Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Trauma, collective liberation, & doing our work

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Over and over we are told we don’t know our own body. We don’t know our own mind. We don’t know our own boundaries or wishes or consent.

And, because we are told so often and from such an early age, we believe them.

And in the believing we allow others to have control over us. Over our body. Over our voice. Over our being. Our lives. ~ Gwynn Raimondi

The flip side to us not being connected to our own boundaries, to our own consent, and that is that we do not recognize the boundaries and consent of others.  We don’t accept that No means No if that No isn’t something we want to hear.  We touch people, no matter how lovingly, without their consent.  We disregard others wishes and wants because we think we know better.

This happens almost daily in my home.  I am still constantly unlearning and relearning power dynamics, consent and boundaries thanks to my two children, constantly being reminded of the responsibility of being the one “in power” and how to not be oppressive or authoritarian.  Some days I am open to all the lessons they have for me and honestly, other days  I am not.  Some days I can patiently talk with them about their Noes and why I need it to be a yes (getting shoes on to get out the door to an appointment) and other days I just really want them to stop and blindly obey me because I’m tired and overwhelmed and have been running on empty for days (thinking about those great times in the past when my then-preteen told the then-toddler he can’t have something of hers and he screams in that screech-scream that both made my ears bleed and head feel like it was going to explode and I just wanted her to give him whatever the thing is to Make. It. Stop.).

It happens when I ask either of them if they want a thing, and they say no, and I then continue to ask approximately five hundred million times if they are sure they don’t want the thing, questioning over and over their No.

It happens when I take a bit of food off the younger’s plate, a plate he has abandoned at the table, and he sees me and reminds me I didn’t ask if I could eat his food.

It happens when we’re trying to get out the door.

It happens when I’m trying to get the house cleaned up.

It happens when one of them says they don’t want to do their homework that day.

And while it happens a million times over the week with my kids, it happens with adults too.

Truth is, I’m much better at not violating other adults consent.  I tend to automatically respect their Noes and because of my own history I am perhaps extra sensitive about physically touching others grown-ups without their explicit consent. I’m also better about not questioning the whys behind their Noes, unless there is a philosophical conversation happening where my curiosity would be well received. Doesn’t mean it never happens, only that it happens less than with my kids.

My kids? 

Well, I am better now than I was a few years ago at respecting their autonomy, their Noes, their boundaries and consent. Even so I am still far from perfect.

So I have the privilege of receiving daily lessons on all the ways we are trained to give up our autonomy, our authority over our own bodies, our consent over our own lives.

And let me tell you, this training and conditioning runs deep.

Because this training and conditioning runs deep it isn’t going to be dismantled and dislodged in a day or a week or even a year.  It will take a couple generations to unravel and dislodge and heal the collective relational trauma we all carry within us and all are complicit in out in the world.

And.

This is exactly why we need to begin our work now.  It is exactly why when we realize we have violated another person’s boundaries or consent or autonomy or authority over their own damn bodies and lives we need to make amends as best we can, learn the lesson as best we can, and do different the next time. We must start this work now, or it will not be dismantled in the next generation or two, if ever. 

If we don’t start our own work now, we are complicit in the delaying of liberation for all people, for another generation.

If we don’t start our own work now, we are complicit in our own oppression as well as the oppression of other peoples.

If we don’t start our own work now, we are complicit in allowing the status quo just keep on keeping on.

If we don’t start our own work now, we are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Each of us need to do our parts in tearing down the oppressive culture that we live in.

Even if it is uncomfortable.

Even if it shows us the ways we have wronged others along the way and we need to go back and be accountable for our actions.

Even if it means being in a space of unknown and in-between and mistakes and stumbling and trying to figure it all out.

Because the moment we actually start doing our work is the exact moment we start to do our part in tearing all this shit down.  It is the exact moment we begin to become part of the solution and become less a part of the problem.

I look at my kids and I think about all the things I do wrong every single day.  All the ways I am unintentionally complicit and compliant to our oppressive culture.  All the ways I pass down the conditioning and training. I won’t lie, it often feels overwhelming and the uphill battle of it all can feel like all too much for me to even attempt to make a tiny chip in.

Then I have a conversation with another woman who reminds me that I have broken the cycle of abuse.

Then I have a conversation with a different woman about how I am teaching my daughter about the powerful women of color, trans women, differently able bodied women, in the world and how until they are free and safe, none of us are.

Then I have a conversation with yet another woman about how I encourage my kids to have and feel and express their emotions in healthy ways.

And in those conversations I am reminded that I am making a difference.  And while it won’t mean the world will be changed tomorrow, it does mean I am guiding two young humans to being in the world differently than I was raised to be and to having their own ripple effect in changing it all.

Parenting and auntie-ing and uncle-ing and grandparenting -all caregiving- is important and vital work.  It is how we have a long lasting impact.  It is how we help create a world we want for these young humans who are temporarily in our care. And of course the way we do this work, is through also doing our own work of unearthing and unraveling and dismantling, so we can teach them not only through our words, but also through our actions. 

Our inner work is vital, and our work with the children in our lives is a vital step in making change within the next generation, there is also the greater work we need to be doing out in the world.

This greater work can look like any of a million things.  It could be donating money to organizations that promote social justice.  It could be volunteering time for a specific cause you believe in.  It could be calling your representatives and/or attending town hall meetings.  It could be speaking up when that racist relative says something oppressive or degrading at the family feast.  It could be speaking up when you see a woman in a hijab being harassed. 

It could be any of those things and so many more things.

All of this work, both inner and outer, in my opinion, in many ways, boils down to boundaries and consent.  Honoring our own boundaries and honoring the boundaries of others.  Defending our own boundaries and defending the boundaries of others.  Respecting our own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others.

Inner work and outer work.

Both at the same time.

Because until we are connected to our own boundaries, until we respect them and defend them, until we know them, I’m not sure we can know or respect the boundaries of others.

This isn’t our fault.

We are trained and conditioned to disregard our own boundaries and to disregard the boundaries of others.

We are told our Noes don’t really mean No.  And since our No doesn’t really mean No then their No doesn’t really mean No either.

We are told our body is not our own.  And since our body is not our own, then their body is not their own either.

We are told and taught and trained in a million ways that we do not have autonomy or authority over our bodies, minds or lives.  And since we don’t, they don’t either.

They can be just about anyone.  That is, anyone who is not CIS, white, heterosexual, likely Christian, upper middle class (or more), able-bodied and always male.

No, it is not our fault that we received and internalized this training.  It is not our fault this conditioning got deep under out skin into our very being.  It is not our fault.

We didn’t ask for this training.  We did not consent to this conditioning.

And.

As I said for literally years, while it is not our fault, it is absolutely and unequivocally our responsibility.

It is our responsibility to stop passing on this training.

It is our responsibility to stop passing on this conditioning.

It is our responsibility to unearth and unravel and dismantle and dislodge it from our bodies and minds and ways of being in the world.

It is our responsibility to learn to feel and know and respect and honor and defend our own boundaries and the boundaries of others.


No, it’s not fair.  And as I tell my kids, forget fairness and instead ask if it is just.

Because fairness is a fairy tale.  But justice… justice is something we can all believe in and fight for and make reality.

Inner work and outer work.  We need both.

To stop passing on harm.

To stop passing on abuse.

To stop being complicit and compliant to a dominant culture and its systems that don’t actually care about us.

To create a world that operates from a place of love not fear; liberation, not authoritarianism, connection and intimacy, not disconnection and isolation.

It is not easy work. And it is necessary.

So let’s do it.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter in August 2017. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We’ll be exploring boundaries and consent, our own and others, in my new six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Relationship six month group program. To learn more, you can go here.

On being an adult in relationship

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Our work, then, is not to abolish our connection to the past but to take it into account without being at its mercy.  The question is how much the past interferes with our chances at healthy relating and living in accord with our deepest needs, values, and wishes. ~David Richo, How To Be An Adult In Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

David Richo states in How To Be An Adult In Relationships, that in order to be an adult, we need to be self-aware and mindful in our actions. 

 In other words, self-awareness is vital on it’s own, but until it is coupled with mindful and intentional action (or inaction), we still aren’t fully acting in our frontal lobe, or “adult” brain.

Those of us who experienced chronic trauma in childhood have a lot to be angry about.  We have a lot to be sad about.  We have a lot to rage and scream and wail about.  I don’t believe anyone would deny that.  The atrocities that were done to too many of us as children are horrifying and all of it is held in our body and mind memory. 

The trauma doesn’t want to stay trapped within us however, it wants to get out.  This is great news if we are in therapy and doing a combination of talk and somatic therapies to help move that trauma on out of our systems and being.  It’s not so great news if we aren’t and so we try to stuff it down and eventually it bubbles up and out and we spew it all over an unsuspecting passer-by.

That passer-by could be our children, our intimate partner(s), our friends, other family members.  It could even be ourselves.

It is understandable that we have so much hurt and torment living within us.  I makes sense that it all needs to get out.  It is not okay for us to lash out at others.

Even when they cause us harm.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Even when  a person causes us harm, it is not acceptable for us to lash out and cause them harm.

The whole “two wrongs doesn’t make a right” thing.

Here’s a thing, though.  For most of us, I don’t think our “eruptions” or “lashing out” are intentional.  I know for me it mostly certainly isn’t mindful.  It comes from a primal place within that only cares about our survival. And so when we are already wounded, like any animal, if we get poked or prodded we go into fight/flight/freeze because we see any hurt as an attack and we need to protect and defend ourselves.

Rollo May wrote: “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between 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.“

The work of self-awareness is to be able to grow that capacity to pause and allow space for us to mindfully choose the response we want to to actually have.

This is not to say there isn’t a part of us that wants our response to be screaming at the top of our lungs and stomping our feet.

It is to say however, that we need to take the moment to consider the longer term impacts of us screaming and stomping our feet.  And if the longer term impacts actually cause us and other (more) harm, then perhaps we could consider a different response.

Shifting from a space of automatic, mindless, response to one where there has been space created between being activated and actually responding, is no simple task.  We cannot undo the habit of a lifetime of automatic, mindless responding simply because we decide we want to do so.

It takes time.

AND.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, learning to regulate our systems: calm our sympathetic nervous system, activate our parasympathetic nervous system, move the stored up cortisol out of our system.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, connecting to our boundaries and coming into our bodies.  Learning to truly understand, on a very visceral level, where we end and another begins, physically, psychically, emotionally.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, finding our ways to ground and our own center, being able to find our way to not only be in but stay in, the present moment, despite any and all the discomfort we may be feeling.

And after all of that, it takes practice, a LOT of practice, to break the patterns and cycles that we have become so accustomed to.  To actually not engage in an argument even though we may be being provoked, to walk away, to calm ourselves in the moment, to bite our tongues, to actually feel empathy for the person causing harm.

None of this comes easy.  Or at least, none of it has come easy to me.

Changing life long, if not generations old, patterns and cycles takes effort.  It requires compassion.  And we will all screw it up along the way, slipping back into old ways of being because that is what is known.  

And.

It can be done.  With practice.  

What is interesting about changing these patterns and cycles is that as we begin to do so on our end, the person(s) on the other side may try to up their game. When this happens it can be so tempting to engage.  Believe me, I know!  And, it is all the more important for us to continue practicing our own work, to continue growing that “pause”, to continue our own work of breaking harmful patterns and cycles.

Eventually those who try to engage us will change too.  Either they will simply go out of our lives because they aren’t getting the emotional charge from us anymore, or they too will begin to create space, to cultivate and grown that pause, to break their own patterns and cycles.

We can’t do any of that for them though.  We can only do our own work.  Even in those moments when, right then, we really just want to scream and stomp, and perhaps, especially in those moments.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

/../

This essay was originally written in May 2018 for my weekly newsletter and has been updated and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

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My response to “not all men”

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Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
~Leonardo da Vinci

Domination is a relationship, not a condition; it depends on the participation of both parties. Hierarchical power is not just the gun in the policeman’s hand; it is just as much the obedience of the ones who act as if it is always pointed at them. It is not just the government and the executives and the armed forces; it extends through society from top to bottom, an interlocking web of control and compliance. Sometimes all it takes to be complicit in the oppression of millions is to die of natural causes.
~CrimethInc.,Contradictionary

I’m a member of several different online groups related to trauma.  In general I basically quietly observe because at this point in my life I don’t have a lot of time to have hours and days long discussions online about anything, not even one of my most favorite topics ever (trauma). Even so, I am observing and reading, and sometimes learning, and sometimes nodding along, and sometimes shaking my head and needing to walk away.

One thing that has me shaking my head vehemently and wanting to shake people is this particular reaction that certain “leaders” in the trauma processing (or “healing”) world have about sexual trauma and what is and isn’t okay to say in reference to these topics.

Specifically what I have seen happen is a women or femme makes a post about her own experience of sexual abuse or harassment or trauma.  Other women jump in to support.  Eventually someone says something along the lines of “Men are pigs”. And then the “leader”/facilitator of the group will jump in, always also a women, and tell folks to “tone it down” and “not all men” and “all people, regardless of gender, have trauma and deserve to heal it”and “remember there are men in this group and we don’t want to offend them,” and perhaps my all-time favorite, “my husband and the men I work with are all Good Guys™ so we can’t talk about men like that.”

As you can guess, I have a bit of an issue with this.

First, it’s silencing and shaming at best and exacerbates trauma at worst. Not allowing women and femmes to express their outrage, frustration, fear, anxiety, or sadness about the state of the world, that women are unsafe in this world, is gaslighting.  These types of statements are saying that an individual woman’s experience is invalid because “not all men” are bad.  (More on this “not all men” crap in a few). It is saying that our anxiety of being unsafe in the world is “all in our heads.”

A truth is, the world IS unsafe for women and femmes.  A truth is that actually, yes all men.  No, not all men rape, not all men assault.  But I’d be hard pressed to say that “not all men” harass women (though they might not call it harassment).  And absolutely all men benefit from the privilege bestowed upon them simply because they were born with a penis (and that privilege includes women being fearful for their lives around men and therefore being compliant and docile and “supportive” of “their” men in an attempt to survive).

Do I believe there are good men in the world? Yes, absolutely.  AND my definition of a good man is one who acknowledges his privilege and utilizes it to bring about change for women.  A good man calls out other men.  A good man notes when he screws up, apologizes, and then does the inner work he needs to in order to do different the next time. A good man doesn’t silence women or say “not me” or “not all men”.  A good man listens and creates spaces for women’s voices to be heard and respected.

A good man doesn’t need a woman to silence other women on his behalf.

Which brings me to the second part of my issue: women defending “innocent” men at the expense of other women.

A truth is, men don’t need us defending their “honor.”  Their actions in the world defend their honor.  The ways they speak up and out against rape culture defends their honor.  Every time they call out another man on some misogynist “joke” or comment they defend their honor.  Every time they listen to a woman and don’t interrupt or “mansplain” they defend their honor.

They do not need us defending them.  Or making statements like “not all men” or “my partner/colleague/friend” is a Good Guy™.

They, as the cultural oppressor and ones with the upper hands, can defend themselves just fine.

What women need to be doing instead of making statements like “not all men” is standing in solidarity with other women.  We need to not be silencing women who are sharing their story and pain and trauma.  We need to not gaslight each other. We need to to not throw each other under the bus so we can maintain our own status as “good” (and by “good” I mean obedient, complicit, and compliant) women in the eyes of men.

We need to stand in solidarity with each other.
We need to support each other.
We need to believe each other.
We need to encourage each other to speak up and out (when we are ready).

Looking at the Senate race in Alabama in December 2017, I was frustrated at see again how much work we have to do.  That 63% of white women voted for Roy Moore is disgusting to me.  That 63% of white women threw the safety of their own daughters out the window to maintain the patriarchal status quo (and their own place in the hierarchy in doing so) is nauseating to me. (There have been multiple similar examples since then, including most recently Jill Biden jumping to the defense of her husband Joe around the Anita Hill hearings.)

Our daughters deserve better.

Our daughters deserve to live in a world where men in power don’t have the right to sexually, physically, emotionally, or psychologically abuse or assault them.  A world where there are real and dire consequences to harming women.

Our daughters deserve us to stand up and protect them.
Our sisters deserve the same.
Our women and femme friends deserve the same.
Women and femmes we have never met deserve the same.
WE deserve the same.

When we, as women, make statements like “not all men” or try to defend men from the atrocities they as a collective have and continue to commit, we are only being complicit and compliant players in our oppressive, misogynist, patriarchal culture.

Because a truth is, yes all men.

Even your husband.  Even my (ex)husband. Even your son.  Even my son.  All men have their own work to do.  And us loving them isn’t going to change the reality that they were raised and conditioned and trained in a misogynist culture and that, through no fault of their own, they internalized these messages.

There is not a totally innocent man out there.  And unless they are actively and intentionally doing their own inner and outer work to tear this shit down and atone for their own wrong doing and the that of other men, they are that much more of the problem.

Men don’t need us making excuses for them.  They don’t need us defending them.  They don’t need us say “Well, not MY man.”

Men need to do their own work.

And we, as women, need to do our own too.

Which includes taking a deep look inside to explore why we may feel a compulsion to defend the “innocent” men of the world.  Why we feel a compulsion to make statements like “not all men.”  Why we feel a compulsion to disregard and discredit the experiences of other women in favor of the “reputation” of a man.

Yes, we are all in this together. Yes, we cannot change rape culture into consent/nuturance culture without men.  Yes, men are also harmed by our oppressive, misogynist, patriarchal culture.

And we need to stop coddling them and instead begin pushing them to prove to us that they are indeed one of the Good Guys ™ through their actions, not just their in-actions.

Not being a rapist doesn’t automatically make one a good man.  It takes a lot of intentional internal and external work to get that title.

We all need to remember that.

This essay was originally written for my weekly newsletter in December 2017 and has been edited for publication here.

To subscribe to my weekly newsletter you can sign up here.