embodied wisdom

Our shame narratives

January 16, 2020 By gwynn

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare. ~Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

We all carry with us narratives from our families of origin, narratives from our communities, narratives from our greater culture. The stories of how we are too much this or not enough that. The stories about how we should feel shame for what we want, what we do, who we are, that we even exist in the first place.

These narratives didn’t come to us out of the blue. These are stories that have been cultivated for generations and generations, by a greater culture that sees humans as a commodity to be used, but not respected. These stories stem from capitalism, authoritarianism, patriarchy, misogyny. These stories stem from those in power wanting to stay in power and doing whatever they can to keep everyone else in line and doing their bidding.

That is where those stories come from on a meta level. That is how they seep into our communities. Into our families. Into our relationships. Into us.

It is true that our own experiences of abuse feed these stories. Complex trauma only makes those voices louder, only makes the stories seem more true.

And.

I would argue that the abuse of children – sexual, physical, neglect – all stem from this meta source.

Why else would children be beaten if not to be forced to fall in line with the status quo?

Why else would children be molested if not because the abusers were indoctrinated in the idea that children exist to serve others, in any and all capacities?

Why else would children be neglected if the adults weren’t so busy trying to stay alive within a culture that wants to kill them?

I am not dismissing the responsibility of the abusers for their own actions. Regardless of our own experiences of oppression and abuse we are always responsible for how we treat others in the world and whether or not we perpetuate harm.

What I am saying is that these narratives are fed to us from many, many different places. Hearing these narratives is inescapable. If it’s not our family, or our Self that’s telling us how we are too much or not enough and should feel shame, our greater culture definitely is.

These stories are fed to us, from birth. These stories seep into under skin, into our muscles, our sinew, our bones. These stories keep us small, quiet, complicit, compliant.

These stories keep us stuck in harmful (to us and others) patterns and cycles.

These stories impact the ways we relate to others. They have us judging. They have us expecting. They have us assuming. They have us demanding.

These stories keep us disconnected from our Self. Our true self. Our tend, broken open heart, Self. The self that knows, in its very being these narratives are total bullshit. The Self that asks over and over, why do you keep believing these lies?

Because a truth is, we are not too much.

A truth is, we are exactly enough.

A truth is, we get to take up space. And there is plenty of space for everyone.

A truth is, we get to state our wants, whatever they are, without shame.

A truth is, we get to have our boundaries respected.

A truth is, we are exactly enough just as we are.

A truth is, we can do the work of untangling all this cultural indoctrination and trauma.

Let’s do it. Let’s undo the generations of training we have living in our bodies and minds. Let’s begin to feel good in our own skin. Let’s find our ways to connection, real connection, without losing pieces of ourselves in the process.

We can do it. I know we can.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on January 14, 2020. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring these narratives in my seven week writing course Embodied Writing :: Too much, not enough, & shame. We begin Monday, January 27, 2020. To learn more and register, click here.

Blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves Circle & for all of us

March 31, 2018 By gwynn

On the eve of each of my circles and online programs I offer a blessing to the participants and to all of us. This is the blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny circle, and truly, for each and every one of us.

May we…

Release the narratives of who, how, and what we should be

Heal the generations of wounding that has been passed down through the millenia

Process the inter-generational trauma that impacts our daily lives

Bring our unconscious motivations into our consciousness

Embrace our female lineage

Unearth the power, strength and daring of the women who came before and live within

Acknowledge our own innate, embodied wisdom

Connect to our true, authentic, whole Self: body, mind, spirit, and soul

Live mindfully and consciously into our interconnected futures

Amen.

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If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming spring circle, Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny that begins to gather April 1, you can click here. There are still a few spaces left and we’d be thrilled to have you join us. xoox

If you missed the educational essay and video series I wrote introducing the ideas and concepts we’ll be exploring and examining in the spring circle, you can find them at the links below:

Defining Ancestral, Inter-generational, & Cultural Relational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

I also wrote these essay to give more detail about the circle and our work together:

The importance of processing ancestral trauma & dislodging internalized misogyny

More About Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

March 15, 2018 By gwynn

No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all.

~Diana Peterfreund, Across a Star-Swept Sea

When we look at cycles of trauma, it is important to remember that often there may not have been a choice to not pass the pain forward. Talking about trauma at all is a relatively new development in our human (western) history, and in the early days of recognizing and trying to find ways to process trauma, we only looked at the trauma soldiers experienced and lived with.

It has only been in the last forty to fifty years that we began to acknowledge the trauma that comes with abuse and assault. And it has only been about twenty to thirty years that we began to recognize the impacts things like poverty, being witness to abuse, or living in a family where one or more members had addictions issue has on us.

Add to this that the somatic (body-centered) trauma therapies are also a relatively new thing. It wasn’t until 1997 that Levine’s first book Waking the Tiger introduced the wider public to the ways that trauma lives inside our bodies and how we humans prevent ourselves from processing it. That was only twenty years ago.

The amount of research and acknowledgment around trauma just within my own lifetime (46 years) is amazing. We have come so far since the early 1970s, and I believe we likely still have a long way to go. And I also believe we are getting there.

I share all that to remind us that we couldn’t know what we didn’t know. I don’t know how many times I have heard clients say “I wish I would have started this work earlier/years ago/when I was much younger.” But the truth is that this work, body-centered trauma processing work, is a very new phenomena and likely you actually could not have started this work earlier, because it didn’t exist.

And yet. While it is not our fault that information was not available before it was available, it is our responsibility now to do the work to create change, within ourselves, within our families, and in our greater communities and world.

Breaking cycles of abuse is something that has only been talked about for the last fifty or so years. And then it was only spoken of quietly. Greater social conversations didn’t begin to happen until the 1980s, in part thanks to Alice Miller and her body of work. We didn’t even consider that beating children would or could have long term, life-long, impacts on them. And it wasn’t until the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACEs) which was initiated in 1995 but then not really talked about until twenty years later, that we knew those impacts were beyond psychological and spilled into our actual physical health.

And even so, I know my maternal grandfather talked about his abusive step-mother and how he swore he would never treat his child the way she treated him (now I have no idea if he actually kept this promise to himself, but evidence says he probably did).

So, even though the greater social conversation was not there, I do believe we have within us the “moral” (for lack of a better word) compass to know abuse, domination, authoritarianism, and othering are not right, okay, or humane (or for that matter actually human).

We are in the infancy of truly understanding how the traumatic experiences of our ancestors are passed down to future generations. We are in the infancy of learning how to examine and process these traumas – especially the ones we don’t actually know about. There is still so much that is unknown, and frankly there is so much that cannot be known for several more decades as studies continue to watch families move through more and more generations.

And.

Even with this being true, I believe we all know deep within ourselves that the past impacts us. Historical past, ancestral past, and our own lived experience past. We may not have all the data and research to back this up (yet), and still we know.

And this is where our own responsibility comes in. It is not our fault what was done to us or our ancestors. It is absolutely our responsibility to make the change within ourselves so that change out in the world can occur, so we can end the cycles of abuse, oppression, and domination.

So we can all find our ways to freedom.

So we can all be a part of creating a world where all of us are free.

I believe part of that work is for us to look at our ancestral, historical, and personal pasts and to unearth what we have internalized; to examine it; to unlearn what we know is not right or just; and to create space for change and doing different for ourselves and for the world moving into our futures.

I talk more about all of this in the 10-minute video below:

This essay is the fourth and final in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny. I hope you found the series helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring circle I facilitate: Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny. We begin April 1. You can learn more here.

To read the other essays in the series, go to the links below

Defining Ancestral & Intergenerational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual and Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles :: Processing the Past & Changing the Future (this essay)

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

On Grief :: The passage of time

November 16, 2017 By gwynn

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don’t know grief from garlic grits. There’s somethings a body ain’t meant to get over. No I’m not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They’re sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall.

~Michael Lee West, American Pie

Loss, and the accompanying grief, are not things we can simply “get over” or “move past.” When there is a death, it is a death. The person who died is not coming back. They will leave a hole in our hearts and lives for as long as we ourselves continue to breathe. In time we learn to live with the hole. In time the hole doesn’t ache as much or as often. In time, we find ways to work around and in and above the hole. But that hole, it’s still there.

And even though our person will always be gone, and even though we will always grieve this truth, it is also true that in time and when we allow ourselves to process our grief, the grief does become… less intense, less raw, less constant.

This is not to say that even years later there aren’t moments or hours or days of intense grief, of deeply missing our person. Those days will exist. And they will be less common than in those early days and months of loss.

We live in a culture that would have us believing that grief shouldn’t last for very long. Many companies offer three days of “bereavement pay”. THREE DAYS. Let me tell you from experience, that isn’t even enough time to plan the funeral or memorial service, let alone have space to actually grieve and cry and howl about our loss.

The DSM-5 (the holy bible of the psychology world) tells us that six months after our clients experience a loss, we need to evaluate them for complex grief disorder. SIX MONTHS.

Yes, our culture, and my profession, has turned grief into a disorder. (Note there is much debate about this particular diagnosis/disorder within the psychology community and particularly those of us who work with grief and the grieving.)

There is also a timeline, a linear path, for us to follow when it comes to our grief. Kublar-Ross gave us the Five Stages of Grief, and this has been interpreted for many to mean this is how we should be grieving and if we don’t follow this path in a timely manner, well then there is clearly something wrong with us. (I much prefer Worden’s Tasks of Grief as way of looking at our grieving process. I’ll write more about that in the third and final essay of this series).

These timelines are put upon us for a reason:: in our culture we do not like to experience discomfort, and will go to any lengths to avoid it. This includes the discomfort that bubbles up when either we ourselves, or someone we care about, is experiencing and processing their own grief and loss.

Because let’s be honest, grief and loss are uncomfortable to say the least. As the person experiencing it, it is a visceral experience, our whole body responds to the death of someone we love. As the person who is there to be of support to the grieving, there is also discomfort, both physical in the sensing of the visceral experience of our loved one who is grieving, and also the existential discomfort of facing our own mortality and the mortality of those we love.

Because 100% of us will die at some point. And 100% of us will also experience grief and loss, at least once, in our lives (for most of us, we will have this experience multiple times).

And frankly, most of us don’t want to sit with or in any of that. And we were never shown how to sit in and with that discomfort. It was never modeled for us how to stay in our bodies and allow the pain and agony of grief and loss to run through us. In my opinion, this is something we need to change for ourselves, and for future generations. We need to learn how to acknowledge, allow, and sit with these uncomfortable and unpleasant sensations and emotions, otherwise they will continue to exist within us and create their own havoc upon our bodies and minds.

The reality is, that grief is a life-long process. Yes, it comes in waves. Yes it can become less intense with time and processing. Yes, it won’t always feel as raw as in those first days and months and year. And yes, even decades later, we will miss our person.

I talk more about this in the 14-minute video below ::

This essay is the second in a three part series I have written exploring grief and loss, how it affects us, and how our culture attempts to stifle it. Here are links to the others in the series ::

On Grief :: Loss is Loss

On Grief :: The Passage of Time (this essay)

On Grief :: Holidays, Anniversaries, and Other Triggers (link coming soon)

My grandmother

March 14, 2017 By gwynn

But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin. ~ Mitch Albom, For One More Day

The last few days I have been going through a bin of pieces of my grandmother’s life from before she married my grandfather and gave birth to my mother. There are a lot of old photographs of a a lot of people I don’t recognize. And of course there are a lot of images of my grandmother as a child and then a young woman.

I wrote this piece on Instagram a year ago:

I’ve been looking through the rubber maid bin that contains the pieces of her life before she married my grandfather and gave birth to my mother. There are a couple pictures that have someone cut out of them and I am guessing it was her first husband. And there is this picture that reached out and stole my heart and breath. She must have been in her early 20s or maybe late teens. I’m guessing this was before she lost her son before he was born because in later pictures there is a shadow in her eyes that isn’t here. I didn’t know the woman in this photo. I only knew the woman she became decades later. After her son was born dead and she divorced her first husband and a world war raged and she had a career as a business teacher where she met my grandfather and after she married him and gave birth to her daughter who lived for 59 years. I only knew her after a lifetime. Our eyes met each other for the first time when she was 61 and had been a mother to a living daughter for 22 years. But the egg that makes up half of me was made and nurtured in her womb. We are connected by blood and tears and wombs. She made half of me, both literally and perhaps figuratively. I love her even knowing her imperfections and probably because of them. And oh how I wish I could have known this woman in this picture before the shadows and still holding within all the possibility that would become my mother and me. #liberatedlines #startingmoments #inherskin #storieswithin #awakeningourwomanline #embodied #dare #grandmothersroar #amamaslife

I’ve been thinking a lot about the women who have come before, how they shaped me, how parts of my life trajectory were begun before I was even conceived. I have been thinking about my great-grandmother, a woman I never met and don’t even know the name of, and my mother and their relationship. I wonder about my grandmother and her relationship with her mother and her own grandmother.

I grieve for the too short relationship my mother had with my daughter and my niece. I look at these girls and see the fire of my mother, her independence as well as her simply wanting to be loved. I wonder how much of this was passed through our wombs, grandmother to grand-daughter and how much is in our relationships with these women who came before us and before our own mothers.

I wonder about the spider web of connections that has been woven over the generations. How each woman was partially created inside their grandmother’s womb. How laughs and attitudes and facial expressions can be passed down without ever knowing.

And then I get to wondering about my grandmother’s womb itself. The place that my mother was created and incubated and where the egg that later became me, was first formed. A womb that carried and grew a baby boy and was the place of his death before he was able to take his first breath in this world. I wonder if there were other deaths within my grandmother’s womb. I wonder what scars and grief and pain she carried within that organ.

And so my mind wanders and wonders. I know many stories of my mother’s womb, the deaths within it and how ultimately that system was the cause of her death when the tumors first born on her ovaries spread throughout her body a second time. And of course the stories of my own womb, the deaths within, the sickness, the wounds. What about the stories of my great-grandmother’s womb? Or my great-great-grandmother? Or the female ancestor who live 500 years ago? Or 5000? What stories did their own wombs hold? What hurts and joys and wounds and healing lived within their uniquely feminine organs?

What pieces of those stories were passed down to their daughters? Were grown in their granddaughters?

It all comes back to the stories. Our origin stories do not begin with us. And I do not believe they begin with our mothers either. Our personal origin stories begin thousands of years ago with women we never knew and likely rarely, if ever, think of.

And what does that mean?

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe it’s somewhere in-between nothing and everything, that this in-between is where the meaning lives. Or maybe the meaning lives in the nothing and the everything and in-between, perhaps the meaning is everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Of course in thinking about the women who came before, their wombs, my own womb, the ideas of oppression, patriarchy and misogyny and how they deeply impact us, over and over, across the generations, also comes to play in my mind.

I want to make sense of it all and I also know there is no sense to most of it. The women who came before me lived their lives and carried their wounds just as I do today: as best they could. Perhaps some were able to heal a bit more, passing down a bit less to the next generations and perhaps others did more wounding than healing, passing down more pain, and shame and wounds.

This I do know: they were each perfectly imperfect woman and they each live within me, not only as markers in my DNA but also as my own deep knowing and truth.

So I continue to look at these old photographs of women who in some way are related to me, if not by blood then by experience and shaping the lives and psyches of the women who are my genetic ancestors. I wonder about them and wander down this path of unraveling the stories, of healing the wounds, of dancing with the shadows and finding my own sense of peace, being and embodied knowing.

If you would like to explore your own relationships with your female ancestors, I have a six month circle that will begin on April 1. You can learn more and request an application here.

Did you enjoy this essay? It is actually a copy of a love letter I sent out last year. If you’d like to sign up to receive future love letters, you can do that here.