Gwynn Raimondi, MA

You can be right or you can be in relationship

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Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. ~Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

You are not always right. It’s not always about being right. The best thing you can offer others is understanding. Being an active listener is about more than just listening, it is about reciprocating and being receptive to somebody else. Everybody has woes. Nobody is safe from pain. However, we all suffer in different ways. So learn to adapt to each person, know your audience and reserve yourself for people who have earned the depths of you. ~Mohadesa Najumi

Many of us who live with complex trauma from childhood have a deep need and want to be heard.  To be seen.  To be acknowledged.  To be noticed. To be understood. Many of us as children weren’t seen or heard or acknowledged.  Or worse, we were gaslit: being told our experiences weren’t “that” bad, or even worse than that, they never happened at all, that we were making it all up.

Our need for belonging, for being seen, for being heard, was not met when we were young.  Most of us learned to become silent.  But that silence was only on the surface, only the mask we wore on the outside.  Our internal experience was loud, it was screaming and howling, whether we consciously acknowledged it or not (and likely, we did not because of dissociation and our need to survive).

We were never taught how to express our emotions in a non-harmful way.  We were never taught how to have disagreements that don’t turn into screaming matches.  We didn’t learn how to listen to others, only to shut down or to argue.  Most likely as children we shut down.  So, as adults, we argue.  Loudly.  Harshly.  Cruelly. 

Our need to be seen and heard and acknowledged and accepted comes out all sideways as we grow older.  We need to be right.  We need to be understood.  But our desperate need to be seen and be right overshadows the other people we are in relationship with.  It overshadows their own needs to be seen and heard and it tramples over our empathy for this.  It actually keeps us out of relationship and getting those needs met for ourselves.

Not our fault.  We were never taught different.  

However.

We have a responsibility to stop causing harm to others, and in turn to stop causing harm to ourselves. To do the work of breaking life-long patterns and disrupting generations-old cycles. To process the trauma within us. To shift.  To do different.

This is not an easy feat.  We typically have generations of trauma and training ingrained in our bodies and being.  We have our own lived experience and those wounds and hurts.  We don’t know other ways of being, and even if we can get a glimmer of how to do something different, we have limited resources to make the internal and external shifts to make that happen. 

This is where our work is.  With our therapists, with our coaches, with ourselves.  It is the slowing down.  Learning to regulate our nervous systems, to understand boundaries, to be able to find our own center and ground.  It is coming home to our bodies and becoming more and more self aware. It is in processing the many traumas that live within us. 

It is a messy and hard road.  We will make mistakes.  We will need to be accountable for those mistakes, apologize, repair, and learn how to not make the same mistakes again.  It will be incredibly uncomfortable as we step into the unknown, as we shed the layers of our own and our ancestors traumas and woundings.  It will be terrifying as we unravel and dislodge those parts of us that aren’t really us, those parts of us that we carry around that were our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents.  It will be discombobulating as we seek out who we are and who we want to be and untangle that from all the hurt and pain.

It will not be a straight journey.  It will go in all directions. 

It is important to acknowledge the unfairness of needing to go on this journey at all.  Of needing to unravel the generations of trauma and wounding.  Of needing to process and heal our own traumas and woundings.  It is not fair.  It is not our fault.  We didn’t ask for it.

 And.

If we want to live our lives in a place of thriving instead of surviving, in a place of connection instead of isolation and dissociation, a place of joy, contentment, and or peace instead of constant pain, hurt, and suffering, we need to make the decision to enter into this work, to do this work, to create the change within ourselves so that we can begin to see the change and shifts in our outer world and in our relationships.

And we need to keep making that choice every day. To break the patterns.  To disrupt the cycles.  To come home to ourselves.  To feel good in our own skin.  To have nourishing, loving, and authentic relationships with our Self and with those around us. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on May 20, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Communication & Complex Trauma

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Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words. ~Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.  ~Fred Rogers

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
~Andrea Gibson,The Madness Vase

One of the most important parts of any relationship is communication.  In order for there to be good communication, both people need to be able to express themselves verbally, in a relatively non-defensive and non-abusive or non-harmful manner.  Both parties need to be able to take the risk of being vulnerable, of expressing their wants and needs.  Both parties also need to be able to truly listen and hear what the other person is trying to communicate to us.

This of course makes sense.  I believe this is what most of us strive for.  

But it is so fucking hard in practice.

It’s challenging because we each have trauma coursing through our bodies, living in our nervous systems. We each received messaging, either overtly or subvertly, that our wants and needs don’t matter, that we should just be happy if someone loves us and not complain.

Many of us learned in one way or another that expressing our wants or needs is actually dangerous.  Perhaps we were physically abused for crying or “whining.”  Perhaps we witnessed siblings or one of our caregivers receiving violence for expressing themselves.  Perhaps our bids for affection were met with coldness or further isolation.  Perhaps we were ridiculed for being “sensitive” or “weak” or “soft.”

Regardless of the specific whys, we got the message loud and clear that expressing our wants and needs wasn’t okay, wasn’t acceptable, wasn’t safe.  

So, it makes sense that as adults we have a very challenging time expressing our wants and needs.  

It makes sense it is challenging.  

It doesn’t make sense that we may (unconsciously) expect others to be mind readers. 

How many times have you thought or said or heard “Well, if they loved me they’d know what’s wrong!”?  Or “I shouldn’t have to tell you why I’m upset, you should know!”  

This narrative is actually a cloak for our own hurt and fear that our own feelings don’t matter.  That we don’t matter to the other person (and look, there’s proof!  They can’t read our mind!).  That we aren’t actually lovable.

Learning to communicate in productive, connecting ways takes practice. Lots of practice. It requires us to look at and work through some of our own wounding.  It requires us to come into our bodies so we can have some felt sense around what is happening for us – if past wounds are being poked, if something new is growing, if it’s a combination of both (usually it’s a combination).  

It takes practice to become curious and ask questions instead of making assumptions about what another person is thinking or feeling.  

It takes practice to actually ask another person if they can meet a want or need of ours in that moments, instead of demanding it from them.

It takes practice communicating our desires and boundaries without expectations for how the other “should” respond.

This all takes practice.  It takes patience, from all parties.  It takes messing up and getting it all wrong.  It takes a willingness to be vulnerable, to take some risks in sharing something a bit more intimate about ourselves.

This is what it means to break patterns and cycles.  It requires us to actually do the very messy and challenging and uncomfortable work of disrupting these generations old ways of relating that cause harm, to the others, to our relationships, and ultimately to our Self.

It not glorious work.  It isn’t fun.  It can be painful.  As we disrupt these patterns, we will likely lose people.  There will be grief.  There will be days we just don’t want to do it anymore.  

And. 

There will be days when we realize we are in a situation where once we would have lost our shit and here we are, relatively calm, figuring it out.

There will be days we feel such intense joy and happiness that all we can do is cry.

There will be days where we know, deep in our bones, how cherished we are, how loved we are, how lovable we are.

Both and.

Yes it is intense work.  And in my personal experience, it is so intensely worth it. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly-ish newsletter on May 10, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays and learn about my online offerings, you can subscribe here.

Breaking patterns, disrupting cycles, & accountability

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Healing can only happen when people are willing to shift.  ~Iyanla Vanzant

Much too often, our minds are used to somewhat efficiently excuse and justify old patterns, when the same energy and efforts could go towards the creating of new ones. Our society is, meanwhile, deeply enamored with technological creation, invention, and marvels. Many of these technological advancements assist with life as it is, however, the creation of new patterns of behavior and ways of life remains largely unexplored.  ~Sabina Nore, 22 Triggers

True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impact your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again. ~Mia Mingus

Looking back on my thirteen years of motherhood, there is so much I would do different, if I could go back in time and start all over again.  There were so many mistakes.  So much I got wrong.  So many patterns and cycles that I continued.  So many I am still working on breaking.

And.

There is so much I got right, and I would do it the same way again.  There were patterns I have been able to break, cycles I have been able to disrupt.

It is the both and.

All our relationships are often like that.

There are moments we look back on and wish with every fiber of our being we had made another choice, done something different.  And then there are the moments that we look back on and breathe a sigh of yes, that one, that I got right.

Hindsight is nearly always 20/20.  Looking back we have a clearer view of those moments, the ones that mattered, the ones that didn’t.  The ones that were defining, the ones that weren’t.  The ones that didn’t feel significant at the time, but turned out to be.  Those moments we didn’t know would be the last, the times we thought we would always have another chance, more time, but it didn’t turn out that way.  

We all carry within us patterns and cycles passed on to us by our families of origin, by our genetic ancestors, and by our culture. We have a choice, to a certain degree, to break and disrupt those cycles, to create change, to do different than what was done to us, to do different than what was done before.

I say to a certain degree, because we can’t break a pattern unless we become aware of it.  This requires not only our ability to look back at past generations, but also an ability to look objectively at ourselves.

We need to be able to see the ways we have perpetuated these cycles.  The ways we have continued the patterns.  

This requires us to have a certain level of self-awareness.  I believe it also requires us to have the ability to give ourselves self-compassion, to not dive into shame spirals and defensiveness.  To be able to explain the whys of the harm we ourselves have participated in, but not make excuses for it.

There are no excuses for causing harm to others, or ourselves for that matter.  Regardless of what was done to us in the past.  Regardless of what was done to our ancestors.

In order to break these patterns and cycles we need to be willing to hold ourselves accountable.  

Accountability, has four basic components.**  These are:

  • Self reflection
  • Apology
  • Repair
  • Changed behavior 

**From Mia Mingus

We need to be willing, and able, to do all four.  It requires our ability to be wrong, and to actually change our behavior in the future. And in order to change behaviors, we need to do the work of unraveling, untangling, and processing the trauma that lives within us.  

It is not glamorous or fun work.

It is work most people avoid doing.  I get it.  I understand why.  It is hard and brutal to process the trauma that lives within us.  To do the accompanying grief work.  To move into liminal space and unknown territory of doing different.  Of making change.  

Of actually breaking and disrupting, and not repeating and perpetuating, old patterns and cycles of harm. 

Even in the this work of doing different, we will still get some things wrong.  Which is why self-compassion is so important.  Which is why accountability, and our own willingness to go deep within ourselves and look at our own shadows, is so important.  Which is why we need to remember that we are all only human, to make space for forgiveness when appropriate (and I do not believe it is always appropriate). 

I have spent the last thirteen years practicing accountability with my daughter. Believe me, there have been ample opportunities for me to practice! And almost daily there are more opportunities. I practice it with my son.  I am learning to practice it with my friends and lovers.

Accountability is vulnerable.  It is a vulnerable space to move into admitting we have caused harm and taking ownership of it.  It requires that we be able to hold the disappointment, hurt, and or frustration that we caused, of someone we love; and it requires that we process our own grief that comes with it.

It all takes intention, practice, and time.  Life will give us plenty of opportunities.  A vital piece is remembering the importance of doing our own work of breaking the patterns and cycles still alive in us, in between each new opportunity.  

This is how we create change in the world :: by doing our individual work and the work of healing and creating a loving relationships with those in our lives.  It means we will each be in the wrong, and this needs to be okay in the sense that we accept our responsibility and do the work of repair and change.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on April 12, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

We’ll be exploring these ideas in the seven week course Embodied Writing :: Relating, Relationships, & Trauma. You can learn more and register here.

 

A love letter to you and me

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I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living. ~ Anais Nin

You torment yourself wondering
how they could not love your 
Burning heart.
and the answer is darling, 

You are not the star
you thought you were.

You are the fucking universe.

and not everyone is an astronaut.
~wild moon woman

And you tried to change, didn’t you?  Closed your mouth more.  Tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake… You can’t make homes out of human beings.  Someone should have already told you that.   And if he wants to leave, then let him leave.  You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful.  Something not everyone knows how to love.  ~Unknown

Breathe.
Oh you gorgeous human, breathe.

You live in a world that hates you. That wants to mold you and reduce you and put you in a box of its own liking.

But you won’t let it.

You live in a world that wants you quiet, silent, agreeing with everything the status quo says is right.

But you speak out.  You speak up.  You use your voice.  You have the audacity to disagree, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly.  

You live in a world that views you as a thing.  An object.  Something to be used and abused and consumed at someone else’s whim.

But you demand to be recognized as a human being.  Who is not to be used or objectified or trifled with. An autonomous being of your own creation.

Breathe.
Oh you fabulous, effervescent human, breathe.

We live in a world that says we only have value if we are producing.  Babies.  Content.  A beautiful home for our husband.

But we take time to slow down, to rest.  We decide for ourselves if children are to be a part of our path or not.  We demand that any spouse or partner take equal part in creating and maintaining a shared home.

We live in a world that tells us we are hysterical, that our rage and sadness and frustration are all invalid.  That we want and expect too much of others, of the world.  That we are unreasonable.

But we know that our rage and sadness and frustration stems from generations of oppression, of abuse, of murder.  That all our feelings are valid.  That expecting others to treat us with basic respect and dignity and kindness is a baseline.  That we are beyond reasonable and are always looking for ways for everyone to get their needs met, but not at the cost of our own.  

We live in a world that expects us to beg for scraps and when we receive them, even though they aren’t nearly enough to sustain us, we are supposed to be and act so fucking grateful.

But we know our worth, we know our value, and we know it is bullshit to accept scraps that aren’t nearly enough to nourish us, to sustain us.  

Breathe.
You gorgeous, amazing human, breathe.

You are beautiful and amazing.  You are strong and capable.  You are brilliant and so fucking deserving of everything good and incredible.

You wake up every single morning and you fight.  You fight by getting out of bed and making yourself (and or your kids) food.  You fight by taking a shower.  You fight by saying you are going to keep going, even if only for today.

You are gorgeous and awe inspiring.  You are a force of nature.  You are dazzling and so worthy of love and respect.

You do your work, every single fucking day.  Your work in the world.  Your inner work.  You do all that you can, what you must, to stop the generations of abuse, neglect and trauma from being passed down through you.   

You are exquisite and magnificent.  You are uplifting and awesome.  You are luminous and significant.

You bring light and hope to those who know you.  You give love, so much fucking love, to those who are in your world.  You matter to so many.  The world would be a darker place without you in it.  

Breathe.
Oh you stunning, sparkling human, breathe. 

Thank you.  

Thank you for all you bring into the world.
|
Thank you for doing your work, for stumbling and getting up and trying again the next day.  

Thank you for wanting more, for wanting different, for wanting better, for yourself, for the world, for the generations to come.

Thank you for all you do in this world.  Even if you feel like it isn’t enough.  Even if you are so fucking beyond exhausted.  Even if all you can do many days is simply keep breathing.

Thank you.

Remember that you are enough.

All you do is enough.

You don’t need to prove your worth.

You are already worthy.

You don’t need to prove your deserving.

You deserve all amazing things simply because you are alive.

Remember to give yourself credit for all you have done.  For the person you are today.  For the changes you have already made.  For the work you have struggled through.  For the darkness you have clawed your way out of.

Remember to give yourself credit for all that you are.  For the love you give.  For your willingness to grow and shift and change.  For all those generations old patterns and cycles you have already broken.

Remember you are amazing.  You are gorgeous.  You are deserving and worthy.

Of course you still have work to do.  Of course you still struggle with certain patterns and cycles.  Of course you fuck up, on the daily.

You are human.

All of that does not make you less beautiful.  It does not make you less luminous.  It does not make you less deserving of love, respect, liberation.

Today remember all you are.  You are made of star dust.  Of raging fire.  Of luscious earth.  Of vast oceans.  Of life giving air.

You are strong, even when you feel weak.  You are loved, even when you feel you don’t deserve it.  You are part of the web of humanity and the cosmos, even when you feel so very, very soul-crushingly lonely.

You are a fighter.  You are a survivor.  You are a warrior. Even if you don’t feel it most days.  By simply continuing to exist you are these things.  Be simply demanding to take in breath, you are these things.  By doing all you do beyond this, you are these things.

And because of this, because  you are wholly you.  Unapologetically you.  Unfailingly you, human, flawed, perfectly imperfect.  Struggling, scared, anxious.  Fucking up and still continuing to try and do different.

Because of this and so much more, I am so deeply grateful you are here.

You matter.

In this world.  To those who know you personally and intimately.  And to me.

/../

This essay was written and originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on March 8, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We will talk a bit about self-worth, deserving, and self compassion in the six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors (TIE™ STS) group that being on March 16. To learn more, click here.

Self regulation, body reclamation, & trusting ourselves

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Knowing yourself is first step towards self reclamation.  ~Amit Gupta

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.  ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

When we self-regulate well, we are better able to control the trajectory of our emotional lives and resulting actions based on our values and sense of purpose.  ~Amy Leigh Mercree, A Little Bit of Meditation: An Introduction to Mindfulness

Living with unprocessed complex trauma means living with a dysregulated nervous system.  It means living in a state of dissociation.  It means not being able to trust ourselves, our reactions, or others and our surroundings.

Living with complex trauma, living in that activated state, in that anxious state, more hours of the day than not, is exhausting.  Emotionally, psychologically, and physically/physiologically.

It impacts our health.  Physical, emotional, psychological.

The impacts of living with unprocessed trauma is exacerbated by the world we live in.  A world where womxn, people of color, trans and non-binary persons, are oppressed and murdered for simply having the audacity to breathe.

A world where being poor is essentially a death sentence.

A world where billionaires can buy their way into the presidency.

A world where victims are blamed and survivors aren’t believed.

A world that is ultimately unsafe.

Knowing this, knowing our world is unsafe, fundamentally so, that this reality activates and exacerbates our complex trauma, how to do we find ways of regulating our nervous systems, reclaim our body, and learn to trust our Self and not be at the mercy of our fight/flight and freeze/fawn reactions?

First, I believe it is so important that we don’t gaslight ourselves.  That we don’t tell our Self that the world is perfectly safe when it’s not.  Yes, there are spaces where we are more or even mostly safe.  In those spaces, we can tell our systems, body, and Self that we are safe enough. 

That said we can also go out and function in the world without being controlled by our limbic system.  We can learn to lower our baseline anxiety, to self regulate, to reclaim our body as OURS and ours only, and even to trust ourselves without lying to ourselves about the reality of the world we live in.

In fact, we need to be able to go out into the world and function.  We need to be able to learn to relate to others in ways that aren’t activating, that don’t escalate already tense situations.  To relate to others from a place of compassion, curiosity, community.  To actually relate to other humans, and ourselves, instead of constantly being on the defense or offense.

I believe in order for us to learn to relate to others, in any and all spaces, we need to bring our baseline anxiety down.  To regulate our autnomic nervous system.  To reclaim our body as our own and to come home into it.  To trust our deeper knowing, our body, our perceptions, while also being curious and open to check in with ourselves and see if what is happening is a response to a past trauma or the present moment.

We need to know if what is happening within is a response to the present moment or that our past trauma experience(s) is being activated in some way, in order to relate to people and situations in ways that are beneficial for all involved, and for the greater collective.

Ultimately, I’m saying it is important for us to do our work.  To learn to self regulate.  To reclaim our body and come home to it.  To know our self well enough so we know when we can trust and when we need to dig a little deeper.

It is important for us to do our work not only so we can enjoy our lives more and have deeper and more fulfilling relationships, but also so the the new ways we are in the world start to make a greater shift for our communities and the greater collective. 

We aren’t required to do this work.  It wasn’t our fault that we were harmed and what we do or don’t do with our processing or healing is wholly up to us.

AND.

We are required to not cause harm to others.  To not perpetuate abuse and trauma.  

I honestly don’t know another way to not cause harm, to ourselves, to other individuals, to the collective, to the planet, than to continue doing our own personal trauma work and breaking the generations old patterns and cycles that have brought us, individually and collectively, where we are today.

This is not simple work.  I don’t believe it’s ever done.  We have layers and layers, lifetimes worth of patterns and cycles to unravel and untangle.

Learning to regulate our nervous system takes practice and time.

Reclaiming our body as ours takes practice, compassion, and an understanding that this part of our work will ebb and flow.

Coming to a place of both trusting our inner knowing and being self-aware enough to know the difference between this knowing and an activated past trauma response takes knowing how to self-regulate, coming into our bodies, and practice, time, compassion, and patience.

This trifecta, self-regulation, body reclaiming, and trusting our Self, is so key to being able to change all our relationships and changing the world. It is how we shift from our own individual survival to having a life that is fulfilling and thriving.  It is a vital part of the revolution and evolution of our species.  It is an important piece of how we will burn down our authoritarian, white supremacist, oppressive systems and come together to build something different, where all persons are free, loved, and liberated.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weeklyish newsletter on March 1, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. If you would like to read my recent essays you can subscribe here.

In Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors we will explore this trifecta, learning tools to self regulate our nervous system, practicing exercises of reclaiming and coming back into our body, and exploring ways to deeper self-awareness, starting to know the difference between our inner knowing and an activated past trauma and seeing the ways we can begin to actually trust our Self.  We will begin on Monday March 16 and registration will close on Sunday, March 15 at 10pm PST.  There are nine spaces total and six are currently still available.  To learn more about this six month group program, you can click right here.