Gwynn Raimondi, MA

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.

 

Activated, softening, or both

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The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.  ~Willa Cather

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.  ~Camille Paglia

Many of us across the globe are staying home in an attempt to flatten the curve of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We aren’t leaving for work or play.  We are within our four walls every day of the week, almost every single hour – with the occasional exception to leave and get groceries or other necessities.  

This can have us all a little stir crazy.  Developing “cabin fever” as we are also trying to manage the stress of the present along with any old traumas that may be activated right now because of what is happening both out in the world and with our own friends and families.

The stress, frustration, and grief centered around the present moments mixed with the same around our past wounding, can lead us to not always being our best selves.  

We don’t have much control over the current global pandemic.  We can each do our own part to try to flatten the curve and stay home as much as possible and to practice physical distancing when we are out and about.  And that is all any of us can do.

This lack of control may have us agitated.  

Add to this all our usual distractions aren’t available to us – sports broadcasts have halted, bars are closed, as are restaurants and retail stores. The ways we avoid, ignore, and stuff down our feelings; the ways we avoid dealing with our past and current hurts, pain, and trauma – they are mostly gone.  

This leaves us almost no other choice than to sit with our own stuff.

This too, can be highly agitating.

In our own agitation we may find ourselves being short with others.  We may find ourselves picking fights. We may find ourselves stuck in a cycle of blame and shame – blaming another for how we are feeling and acting while also feeling shame around how we feeling and acting.

We are in an unprecedented time.  This can be a time of healing – if we allow it to be.  This can be a time to begin to learn to sit with our own uncomfortable feelings (emotions and their physical sensations) – if we allow it to be. This can be a time of learning and practicing breaking life long and generations old patterns and cycles of harm – to ourselves and others — if we allow it to be. 

Many of us are in a heightened state of activation.  This true. It is also true that even with this, we are still responsible for our actions. For the ways we treat those close to us. For the ways we show up, for ourselves and for others.  For the ways we use this time, when all our go-to distractions are unavailable.  

And while many of us are in a heightened state of activation, it is also true that many of us are in a heightened state of softening.  That our hearts are breaking open even more, that the remaining bits of our hard armor are falling away, that we are in this time gently shifting into new ways of being with each other and with ourselves. 

And it is true that for many of us, we are moving back and forth between heightened activation and softening.

As we move through these challenging and unprecedented times, I invite us to come back into our bodies, to be present to the myriad of conflicting and complimentary emotions and physiological sensations we are experiencing.  I invite us to seek out new ways of being with ourselves, to find ways to break old harmful patterns and cycles.  I invite us to soften, to become gentler, with ourselves and others.  I invite us to find ways to inner peace within the outer chaos.  I invite us to nurture, to provide loving care, to ourselves and others. 

I invite us to a new way of being in the world.  One that gathers together in community, even when we cannot physically gather.  One that cares for one another instead of only looking out for ourselves.  One that shares in the abundance instead hoard out of fear of scarcity.  One that guides us to peace and love and joy as well as creates space for feeling, processing, and allowing the flow of upset, loss, and grief.

Let us all be a part of a global revolution of change.  To acknowledge our fear and to do it anyway. To step into the unknown, with open hearts and open arms -for ourselves, for others, and for our planet.  

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 4, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, subscribe here.

In Embodied Writing :: Relating, relationships, and trauma we will be exploring how trauma impacts our relationships and ways that we can begin to break (often generations old) patterns and cycles. You can learn more and register here.

Learning and relearning to trust our Self

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The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.  ~Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

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

Within you is a fountain of wisdom. And you sell yourself short every time you allow some authority to define your limitations and cage your potential. Even if that authority lives in your head.  ~Vironika Tugaleva, The Art of Talking to Yourself

Sometimes there are things we know.  What our next steps are.  Decisions that need to be made.  Changes that need to happen.  We know, deep down in our bones and being.  

And yet.  We don’t listen.  Or we don’t want to listen.  

Because the change feels to big.  Because the process feels too painful.  Because there is a part of us that doesn’t want the change, wants things to go back to the way they were.  

Also because we were taught, from a very young age not to trust ourselves.  Not to trust our own inner knowing.  

So we look for ways out.

We look to signs from the Universe, the cards, the songs on the radio, the grocery store clerk.  We ask everyone under the sun what they would do.

We talk ourselves in circles trying to find any way we can to not do the thing we know we need to do.  

We do all this in an effort to avoid doing what we know we need to do. 
We don’t listen to our own inner truth.
We seek answers outside of us when they are screaming at us from within.

We do this to avoid pain, discomfort, the unknown.
We do this out of fear.

We do this to try and escape the grief that is welling up inside of us.
Or the hurt.
Or the anger.
Or the frustration.
Or all of the above.

Regardless of the whats or whys, we don’t listen to our Self.  We don’t listen to our Truth.  

We stop our own metamorphosis.
We keep ourselves stuck.
We hide.
We put on fronts and masks.
We try to pretend everything is fine as it is.

But everything is not fine.

And if there is one thing that is constant and inevitable in our lives it is change.
Sometimes that means trying harder, trying different.
Sometimes that means letting go, surrendering, allowing.
It always means going outside our own comfort zones.
It means doing what we know we need to do.
Even if we don’t know what is on the other side.
Even if we are terrified of the process.
Even if it breaks our hearts that things need to be the way they need to be.

Trusting ourselves, trusting our own knowing, is no easy task.  It is not something we learn to do, in fact it is something we were born with knowing and then it was taught out of us.  We were conditioned to trust others over our own Self.  We were told we don’t know what is best for us or our own lives.  We were trained to seek answers outside of us and to never look within.

But here’s a thing: we were born knowing how to trust our Self.  We were born with the knowledge of how to connect with our own innate wisdom.  We were born listening to our own needs, wants and truths, and never, ever questioning them.

We were born with a blind faith in ourselves.

I don’t know that we can, or should, get back to that blind faith.  I am a deep believer in curiosity, questioning, analyzing, and understanding.  I believe we should always check in with ourselves and see if there are shadow pieces, hidden motivations, unconscious agitators, to what we see as our truth, as our knowing.

And all of that requires deeper looking within.  Not outside.  Within.

And a willingness to actually trust ourselves.  And then to honor that trust and do what we know we need to do.

/../
This was originally written for my weekly newsletter in September 2018 and was edited and updated for publication here. To receive my most current essays you can subscribe here.

*Post now on Substack

Sitting in discomfort

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Revolution and rebellion and disruption looks like many things. Sometimes its work out in the world and sometimes its that inner work of unearthing, examining, dismantling and dislodging.

Most Monday afternoons I go to see my therapist. She specializes in two particular modalities of trauma therapy, which is why I chose her. To process and dislodge both some relatively recent traumatic events with my kids, and to process my own various childhood traumas.

For the first year plus, every time I sat down on her couch she asked if I want to do one of the two modalities. I would invariably tell her, No. No I do not. Because this particular form of trauma work, while gentle in many many ways, is also intensely uncomfortable. I literally feel the trauma shifting in my body and it creates a type of dissonance under and on my skin that is… well, uncomfortable.

It isn’t icky feeling or unbearably painful. It is simply not a pleasant sensation. At all.

And so no, No I did not want to do that. Because really, who would intentionally sit there in this intentional physical, emotional and psychological discomfort for 20-40 minutes at a stretch.

Anyhow, I would say my no, we’d laugh, talk about the short game of avoidance and the long game of actually dislodging this shit from my body. We’d do some breath work, I would get present and then I say, okay, let’s do this work.

And we’d do the work and it’s uncomfortable and things would shift and sometimes I *felt* emotions and sometimes I cried and sometimes I’d get an intense pain in a particular part of my body and we;d get curious about it then sometimes I would feel even more emotions and so it goes until I would say it’s time to stop. And we check in with that No More and see if it’s short game saying “I’m uncomfortable and I DON’T WANNA” or if I really have reached my capacity of processing for the day. And so it goes.

In the last six months or so, this has shifted.  Now when I walk in I state straight away “I want to do the trauma work” or “I need a lot of time to talk today.”  We don’t need to have discussions about avoidance.  The work, while uncomfortable, is now something I am more than willing to tolerate because I have seen for myself some of the short and long term benefits of the work.

My point however is that being uncomfortable isn’t fun. Not for me, and really probably not for anyone. By definition, being uncomfortable is NOT enjoyable. And for most of us, in our short game of fear or shoving it down or not wanting to deal or feel, we avoid discomfort like the plague.

Here’s a thing though: we need to remember our Long Game. What our real intentions for being in the world are. What do we have to do to make it happen.

I’m doing my own trauma processing and dislodging for a variety of reasons, many of them about other people (like my kids). But the real, the core reason I’m dealing with my own shit is because I don’t want to ever be frozen in front of a TV screen unable to move as a sexual predator stalks about ever again. I don’t want to ever be frozen in inaction again. I want to be able to move and act and roar and fight.

And, well, I also need to walk my talk. Because I invite all of you to sit in your uncomfortable feelings, to push outside your own comfort zone, to learn that even if we *feel* our our emotions and their physiological sensations or make mistakes or feel uncomfortable because we are challenging our racist uncle at the family feast or defending a boundary with our mother while visiting, we *will* survive. And we may even learn a little bit about selves in the process.

In the all the work I do, facilitating groups and individual work, I invite the participants to push themselves outside their own comfort zones. To become curious as to why they don’t want to “go there.” To expand, contract, then expand a bit more. I always offer tools to help titrate or process or soothe, as needed. And then, when ready enough, we bravely push out into discomfort again, get curious again, ask the whys and start to unravel all the stories that have kept us stuck and small and frozen.

Because I deeply believe that we have remained frozen for far too long. And I deeply believe all of us are carrying trauma in our bodies, be it the trauma of our own lived experience or the trauma passed down to us through our ancestors and in our DNA.

Our trauma impacts us in many ways. It impacts our ability to set boundaries and know our consent. It impact how we relate to other people, and especially as women how we relate to other women.

This is why I do the work I do.

This is why I offer the TIE™ for Sexual Trauma group each year.

Why I work with the individuals I do.

Why I continue to do my own work of unraveling and dislodging and learning.

Because while there is the macro work out in the world of tearing this shit down, we will never build something new and different until we do our own inner work of dismantling and dislodging.

In rebellious solidarity, always.
xoox

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

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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)