gwynn, Author at Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA

Trauma, retreat, cocooning, coming back into world

November 22, 2018 By gwynn

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

~Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

About a year and a half ago I received some incredibly traumatic news. I was incredibly blessed that my people gathered around me and held me together and up as I processed all that was being unearthed. I was, and am, deeply grateful for those women.

A couple weeks later, I learned that one of my best friends from high school died. And there was the funeral to attend across the state and the grief to feel and sit in and know.

I lost my words. All the pain of those two events, the sense of the world as I thought I knew it shattered. I needed to go inside, to spend as much time and energy and space as I could process and being with those I love most. I stepped back from the world and went in my safe cocoon. I processed and felt and cried and screamed. I listened to music I knew would encourage my tears. I allowed all the tears to shake themselves out of my body as my chest hurt and throat felt raw.

I was reacting to and processing two traumas at once.

And because of the way our bodies work, I was also processing old traumas. While the reason for my tears may have been about recent events, the toxins that were released via those tears have been in my body for a long time.

This is how processing trauma works. Our body doesn’t really know the difference between traumatic events, though our mind does. Our body only knows something is not right, that it needs to be in a heightened reactive state. And so as we process any one specific trauma, our body also is able to process old and other traumas at the same time.

Part of my process of processing traumas, personally, is to cocoon. This is different from isolating (which is something trauma encourages us to do). Cocooning for me is like wrapping myself in a cozy, heavy, blanket. It is warm and safe and quiet. The cocoon is made up of time with those I love, time with my therapist, time in solitude. It is having quiet and having soothing voices. It is being held and being not touched. It is limiting sensory input and output and allowing myself to sit in and feel and be with and yes, process, the multitude of emotions that are swirling in me.

(Not all that) long ago I would not cocoon when I experienced a traumatic event. I would “power through.” I would isolate – telling all those around me I was “fine” as I felt like I was dying. I didn’t reach out. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t seek comfort. All of this is a normal trauma response. For reasons we don’t yet understand, when we experience trauma, and do not have sufficient reserves of resilience, our mind tells us to stuff it down, act like nothing’s wrong, and even worse, tells us we are all alone, no one would understand, don’t even bother seeking help.

With my own personal work, both trauma specific and not, I’ve been able to come to this place now of no longer isolating, and instead, cocooning. It hasn’t been easy getting here. And I am still in my own process and journey in this work. This work takes time and patience and whole fuck ton of self-compassion.

Because of the self-compassion part I can look back at old patterns and ways of being and not feel shame. Instead I remind myself I was doing the best I could with the tools I had and was able to receive at the time.

This is true for all of us.

I deeply believe each and every one us at any moment are doing the absolute best we can with the tools and resources we have and are able to receive.

Even when we are at our absolute worst and lowest and darkest.

Take that in for a moment.

Even in our darkest and lowest and worst moments, we are doing the best we can with the tools and resources we have and are able to receive.

(Note: sometimes we are not able to receive resources, for any number of reasons, even when they are offered to us. We get to have compassion for this too.)

I have often heard people say (and even said myself a few times) “I wish I had started this work [of self-awareness, body-centered mindfulness, and or trauma processing] earlier/when I was younger/a long time ago.”

A truth is, that we couldn’t have started this work until we did. For whatever reasons we didn’t have the right resources to move into this work.

We didn’t have enough of our basic needs being met.

Dr. Abraham Maslow developed a theory that is called the Hierarchy of Needs. At the base is food, water, shelter, rest, the ability to breathe and eliminate waste. If these basic needs aren’t met then we can’t focus on the second “level” which is safety – being in an environment where your body feels physically safe, you have a steady income, you have resources you can rely on including friends and family, you have a relatively healthy body.

The “middle level” in the hierarchy is love and belonging. I feel this is important to note. I’ve seen a meme several times over the years that says in essence “If you don’t love yourself, no one else can/will love you.” According to Maslow, this is absolutely incorrect – we actually need to feel loved and cared for and have a sense of belonging somewhere before we can move on to “self-esteem” or self-love. We need our people, our community. We need to feel like we are a part of something. Sometimes we are able to find this sense of belonging from our parents or siblings, and sometimes not. Sometimes we find this at church or school, sometimes not. Sometimes we find it in our social circles, and sometimes not. It honestly doesn’t matter where we find it, only that we do. (Also, this is what attachment theory tells us – we need to feel and be loved in order to love ourselves.)

This is where that “deeper” work, trauma related, self-awareness, body-centered mindfulness, and our ability to “do the work” comes into play. We actually can’t do that work UNLESS we have our other basic needs met – one of which is having a sense of belonging and being loved.

My truth is I would not have been able to start any of my personal work any earlier than I started it. Particularly my own trauma work. I needed to have my basic needs met, have consistent and reliable access to food and shelter, to have a sense of safe-enoughness, to feel loved and that I belong enough, and then also to love myself enough – to be able to come to the place of feeling that I do matter, that my life matters, and that I am worthy of happiness and to not continue to suffer all the physical and psychological and emotional impacts of my own trauma history.

Frankly, I didn’t get to that place, I didn’t have all those needs met, until relatively recently, in the last few years. And so, even if I had gone into trauma therapy prior to that, it likely would not have helped as much as it is now, and also frankly, I likely wouldn’t have stuck with it.

This “deeper work” isn’t necessary for our survival. The first three tiers of the hierarchy are. We honestly don’t need to love ourselves or be “self-actualized” in order to survive on this planet.

And.

For those of us who have the privilege of having those three basic needs met, what would our lives be like if we were able to get the fourth and fifth met? If we did the work of processing our own lived experience trauma, our ancestral trauma that lives in our DNA, our cultural trauma that feeds itself every day? What would that even be like? How would our lives be different?

For me, I know how my life is different. I also see the shifts in the women who gather in my circles and who I work with individually. I know, personally, how coming home to my own body changed every aspect of my life. I know, personally, how doing body-focused trauma therapies have opened up aspects of my Self and my life I thought were closed away forever.

It hasn’t been easy. It has certainly more often than not, been really fucking hard.

And yet, for me, and it seems for others who are able to do this work, it has been so fucking worth it.

…

Did you enjoy reading this? It was originally written for my weekly newsletter in the summer of 2017; I edited it for publication here. If you’d like to receive my weekly emails, which includes essays like one, you can fill out the form on this page.

More on Rape Culture

November 15, 2018 By gwynn

… in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women’s experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

~Judith Lewis Herman

I believe it is important for us to understand the different aspects of our oppressive and harmful culture. This essay was originally published in my newletter in May of 2017 and has been edited for publication here.

What does rape culture look like?

It’s a million different things. I believe that the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why depicts rape culture perfectly. Also you can watch Audrie & Daisy; A Girl Like Her; and/or The Hunting Ground as other films (two of them documentaries) of rape culture.

Rape culture looks like the sexualization of young girls. Also see beauty pageants and the likes of Toddlers & Tiaras.

It looks like rapists receiving lenient sentences. See: Brock Turner. Or rapists and sexual predators being awarded positions of power and prestige. See: Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh.

It looks like being re-traumatized when we do report a rape. See: being in the wrong place at the wrong time; what was she wearing; she should have known better; she shouldn’t have been drinking; etc.

It looks like being gas lit when we describe our experiences. See: Oh, he didn’t really mean that; You misunderstood; You’re too uptight; Stop taking everything so seriously; and my personal favorite – They were only joking.

It looks like random men trying to friend you on social media.

It looks like random men sending you pictures of their penis through social media. It also looks like the social media platform doing essentially nothing and blaming the victim when it is reported (see example below).

It looks like men in power making ludicrous public statements about women and rape (see other example below).

It looks like being afraid to say no.

It looks like not knowing how to say no.

It looks like not understanding boundaries, ours or others.

It looks like being told you don’t know your own body.

It looks like being told to obey authority.

It looks like being told to unquestioningly trust authority.

It looks like not feeling safe walking down the street in broad daylight.

It looks like not feeling safe walking down the street at night.

It looks like not feeling safe in our own homes.

It looks like mansplaining.

It looks like manspreading.

It looks like having a self-admitted sexual predator as the President of the United States.

It looks like…

I could go on listing things for pages and pages. But I hope you get the point.

Sometimes the insidiousness and pervasiveness of rape culture can feel overwhelming. It can feel like too much and that it will never change and that nothing we attempt to do about it will ever matter.

I get it. I so deeply get it.

I have my own personal experiences of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment.

I grew up in a family that pretended the incest wasn’t happening.

I grew up in a culture that told me it was my fault. I should feel deep shame.

I was told I wasn’t really raped.

I’ve been asked what I did to “encourage” my sexual assaults and harassment.

I was told I was asking for it.

I’ve been called a bitch for calling rape culture and rapists out.

I’ve been threatened with physical violence when I have called rape culture and rapists out.

To date my daughter’s physical safety has not yet been threatened due to me using my voice, and I’m sure that day will come too. (See: any number of vocal feminists on social media.)

I share all this to say Me too. And You are not alone. And I get why sometimes some of us do NOT speak up and out. And I believe survivors.

And also.

I know that remaining silent, looking the other way, pretending things aren’t that bad, is all an act of compliance.

I know that not talking about rape culture, not calling it out, not talking about consent and boundaries, not talking about all the ways our culture conditions us to to obey, all of this is complicity.

I know that it can be terrifying to speak up and out (that is intentional and by design, by the way).

I know I have been so scared speaking up that my whole body shook.

I also know it is much safer for me to speak up and out than it is for others. (This is my privilege and I intend to use it to the full advantage of all of us.)

I know that if I don’t speak up and out change won’t happen.

I know that when I speak up and out I am creating ripples and shifts in our culture.

I know when I speak up and out, others hear my voice and know they are not alone.

Countless FB and IG friends, along with myself, have received a private messages from a not-known-to-us men over the last couple years. In these messages there is almost always an image of, supposedly, the sender’s penis. Total strangers. Unsolicited in any way.

One particular friend ended up in FB jail for 24 hours because she took a screen shot and then publicly posted the picture to a couple of his friends/family pages so they would see what he was up to. (If you have a stronger reaction to her retaliation than you do to the fact that a total stranger felt it was okay to send her a picture of his dick via private message, then… well that is a perfect example of rape culture in action.)

She reported it to Facebook as sexual harassment and essentially they did nothing. Oh, they gave him a warning. If it happens again (as in he does it again AND the woman he does it to reports is properly) he may be put in FB jail. Then she was told not to talk to strangers on messenger.

*eye roll*

Isabel Abbott posted the following quotes by US politicians last year. All of the men quoted here are Republicans, and let me be perfectly clear that Democrats uphold and are complicit in rape culture too. They are, perhaps, simply more secret about it. (You can see Isabel’s original post here. Also, in the comments she provides the original context for each quote below)

(note: offensive and distressing words about sexual violence below)

“Rape is kind of like the weather; if it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
-Clayton Williams

“If a woman has (a right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman. At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”
– Lawrence Lockman

“Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.”
-Rick Santorum

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down.”
Todd Akin

“In the emergency room they have what’s called a rape kit, where a woman can get cleaned out.”
– Jodi Laubenberg

“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.”
– Richard Mourdock

These are men in power. These are men who are making the laws of our country. These are men who have wives and some of them daughters and all of them have mothers. These are men who see absolutely nothing wrong with the words they have said.

This is rape culture.

And.

These men didn’t become powerful without women :: they all have wives who supported them in various ways, and more importantly women voted for them. Without the women’s vote, they would not be in office.

Let’s sit with that for a second.

Let’s also sit with the fact that 45% of white women who voted in the presidential election in 2016 voted for Trump, a self-admitted sexual predator.

We have a lot of work to do to unearth and unravel and dismantle and dislodge from our being, the culture we are currently living in.

All of us.

It could be easy to blame our current culture on men. In fact it would be really super easy to do that.

And yes, men are responsible for their actions and words. Absolutely.

And yes, we need more men to stand up and speak out against rape culture. To call their friends and brothers and dads and uncles out on it. To teach their sons to respect boundaries. To dismantle their own internalized toxic masculinity.

Yes.

And.

The rest of us need to do the work too.

As in us women.

Mothers. Aunties. Voters.

We need to unearth and explore and dismantle and dislodge all that we have internalized and been conditioned to believe.

So we can know our own boundaries. So we can understand consent. So we can learn to say no and yes. So we can respect the noes and yeses of others.

So we can stop supporting sexual predators, rapists, those who physically threaten and assault us and others.

So we can burn down rape culture and create a world of consent culture.

Our first steps in burning it down, are being able to see it. To name it. To know what rape culture is and what it looks like in daily practice.

Our first steps are also finding our voice and learning ways to speak up and out.

Even knowing we may not be safe in doing so. Even knowing this is going to make us and those around us very uncomfortable.

There is great risk involved in tearing down our current culture. Great risk to the status quo. Great risk to our own perceived comfort and safety.

Here’s a thing though :: we aren’t safe in the culture we currently live in. Our sense of “safety” is a lie. A lie meant to keep us complicit and compliant.

I am willing to risk being disliked. I am willing to risk being hated. I’m even willing to risk my own physical safety to a certain degree to create a world I want for my children and for you and yours.

These are not actually risks per se for me. They aren’t risks because in many ways they are things I don’t actually care about (other than my physical safety).

There is far greater risk in allowing the world to keep chugging along as it is and sending my children out into it. Knowing the statistics. Knowing the statistics are only for what is reported. Knowing the reality that I am sending my daughter into.

I want something different for her. And for my son. And for you. And for me too.

I want those statistics to be a dark spot on our human history and no longer our human reality.

And so.

I will continue to speak up and out. I will continue to write about the ways our culture oppresses and dehumanizes us. . I will continue my work in anti-authoritarian activism and will continue to promote consent culture. I will continue to call out my profession and the ways it is complicit and compliant. I will continue to raise my kids to understand and respect noes and yeses – their own and others. I will continue to help others unearth, dismantle and dislodge the ways rape culture has gotten into their own bodies and minds and beings. I will do everything I can to BURN IT DOWN and help create a world where this atrocity no longer exists.

I am not alone in this work. And neither are you.

Together we will do this. I deeply and wholly believe that.

/../

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Rape Culture and why the criticism of 13 Reasons Why irritates me

November 8, 2018 By gwynn

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

~Louise O’Neill, Asking For It

[This was originally written for my the readers of my weekly newsletter in May 2017. I have edited it for publication here.]

For the first time ever I am putting a Content Warning here. In the paragraphs that follow I will be discussing rape and rape culture and some of my personal and professional reactions to the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (Season 1) as well as some of my reactions to the criticism I have read about the show.

I understand and know personally how difficult the topics of rape, rape culture and suicide are for many of us. If they are difficult topics for you and/or if you are in a sensitive space today, I invite you to close his essay go give yourself some self care instead of continue reading.

Also please know that I believe you. 100,000%. Always.

If you would like to continue reading, scroll down a bit. If you don’t want to, please close this and go on about your day. (Note there are a couple spoilers to Season 1 below.)

I’ve read many criticisms of the graphic portrayal of suicide in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. I’ve seen posts and articles railing against the “irresponsibility” of Netflix to “glorify” suicide and countless comments from mental health professionals (i.e. my colleagues) going on and on about how now there will be an epidemic of suicides across the country and how the show doesn’t once mention mental illness as the “real” cause of suicide, etc, etc, etc.

With every criticism, particularly from therapists and psychologists, I became more and more irritated. I disagree with their stance and opinions, yes, but my reaction was more visceral, more intense than a simple professional contradictory opinion. I was pissed. I was rolling my eyes. And at one point with one discussion I was literally shaking.

It took a conversation with my own therapist, or rather me being in a space to simply talk without interruption or needing to defend my opinion and reaction, to understand why so much rage was coming up with these comments and “professional statements”.

Where I came to was this:: Not a SINGLE therapist or counselor mentioned in any way, shape, or form the depiction of rape culture and how it contributed to Hannah’s suicide.

Not one.

No where.

As I continued talking I realized how I feel many mental health professionals miss the mark when it comes to talking about topics like anxiety, depression, and even suicide. How they ignore the impacts living in this culture has on all of us. How living in a culture where women and girls are only seen as valuable when it comes to the male gaze. How sexual assault and harassment take their toll on our mental and physical health – DAILY. How witnessing rape and or being raped impact us to the point of considering and for some attempting suicide (According to the National Center for PTSD, it’s estimated that one in three women who have been raped contemplate suicide, and one in 10 victims attempt it.) How culturally it is more important to us to protect rapists than the person who was raped. (Remember how Brock Turner received an incredibly lenient sentence because the (white male) judge didn’t want to impact Brock’s precious future? Or more recently the backlash against Dr. Ford in her testimony against Brett Kavanaugh?)

These are not discussions we have historically had within the mental health community. It is only in recent years that any discussion of how our greater environment (including our culture) impacts our mental health. We, therapists and psychologists, seem to want to pretend that a person lives in a vacuum and that our mental health has nothing to do with our daily lives. And while there is acknowledgement that childhood experiences can and do impact our mental health, we don’t talk about the systems that create and allow those experiences to exist. (This is beginning to change, thankfully.)

I’ve said it before and will say it many times more:: We live in a culture that hates women.

And frankly the professional “outcry” about this Netflix series only emphasizes this truth.

If we (mental health professionals) think for one moment that living in a world where we (women) are considered less than human, where we are unable to earn an equal wage, where what we wear and where we choose to walk or socialize are up for dissection when we are assaulted or raped… if we think for one moment that none of this impacts our mental (and physical) health, then we should absolutely give up our licenses and find another line of work.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are doing far more harm than good.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being complicit to a culture that causes great harm.

Because if we don’t believe these things impact us, we are being compliant and doing harm to our clients, friends, and family members ourselves under the guise of being “professionals” and “authorities”.

Rape culture is real. It is part of this world each of us lives in. It impacts all of us, in varying degrees. It causes harm. It can cause depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and attempts.

These are facts.

And.

Those who experience rape and sexual assault (in any or all its forms) are not the only ones who are victimized by this culture either.

The people who perpetrate the rapes and assaults are victims too.

Because they are given the message, over and over and over again, that it is acceptable to objectify women and girls. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that no doesn’t really mean no. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that it is perfectly acceptable to take what they want, no matter what. Because they are given the message over and over and over again that they will not be punished for their crimes. Because toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with rape culture.

I am not saying that rapists and abusers are not responsible for their actions. They absolutely are. AND. They are also pawns in a system that subjugates women to a role of only being as valuable as the male we are attached to.

Bryce (the rapist in the series for those of you who have not watched it) is a victim. Not in the oh-the-poor-boy-and-his-future-Brock-Turner way. Rather in the way that he lives in a world that says there is nothing wrong with what he has done or continues to do. Because he was not taught about consent and boundaries from an early age. Because he was not taught that silence DOES NOT MEAN COMPLIANCE. Yes, he is responsible for his actions, as is every rapist and abuser, and we are responsible, due to our own compliance and complicity in this culture, for his actions too.

I am irritated (again) with my profession. I am irritated with the “outcry” they have against this show (and also the lack of outcry). I am irritated at my profession for historically not addressing rape culture. I am irritated at the world for not supporting victims and instead re-victimizing and victim-blaming them over and over and over again.

She shouldn’t have gone to that party.

She shouldn’t have gotten in the hot tub in her underwear.

She shouldn’t have drank so much.

She shouldn’t have worn that.

She shouldn’t have had her hair that way.

She shouldn’t have talked to him.

She shouldn’t have expected to NOT be raped.

She shouldn’t have expected anyone to stand up and speak up for her.

She had mental health issues.

It was all her own fault.

It was meant as a compliment.

She’s being too sensitive.

What a bitch.

She was asking for it.

Fuck. All. Of. That.

It is time that we as a culture start to name these attitudes. It is time that we stop victim blaming. It is time that we stop avoiding difficult conversations, including our own compliance and complicity in a culture that harms other humans.

It is time my profession pull its collective head out of its collective ass. (I am happy to be able to say that since the original publication of this essay, change has begun. And more change needs to happen still.)

It is time we begin to understand how living in this culture impacts us. It is time we stop blaming victims. It is time we begin to understand how deep the wounds and scars of cultural and ancestral trauma run.

It is time we stop causing the harm ourselves.

…

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Love is not a victory march

November 1, 2018 By gwynn

And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
~Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

The last year plus has been traumatic for our world politically and culturally, and because of this, also for many of us personally. We have seen some of our worst fears of what would happen with Republican run Executive and Legislative branches here in the United States. We have seen so much put back forty or more years in time, so much more that has been attempted to be put back. With each hit it feels like we are sinking deeper and deeper in a dystopian novel.

And.

Last year saw #metoo. And this year #timesup. We see more and more women coming forward and some of the men who perpetrated sex crimes actually having consequences for their actions. I have been witness to more and more people becoming aware of the social injustices in the world, acknowledging their own internalized biases, compliance, and complicity, and doing the work to make change both within themselves and out in the world.

This shifting in our culture and within ourselves has been about love.

Unearthing what love actually means.

That love is a verb.

That love is not always gentle.

That love can be fiery, fierce, loud.

That love can be both protective and can push us outside of our comfort zones.

That love and justice can and should go hand in hand. And in that mix there needs to also be compassion and boundaries.

I believe that on any given day in any given moment all of us are doing the best we can with the tools we have.

This best we can may not be good enough. This best we can may actually be harmful to ourselves or to others. Other’s don’t have to accept our “best we can”. And in order for me to have hope in humanity, I do still believe we are each trying our best to be the best humans we know how to be.

And.

It is also true that sometimes the “best” others can do is something we need to say a firm NO to. And this No can, and in my opinion should, come from a place of deep love. Love for ourselves as well as love for the other person. And perhaps love for all humanity.

The #metoo movement that has caught fire in the last couple of years is a statement of this kind of love. A love comprised of clearly stating this is where I end and you begin and you don’t get to cross this line without my permission. A love comprised of compassion for ourselves and the traumas we have experienced at the hands of (mostly) men. A love comprised of empathy for others with similar experiences and especially for those who are able to speak up and out.

It is a love that seeks more than justice. It is a love that seeks our humanity.

We are at the dawn of a new epoch of human history. We have perhaps been at this dawn for the last hundred or so years. We have seen cultural “norms” slowly, sometimes painfully slowly, shift. We have seen the emancipation of slaves, the suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, all in the last 150 years. This is after, literally, millennia of slavery, and the de-humanizing of women, persons of color, queer folks, the poor, and anyone who is not a white, heterosexual, middle class (or “better”), CIS, male.

One hundred fifty years is barely a drop in the bucket when you look back three to six thousand years.

The shifting of our culture feels slow. And it is taking multiple generations. And will likely take multiple more before we live in a world where racism, misogyny, ablism, and homophobia are quaint things of past.

And.

With each movement, more movements are born. With each small shift there is a ripple effect.

And those ripples are getting larger. And stronger.

And the more we do this work of shifting ourselves and our world, the more we see the importance of doing this work with love made of justice, compassion, empathy, and boundaries.

Love is not always gentle. In fact, I believe love can actually be rather rude. Love shows up when we set our own boundaries and love shows up when we respect and honor the boundaries another person has set for themselves, whether we like those boundaries or not.

Love is willing to be uncomfortable. To sit in the discomfort of unraveling our own familial and cultural training. To sit in the discomfort of unraveling the trauma that lives within us and sorting what is ours, what is our ancestors, and what has absolutely nothing to do with us or our lineage. To sit in the discomfort of sometimes being wrong and causing harm and doing the work to make amends. To sit in the discomfort of acceptance that we are not always in control, and that sometimes honoring the boundaries of another person can be personally and emotionally painful (not harmful, painful) for us.

Love is fierce. And can be filled with rage. Love can be loud and bold and demanding.

Love is sometimes gentle too. And can be quiet. Love is supportive, always. Love is in the giving and receiving. To ourselves and to others. Always and in all ways.

Love is not a bully. It is not used as a weapon to cause harm or manipulate and impose unrealistic expectations.

Love is a comrade. It is a tool we can use to deconstruct our oppressive culture. It is a tool we can use to create a new world where there is justice and safeness and the embracing of differences.

Love is speaking and listening and hearing. Love is respecting and honoring.

The Christian bible states in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ::

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

I can agree with most of this. And, I do believe that love is not blind, that while it doesn’t keep score and it does trust, it is always smart and aware and knows who and when to trust and when not. Love is not gullible.

Love has been a tool for change within myself for most of my life and in particular I have leaned on love this year. Love for my Self. The love of friends and family. Love as a verb. Love as a lesson. Love as a breathing, shifting, thing that both has torn me apart and put me back together.

May we all use love as a tool for destruction of our own old harmful patterns and ways and for creation of new ways of being which invite ourselves and others to live in compassion, empathy, justice, and truth.

/../

This essay originally written in December 2017 for the subscribers of my newsletter. I edited it a bit for publication here. If you’d like to subscribe to my weekly love letters you can fill out the form on this page.

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

October 18, 2018 By gwynn

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

I have a confession.

I actually love the winter holiday season.

I love all the lights and glitter. I love the promise of snow. I love the food we eat this time of year. I love the hustle and bustle and the quiet snuggling in. I do. I love it.

And.

This time of year is also challenging for me. My mother’s birthday is in mid-December and so there is a triple reminder of how she is not here to celebrate this time of year with us. I notice how certain family members don’t call. I think of friends who have moved away. I consider the things and opportunities in life that I have lost. I think about the life I wanted, or thought I wanted, compared to the life I have.

And while I do love the bright energy of the hustle and bustle of this time of year, I also am acutely aware of how that bright energy can become heavy and oppressive. How what is supposed to be fun can become overwhelmingly stressful. How one moment I may look at my full calendar with excitement and anticipation and the next I may look at it with dread.

Basically, I am human. Which means I am complex. Which means I can have a mix of seemingly opposing emotions and feelings all at once.

Just like you.

To me, it’s never a question of my complexity. Rather, it’s a question of how I hold all of me at once.

How to do I allow all my complexity to flow and be? How do I sit with the bittersweetness of this time of year? How do I not only allow myself, but also encourage myself, to feel all the various and opposing emotions, thoughts, and well, feelings?

For me, that answer is being in my body and the present. Not leaving it, not sitting or hovering outside of it. Rather, being in it, in the now, and finding ways to tolerate and process all the complex sensations and emotions that I may be having.

In short, while I love this time of year, it is also a time of grieving.

Embodiment is both simple and challenging. Coming home into our bodies, and deeply feeling and sensing our lived experience can feel overwhelming at times. It can feel too much. And also, with practice, we learn to tolerate those challenging emotions and sensations more and more.

We stop stuffing them down, only to wait for them to explode.

We stop ignoring them, only to have them crop up as various illnesses.

We start connecting to them, dipping our toes into them at first, and in time and with practice, going further and further in, finding new ways to embrace our own complexities, our own disparities, our own both ands.

I talk more about this in this 6 minute video below.

This is the third and final essay in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays. If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

Did you miss the first two essays and videos in this series? You can check them out at the links below::

Holidays, Trauma & Our Nervous Systems

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment (this essay)

Even in our darkest and lowest and worst moments, we are doing the best we can with the tools and resources we have and are able to receive.

What does rape culture look like?

It looks like rapists receiving lenient sentences. See: Brock Turner. Or rapists and sexual predators being awarded positions of power and prestige. See: Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh.

It looks like random men sending you pictures of their penis through social media. It also looks like the social media platform doing essentially nothing and blaming the victim when it is reported (see example below).

It looks like being afraid to say no.

It looks like being told you don’t know your own body.

It looks like not feeling safe in our own homes.

It looks like having a self-admitted sexual predator as the President of the United States.

I get it. I so deeply get it.

I’ve been asked what I did to “encourage” my sexual assaults and harassment.

And also.

I know that it can be terrifying to speak up and out (that is intentional and by design, by the way).

I know when I speak up and out, others hear my voice and know they are not alone.

And.

Let’s sit with that for a second.

All of us.

And yes, we need more men to stand up and speak out against rape culture. To call their friends and brothers and dads and uncles out on it. To teach their sons to respect boundaries. To dismantle their own internalized toxic masculinity.

And.

We need to unearth and explore and dismantle and dislodge all that we have internalized and been conditioned to believe.

So we can burn down rape culture and create a world of consent culture.

Here’s a thing though :: we aren’t safe in the culture we currently live in. Our sense of “safety” is a lie. A lie meant to keep us complicit and compliant.

And so.

I am not alone in this work. And neither are you.

Together we will do this. I deeply and wholly believe that.

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

Let’s explore trauma, grief, & embodiment together!