Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Slowing into the pause & breaking harmful patterns

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Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. ~Rollo May, The Courage to Create

she learned to walk away
from everything
that didn’t inspire her
toward greater things
~Mark Anthony

a successful life is created
with two words: yes and no
have the courage to say yes
only when it feels right
and no to the old patterns
that do not serve you
~yung pueblo

One way that complex trauma impacts us in our adult lives is in our relationships, be they with friends, family, or intimate partners. Many of us with complex trauma are not good at tolerating painful emotions, like sadness, frustration, or disappointment. 

In fact, most of us don’t have a lot of tolerance for the more “positive” emotions like happiness, joy, and pleasure either.

Any feeling – sensation and emotion – can feel too much and can trigger our fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. The feelings can be overwhelming and so we need a way to release them, to get them out of us, because actually feeling them is intolerable.

So, we start fights. Or turn away and cut people out of our lives. In the moment we may freeze and feel stuck or placate and people please and then later move into the space of either wanting to fight or flee. Depending on the situation we do one or the other of these or we do some in rapid succession. 

Our reaction is generally immediate and coming directly from our back (or reptile) brain. There is no thought that is going into it. We don’t slow down to engage our front brain and are fully in our survival instinct. Because feeling our feelings feels like our actual lives are in danger. It feels like they might consume us. It feels like we won’t survive the sensations and emotions that are swirling within us.

I know for me a go to reaction was always to flee. And by flee I mean turn my back and cut people out of my life. One disappointment, one time of feeling rejected or abandoned, and it was “proof” that the person wasn’t trustworthy and therefore I needed to shut them out of my life. My armor would go up and if need be I would start fights if they wouldn’t “let” me leave. 

It has taken a lot of time, therapy, practice, patience, and self compassion to find my way to pause between the action of an emotion being activated and responding.

Because for most of my life I reacted, immediately, and without thought. What I want for my life, for my relationships, is for me to be able to thoughtfully respond, to slow down and evaluate the facts of the situation and previous situations so that I can respond intentionally and mindfully.

This has meant coming into my body. This has meant learning to tolerate all those intolerable sensations and emotions. This has meant practicing keeping my front brain (where logic, reasoning, creativity, problem solving, and compassion live) online while also experiencing the sensations and emotions that live in my back brain.

It hasn’t meant stuffing my feelings down. 

It has meant allowing myself to experience them and learning to know they won’t actually kill me. They will be uncomfortable, I may not like it, but I certainly won’t die.

When we are able to engage our front brain while also experiencing our feelings, we can begin to look at situations more objectively. We can look for patterns, for habits, for cycles. We slow down not to make excuses for the other person, but to see if our own pain is actually stemming fully from something they did or said or if it also stems from a long ago wound that never healed. 

And then we can decide how we want to respond to the person. We can intentionally decide if this is an opportunity for our own personal growth and processing. We can decide if it is an opportunity for us to communicate our needs, to repair in relationship and to stay. Or to communicate our needs, set a boundary, and possibly leave.

It is true that when another person triggers our feelings of disappointment, frustration, abandonment, and or betrayal that it was indeed their action or words that did this. It is true that our hurt is in part due to the what the other person did or said.

And.

They don’t deserve the full force of our fury or rage or pain, most of which comes from past hurts from others we trusted.

Sometimes when another person triggers our painful feelings it isn’t intentional, or may be a matter of circumstance or what they did or said is actually a perfectly reasonable or normal thing, but it sets off our alarms anyhow. Sometimes these triggers are not an indication of who they are as a person.

And honestly, sometimes it is.

Which is why we need the pause. So we can slow ourselves down and determine what we actually know about the other person. What we actually know about ourselves. What patterns we have seen. What other actions and words we have witnessed or not. 

We need the pause so we can engage our frontal lobe and respond in a way that lets us stand in our own integrity and authenticity. Without needing to cause another pain. Without lashing out. Without cutting people out because in that moment we are hurting and find it unbearable.

The pause requires us to be in our bodies, to be able to tolerate uncomfortable even painful emotions and sensations. It also allows us to enjoy the fun and pleasurable emotions and sensations that can also a part of living as a human.

Learning to live embodied, to tolerate, experience, and sometimes even enjoy the sensations and emotions of our fully human lives is a life long process. There are not five easy steps and then you are done. It is not a one time thing we can check off. It is a constant practice that will have its own ebbs and flows.

The pause will not come to us quickly. It will take time. At first you will notice while you are reacting that you are indeed having an immediate response. With time you will be able to “bring yourself down” more smoothly and quickly. Then, you will begin to notice that you are about to lash out and eventually stop it. In more time, with more practice, you will be able to catch yourself at the very beginning of being triggered. You will be able to feel the sensations and emotions and also be able to explore them, analyze them and the situation logically. And then intentionally decide how we want to respond.

Having patience and compassion for ourselves during this process, while learning to come into our body and to tolerate all the different, varied, and nuanced sensations and feelings and learning how to find that breath, that pause, when some or all our old wounds are triggered is vital and part of the process.

It is true that what was done to us by others is not our fault, we are not to blame for their actions. And we are responsible to learn to respond to new hurts in ways that hold us in our own integrity, in a way that does not continue to pass on harmful patterns, in ways that allow us to break painful cycles for ourselves and the generations to come.

/…/

To read more of my essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

Gaslighting & Cultural Relational Trauma

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Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else’s behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.
…
so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.
~George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Gaslighting.  This is something most of us have experienced in our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not.  Because of what gaslighting is, it is highly likely it’s happening and you don’t realize it.

According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to a 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film adaptation. The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.

Something to note about gaslighting is the manipulator doesn’t have to be intentionally doing it.  Anytime anyone questions your own experience or tells you what you remember isn’t true – that’s gaslighting.

Here’s a thing though – gaslighting doesn’t just happen in our personal relationships.  Gaslighting happens All The Time culturally.  It is a part of our patriarchal culture and wounding.

Gaslighting is part of our patriarchal wounding and cultural relational trauma.  It is traumatic and re-traumatizing for those of us who live in a patriarchal culture (all of us).  This gaslighting shows up in the form of telling us our Noes do not matter.  Our consent is irrelevant.  Our boundaries don’t need to be respected or even acknowledged.

This gas lighting, I find, is particularly insidious.  And that is of course intentional and by design.  Gas lighting has us believing that either our experience isn’t real or that our experience is our own fault and not the fault of the other person or our culture.

This shows up on a broader scale as victim blaming, slut shaming, or actually being told that what we saw or heard or experienced wasn’t real or that we “misunderstood.”

This also shows up in the statistics of violence of against women.  How every day, on average, three women are murdered by current or former intimate partners.  How one in six women experience rape or attempted rape (and these are only the numbers reported, we know from lived experience that this number is much closer to six in six women).  How 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime (again these are only the reported numbers).

This shows up when a man “mansplains” to us our own lived experience or what we meant to say or write.

This shows up when we say something, it is ignored, and then a (typically white) man states exactly the same thing and gets praise.

This shows up in Freudian psychology that blames the mother for all our problems and also tells us that as women we have sexual fantasies about our fathers (um, no.  No I do not.).

This shows up in all the parenting books that tell us what to do and how to do it instead of trusting ourselves.

This shows up in all those stories of how we are too much: too emotional, too loud, too reactionary.

This shows up in all those stories of how we aren’t enough, how we can’t do anything right, how we are broken and need to be fixed, how we have to keep trying harder and harder and striving more and more to become “perfect.”

This shows up in a thousand ways every single day of our lives.

We are gaslit by the media.  By our culture.  By our families and friends.

Some of it I believe is intentional.  And also, some of it, I believe, is not.

Regardless, it’s still gaslighting.

All this gaslighting, which is actually part of our lived reality, creates fear and terror and confusion.  Fear, terror and confusion keep us small and quiet and obedient and compliant. It keeps us chasing our own tails.  It keeps us pointing fingers at other women as The Problem.  It keeps us isolated.  It keeps us complicit.

When we are sitting in isolation, distrusting and judging other women, we are allowing the patriarchal culture to keep us leashed.Because our culture and the systems it propagates knows that when we are singular and isolated we can’t do a whole lot of harm.

Because it knows that if we come together in community and solidarity, it is fucked and will be burned down to the ground as we breathe fire in unison.

Because it knows the way to keep us leashed is to keep us distracted with the stories of how other women are bad and out to get us and how we ourselves are also not enough and too much and don’t deserve to exist.

One of the effects of gaslighting and other forms of patriarchal wounding that I find to be most harmful is the isolation and distrust of other women.

The reality that we are not in community.

The reality that mothers are to blame for everything that is wrong with their children, be they infants, adults, or anywhere in between.

The reality that we shame the hell out of other women for speaking up or demanding their boundaries be respected.

The reality that we completely disregard another woman’s No.

The reality that we, particularly white women, will claw and trample all over each other to get the crumbs of success (white) men deign to offer us.

This leashing runs deep.  It goes back thousands of years.  It is connected to the trauma inflicted on us as women, for generations. It lives in our blood and bones, muscle and being.

It is real.  We are not making it up.

Epigenetics shows us how trauma is passed down through our DNA from our ancestors.  And when each generations experiences trauma of one form or another or many forms, that gets added to what is passed down.  It becomes cumulative and maybe even exponential.

We all carry this unprocessed trauma of our ancestors.  Add to it the trauma of our lived experience be that physical or sexual violence (or both) or the trauma of living in a culture that considers us Less Than.

It’s no wonder we in-fight with other women.  It’s no wonder we question our sanity.  It’s no wonder we often stay quiet and isolated and small.  It is no wonder the leash stays on and the current president is in power and are left feeling lost and confused.

This is all by design. This is all intentional. This is how oppressors keep the oppressed from fighting back against them.

One of ways we can take off the patriarchal leash, one of the ways we can start to shift, one of the ways we can begin to tear all this shit down, is by noticing.

Noticing the ways we allow others to tell us what our lived experience is.

As we notice and acknowledge we can also begin to unravel all the wounding and trauma and stories that lives with us.  We can become curious about our whys and hows and whos.  We can begin to say No and I will do better and I will do different next time and then actually do better and different.

It will be a slow process.  It will be messy.  We will make mistakes. We will fuck it up.

We will need to learn to sincerely apologize.

We will need to learn to tolerate being wrong.

We will need to learn to tolerate making mistakes and being imperfect.

We will need to learn to listen.

We will need to learn when it is important to speak our truth and share our voice and when it is important to move aside and allow others to be in the center.

We will need to learn to trust other women.

We will need to learn to be trustworthy to other women.

We will need to learn to be build each other up, to support each other.

We will need to learn what it is to be in true community, to understand we all have this leash around our necks, we all have our own unlearning to do.

And that we can do this all together.

In community.

Unearthing and examining and dismantling and dislodging our own wounds and wounding behaviors.

As we come together, as we act in rebellious solidarity in community, we will see how our stories and experiences are similar and yet unique.  How we weren’t making it all up.  How it wasn’t just in our heads.

As we share our stories and experiences in community we will see how we have all been gas lit by our culture.  By the myth of the Perfect Woman.  By the myth that women are sinful and evil.

This is an act of resistance.  This is an act of rebellion.  This is an act of defiance.

And it is how we will burn it all down to ground with our fiery breathe.
It is how we will rise from the ashes, together.
In community.  United.  Together.

/../
This essay was originally shared as my weekly newsletter in August 2017. It has been edited and revise for publication here.

To read my latest newsletter you can subscribe here.

Rape Culture, 13 Reasons Why, & the Mental Health community

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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

 

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) 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 and other towing the line statements and declarations.

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

It took a conversation with my own therapist, being in a space to 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. 

(I did find a single site when researching for this article originally, written by a therapist, talking about depiction of rape culture in the show.)

As I continued talking in my session, I realized how I believe many mental health professionals miss the mark when it comes to discussing topics like anxiety, depression, and suicide and their root causes. How they ignore the impacts living in this culture has on all of us.  How the interconnections and intersections of our own lived experiences, our culture, and our ancestral history affect 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 – whether we have personally experienced either or now.  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?)

These are not discussions we typically have within the mental health community.  It is only in recent years that any discussion of how our greater environment (including our culture and ancestral history) impacts our mental health.  We, mental health professionals, 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 or outside forces.  That it is all in our heads.  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 and how they impact us and compound things.

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” (and absolute lack of outcry in regard to rape culture) around this Netflix series only emphasizes this truth.

If we (mental health professionals) think for one moment that living a world where we (girls and 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 raped, where our bodies are mentally dissected and compared and contrasted with others… 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 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 from being touched without consent to being placed on a “Hot or Not” list to having rumors spread about us) 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.  Because he was protected and defended by many different peers.  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” that has been targeted against this show (and also the lack of outcry).  I am irritated at my profession for 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.

If you won’t give his name, you just have to deal with it.

Are you sure that is what happened?

Fuck. All. Of. That.

It is time that we as a culture start to name these behaviors and insinuations for what they are:: complicity in rape culture.  It is time we stop victim blaming and gas lighting.  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.

It is time we begin to understand how living in this culture impacts us, especially women, people of color, the LGBTQi community, the differently abled, those who live or have lived in poverty… the list could go on and on.  It is time we stop blaming victims and gas lighting our clients.  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.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

xoox

This essay was originally shared in my weekly love letter on May 6, 2017.  If you’d like to read more essays where I breathe fire and talk about the intersections of the personal and political, the social and singular, the communal and individual, you can sign up right here. 

Resources and References

13 Reasons Why Shows the Deadly Impacts of Rape Culture

US Veterans Administration Center for PTSD (Sexual Assault) Public Site

US Veterans Affairs Center for PTSD (Sexual Assault) Professional Site

13 Reasons to Make Violence Against Women Unacceptable (tons of resources at the bottom)

13 Reasons Hits Hardest When Depicting Rape Culture

The Truth Behind Rape Culture

Psychological Analysis of ’13 Reasons Why’: People’s Feelings About Hannah Say a Lot About America’s Rape Culture  (the only article I could find by another therapist on this topic)

Unleashing Our Self :: Disconnection, Shame, and thinking it is us

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My own relationship with my Self has been a rocky one most of my life.  From a very young age I received and internalized the messages of how my body was not mine, how I was to be seen and not heard, how I took up too much space, how I was too smart, how I wasn’t good enough at this or that or anything.  I had feelings of shame for even existing as far back as I can remember.  These messages came from many places, family of course, but as I grew older and started reading teen magazines and Cosmopolitan, watching movies, really listening to music, the message became very clear that my sole purpose on this earth was to look pretty and to get a boy or man and that in order to do that I had to look and be a certain way.

And of course I didn’t measure up to the standard idea of beauty – my thighs were too big, my hair too mousy; I was too short; I wore glasses.  My clothes were hand-me-downs or homemade and never in style.  I would never fit that Ideal and so I would likely never catch a boy or man.  In addition, I was smart, and, well, we all know that smart girls can never ever be pretty.

Since my worth, according to media, according to popular (i.e. patriarchal) culture, was measured by whether I could get a boy/man, I was clearly worthless.

This didn’t get much better as I grew older.  In college I spent the first three years or so proving how very stupid (and therefore how very pretty) I was. There were periods of self harm that included drugs and drinking and hitting myself, usually my legs, so hard that I would bruise.

All of this I hid from others for the most part.  All of this I had to hide because it was only more proof of how flawed I was because I couldn’t “handle” life and very clearly didn’t have my shit together.

Eventually I did meet my now husband and our love story is one for another day.  But my not measuring up didn’t stop with falling in love with, and more importantly being loved by, this man.  I had my career, then an electrical engineer, where I was constantly pushing myself beyond my limits by working 50, 60, and even 70 hour weeks to prove I was as good as The Boys and trying to find the balance of my femininity and my power.  And then when I had my first child things became even worse.

Now I had to juggle career and motherhood and I could not fail at either. And failure, by the way, basically looked a lot like being human.  I kept up a persona and mask that everything was Fine when the truth was I was suicidal and on the brink of a complete mental collapse.  I hated myself, and blamed myself as obviously lacking, because I couldn’t do it all and my career, marriage and motherhood were all flailing.

I was never ever enough on the one hand and I was way too much on the other and no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I could never “win”.  I could not feel, now matter how much I did, that I deserved any of the success that came my way. If someone tried to compliment me on some thing or another I would come back with a list of all the things that were wrong or imperfect or all the ways I fucked this or that thing up.

And boundaries… what were those?  I wouldn’t dare set a boundary for fear of being considered rude or a bitch or selfish or not committed to my work.

And at my core, I didn’t like myself.  In fact, I really hated myself.  I truly did not believe I was worthy of being loved.  I did not believe that I was lovable.  I didn’t respect myself.  I was ashamed of who I was, how I looked, and almost everything I did.

There are many things that contributed to the shifting of my relationship with myself.  There was therapy, and then my pregnancy with my daughter and then her birth and life.  There was leaving engineering and going to graduate school to study psychology.  There was mindfulness and yoga and writing the words breathe or love or gentle on my arm.  There were a million books.  There were friendships that saved me.  There was my husband.  And there was more than all of this.

One of the things that finally helped make it click for me though, was the realization that it – all that self hatred and loathing, all those feelings of not measuring up or taking up too much space or needing to prove I deserved to even exist – wasn’t my fault.

None of it was my fault.

It was the realization that our culture purposefully trains and conditions us to think we are undeserving and unworthy of love as we are and so we must keep striving and proving and fixing ourselves.  That if we have boundaries we are cold and uncaring and will alone.  That we must bend and mold ourselves ways of being to always please others and make sure they are comfortable.

When I started to dig into the ways the system was truly and actually stacked against me – against all women, and definitely some more than others – light bulbs started to go off in my head.

Our culture doesn’t want us to have healthy or loving or connected relationships with other women – because when we do come together and rise up the status quo is going to be destroyed.

And more than that, our culture doesn’t want us to have any type of healthy relationship with our Self – with our body, our mind, our spirit or our soul.

It wants us living outside our body while also being focused on changing it, on starving it, on torturing it, on hating it.

It wants us disconnected from our mind and so keeps us distracted with all the menial ways we “fail” and don’t measure up, be it the clothes we wear, the home we live in, the way our children act.  It wants us constantly striving and striving and striving, never being satisfied with anything we have, because if we feel satisfied with ourselves, with our life, we might actually take the time to stop, and breathe, and look around and see how fucked the entire system actually is – and then, and then, we might actually also have the time and energy to do something about it.

It wants us believing in a spirituality that doesn’t feed us, that oppresses us, that doesn’t allow space for women.

It wants us cut off from our soul, from our core, from our very being.

By keeping us disconnected, disembodied, and cut off from our Self, our culture, and those in power in our culture, is able to keep us distracted, compliant and complicit. By keeping us severed from our Self, it is able to continue oppressing us and in turn have us passing this oppression down through the generations.

To all of this I say:

No More.

Not on my watch.

You are my sister, my comrade, not my competition.

And

I am connected to my Self.

I have compassion for my Self.

I honor and love and cherish my Self.

I invite you to join me in the resistance to our culture.  To the gas lighting. To the shaming. To the stories and lies of how we aren’t enough and are too much and aren’t lovable and need to be “fixed.”

I invite you to sing and shout and whisper and scream and roar with me:

No More.

Not on my watch.

You are my sister, my comrade, not my competition.

And to

Connect with your Whole Self – body, mind, spirit and soul.

To have compassion for your Self, your stumbles along the way.

To honor and love and cherish your Self, as the beautifully profound and amazing being you are.

I invite you to join me in this rebellion of connection, of wholeness, of love and in so doing burning down a culture that dare to hold us down.

I talk even more about how our culture encourages us to disconnect from our Self in this 20-minute video below.  I hope you enjoy it.

This essay and video are the third in my three-part series Unleashing Our Self as an introduction to the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Unleashing Our Mothers, Unleashing Our Selves.  We begin April  1.  If you are interested, you can learn more and request an application here. xoxo

You can find first essay & video in this series right over here and the second one right over here.

 

Mothers and daughters

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Love her but leave her wild. ~Atticus

Most of us were tamed as children.

We weren’t allowed to run wild. Or if we were, only in certain circumstances.

I remember longing to be a tomboy in some ways, although I was very much a girlie-girl. The tomboys always looked like they were having so much fun climbing trees and getting muddy and having snarled up hair. I watched them, intently, with my brushed neat hair and pressed dresses, sitting as lady-like as possible on the porch steps or the sidewalk.

I think my mom longed to be a tomboy too. She wore jeans and it seemed like such an act of defiance. Her jeans and t-shirts were her own special fuck-you to my grandmother I think.

I know she, my mom, was raised to be lady-like too, to be girlie, to wear dresses and always have her hair neat, to speak properly and only when spoken to. And so, as an adult, she wore jeans and tied her hair back in messy pony-tails and swore like a sailor.

But not around my grandmother, her mother. Never then.

And of course, we were never allowed to be anything but proper around our grandmother too.

And so the lessons were learned early on to hide parts of myself. To hustle for love and acceptance. To bend and mold myself to another’s liking, no matter what.

This all came to a somewhat abrupt stop when I was pregnant with my own daughter. And the vows I made so many years before that all the abuse and shame and neglect would end with me came crashing forward and I claimed those vows again.

I wanted different for my own daughter. Hell, I wanted different for me.

I saw the pain in both my mother’s and grandmother’s eyes when they tried to connect, to interact with each other. My mother always on guard for the next criticism, my grandmother having the best intentions but always picking and pointing out all my mother’s “faults”.

I saw the pain in my own mother’s eyes when she tried to connect with me and I knew my own reluctance and resistance to letting her in for all the reasons I had.

I knew their heartache and I knew my own.

I didn’t want that for me and my girl. I still don’t.

Some days are better than others and some days my grandmother’s harsh voice comes out of my throat and some days my daughter watches me with weary eyes and some days we connect in ways that I never knew possible for a mother and daughter and my heart swells and I know that cycles are breaking.

These cycles that go back beyond my own grandmother. Back generations and generations. Back to the times when patriarchy took root and women began to be disregarded and de-humanized. Back to a time when women first learned the lessons of what they must do to survive, what they must do for their girl-children to survive.

The cycles, the trauma; the looks, the tones; the violence, the neglect; the complicity, the compliance. Passed on and down, over and over.

All leading to isolation and loneliness; anxiety and depression; disconnection from the women who came before and the women who came after. Passed on and down, over and over.

I was very young when I made the vow that it all stopped with me. Maybe five or six. And for a time I thought that meant never having children, as it was the only way I knew to guarantee none of it would be passed on and down again.

And then biology and wanting and the meeting the right man and well, here I am today.

Ten years ago I renewed my vows that it all stops with me. And every day since I renew them again and again.

Part of the renewal is continually finding ways to connect to the women who came before, to continually re-examine my own relationships with my mother and grandmothers and their relationships with each other. To step outside myself and see what is still being passed on and down and doing as much of my own course correction as I can.

This is one of the ways we burn it down. This is one of the ways we change our culture and world for future generations. By doing our own work of unearthing and unraveling and dismantling and dislodging and embracing and being.

On April 1, an intimate group of women will begin to gather for my next six month online women’s circle. (CIS, Transgender, and AFAB non-binary all welcome). We will explore our relationships with other women, with our mothers and grandmothers, their relationships with each other and connect to our female ancestors to heal wounds and trauma and embrace their strength and power. If this sounds like part of your own journey of self actualization, of social liberation, of becoming unleashed, then I invite you to learn more and request an application here: http://gwynnraimondi.com/unleashingourself