child. I know part of it was the reading of All The Books and getting my own degree in psychology. I know part of it is simply growing older and no longer having any fucks to give.

Here I am. I have been walking with Inanna for years now, going down into the Underworld, learning to sit in the discomfort of my own grief and trauma, learning to hold space for others to do the same. With each descent and ascent more layers come off and I leave more of my masks and armor and distracting baubles behind.

I live in my body. In her very real liminal space, moving from motherhood into cronehood. Shifting and softening. Creaking and popping more than in years past, and even with the pains and aches that are new to me now, I feel more comfortable and at home in her than ever before. The anger and resentment and sense of betrayal that I once had for her feels like a distant memory and I almost question if I ever hated my body at all.

Almost question. Because I know. I know I hated her. I hated her softness and curves. I hated how she drew attention from some people but not from others. I hated how she felt weak and defenseless against the world, against men who only wanted to take her and use and then discard her like a piece of trash.

I know I resented her. I resented all her limitations. I resented how she “turned on” me, how she wouldn’t bend or sway or stand or leap or run or punch or kick in the ways other bodies did. I resented how she was built and what all that meant. I resented her nature and naturalness. I resented how she was a target for pain and beatings from those who were supposed to love me. I resented how she just kept taking it, kept going on, wouldn’t stop. I resented my body’s resilience with all my mind. I resented her because I could not understand her need to survive or keep going or keep living, even in the worst and most torturous of circumstances.

I know I felt betrayed by her. Again and again. Becoming pregnant when I didn’t want her to and then becoming infertile when I desperately wanted another child. I felt betrayed by her “unspecified” diagnosis and how there was no clear or straight path to fix her, according to the myriad of doctors who poked and prodded and cut and then sewed her back up. I felt betrayed again by her curves and the attention they received, both “positive” and less “positive.” I felt betrayed by her sicknesses. I felt betrayed that she wouldn’t do exactly what I wanted her to do when I wanted her to do it.

I lived in that space for a long time. The hatred and resentment and betrayal almost ate me alive.

And here I am. From where I am now that all feels so very long ago. Though I know it wasn’t.

Here I am now. Now, I love my body. I revere and respect her. I am honored and humbled and so deeply grateful that despite me she kept going. I am amazed at all she has endured and grateful that she has held these stories and truths about the experiences that made me in a safe space until I was ready to know them.

I am at home in her. At home in the pleasures and pains of her. At home in the discomforts and comforts. At home in what she is right now. At home with the aging body she is becoming.

This is where I live. In my body.

In this amazing body that has endured tortures and pleasures. In this amazing body that keeps going despite all my past attempts to stop her. In this amazing body that has given me two beautiful living children. In this amazing body that is shifting and moving in her own ways. In this amazing body that holds both my stories and the stories of my ancestors. In this amazing body that knows.

I live at home. In this body. In the liminal spaces of life. In this tiny apartment that keeps us warm and safe and dry.

I live at home. In my freedom and unapologeticness and strength and power and daring and light and wholeness and knowing.

I live at home in my being and becoming the Unleashed Woman who my body held and nurtured and kept safe and brave through all our years.

I live at home in me.

xoxo

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

Today’s post was inspired by two different writing and exploration courses. One by Jena Schwartz and the other by Isabel Abbott and Bronwyn Petry. I encourage you to explore their work and see if any of their future offerings are right for you. xoox

October 27, 2016October 21, 2016

Reclaiming Our Light

What does it mean to step into our light? To claim our light? To embrace our light?

It is about reclaiming our brilliance, our fire, our spark.

It is about embracing the truth that we women are forces of nature.

It is all about being an Unleashed Woman.

It means claiming authority over our own life and claims and confidently sharing our knowledge, education, and experience.

It means claiming space: physically by not trying to shrink our body; emotionally by allowing our emotions to be felt and processed; psychologically by speaking up when something doesn’t work for us; spiritually by having practices that feel right for us in connecting to the greater world, to nature, to the cosmic energy of the universe.

It means embracing and loving our Whole Self, unconditionally and unapologetically.

It means connecting deeply with others, especially other women.

It means being self-aware, trusting our intuition, feeling good in our own skin, and acknowledging and accepting the ebb and flow of life.

Stepping into our light, becoming the Unleashed Woman is about making and breaking our own rules. It is about living life on our own terms and not compromising who we are to make others feel safe or comfortable.

Claiming our light, becoming our own Unleashed Woman is about taking up space in our homes, our work spaces, our entire world. It is about using our voice, daring to be heard and seen, embracing our power, all without apology.

Connecting to our light and the Unleashed Woman within us is about accepting our “flaws” and imperfections. It is about not pretending to “know it all” or “have it all together.” It is about us making mistakes, but not beating ourselves up for it; instead apologizing and making amends when necessary and learning and then doing differently in the future.

Embracing our light, our power, our strength and daring is being an Unleashed Woman and seeing other women as comrades, as sisters.

It is about knowing who we are. Analyzing ourselves, our emotions, our actions and looking for deeper meaning for our reactions to things. It is about trusting our intuition and listening to our body. It is about allowing ourselves to feel the bad times as well as the good, knowing that in time, regardless, this too shall pass.

And.

Reclaiming our light is also about stepping up and correcting the injustices we see in this world. It is about standing beside those who have been wronged and fighting with them to bring about justice and equality.

It is speaking out against our culture, not only in our being – also in our doing. This could look like going to protests or marches. It could look like donating money and or time to causes that call to us. It could look like raising our children to aware of the injustices in the world and showing the injustices in our history. It could look like listening and hearing and believing someone when they tell you of their own lived experience. It could look like voting from someone who you may not like, but know in the greater picture will be the better option for the oppressed, including you, in this country. It could look like calling out and in family and friends when they make a racist or ablist or misogynist comment or joke.

It could look like a million different things. And each of these things matter. Each of these are ways that we both step into our own light and create the space for others to step into theirs.

Because while this work is about us, it is also about our greater world community. It is about tearing down the oppressive systems we live under and building anew so everyone is free. It is about not only surviving, but thriving, both individually and collectively.

Because the truth is we cannot do this work alone, in a vacuum. The truth is not a one of us by ourselves can change the entire world. The truth is we need to do this work in community.

Together.

You and me and our all our brothers and sisters. Together.

Let’s do this thing.

(Below is a 20-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our light. I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in reclaiming your own Light, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you with a community of other women? Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1. You can learn more and register right over here. )

This is the fourth in a four-part series of essays and videos. Want to see the rest? You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength

Reclaiming our power

Reclaiming our daring

Reclaiming our light (this post)

October 25, 2016October 27, 2016

Reclaiming Our Daring

It is both an act of rebellion and an act of bravery to move against our (racist, misogynist, all the -ists) patriarchal culture. It is an act of daring to show the world who we truly are, to break the rules of compliance and complicity, to speak and shout and scream out against injustice.

Our culture wants us quiet, or rather, silent. Our culture wants us to look the way. Our culture wants us to follow the rules (you know, the ones that are ever changing and are different rules than the men need to follow). To be nice girls. To be polite.

Our culture wants us pitted against other women. Our culture wants us isolated, lonely.

Our culture wants us constantly striving. For better. For more. To never be satisfied with who we are or what we have. And in this striving we are to stomp on any other woman who gets in our way.

Our culture wants us buying into the stories of how we are too much and not enough. It wants us nearly immobilized by our shame.

Fuck our culture.

This is a culture that allows us to be raped, beaten and murdered. For the perpetrators to either not be punished at all, or get such lenient sentences that it’s laughable. And at the same time, we –the actual victims– are blamed. You know all the stories, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, well with what she was wearing what did she expect, she should have taken self-defense classes, she should have never talked to/dated/married him in the first place. Maybe you have even told some of these stories yourself.

Because we think if we hold up the lies of our culture, that somehow we will be safe.

But see, that right there, that is another lie our culture tells us.

We are not safe. We haven’t been for millennium.

Knowing this, it takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to stand up against our culture.

To dare to speak out.

To dare to speak up.

To dare to speak at all.

It takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to declare that we are perfectly fine as we are, that we do not need fixing, thank you very much, and by the way, neither do our sisters.

To dare letting go of the stories of how we are too much.

To dare letting go of the stories of how we are not enough.

To dare feeling comfortable in our own skin.

It takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to find and connect to and embrace our sisters, both by blood and by community.

To dare to show ourselves to the world so our sisters can find us.

To dare being honest and vulnerable.

To dare to acknowledge when we make mistakes, when we unintentionally harm others and to make the repairs necessary and do different the next time.

And here’s a thing: We have daring in our very being as women.

We dare to get up each day and try again, no matter how many times we have been shoved down.

We dare to fight for our children, their rights and well-being.

We dare to do things differently from our mother’s generation.

We dare to find ways to connect to our Whole Self, and embrace her as she is.

We dare to say fuck you to a culture that says we don’t matter.

We dare to claim our worth.

We dare to claim our value.

We dare to claim our bodies.

We dare to claim our experience.

We dare to claim our existence.

And it’s not easy. It’s messy and hard and frustrating and sometimes lonely. Particularly when we are in that in-between space of shifting from Leashed Woman to Unleashed Woman.

Daring to become the Unleashed Woman within requires fortitude, bravery, resilience. It requires us to be deeply connected to our own individual strength and power and the strength and power of the collective. It requires us to be able to sit in the discomfort of being rebellious, being a rule breaker.

I invite you to embrace your own daring, in all the big and small ways. To step into the discomfort of doing and being different. To join us in burning all this shit down and building up new.

Will you accept the invitation?

(Below is a 20-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our daring. I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in deeply connecting to your own daring, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you with a community of other women? Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1. You can learn more and register right over here. )

This is the third in a four-part series of essays and videos. Want to see the rest? You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength

Reclaiming our power

Reclaiming our daring (this post)

Reclaiming our light