Category: inter-generational trauma

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Loving or hating our bodies

I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
with clean blood
and organized drawers.
I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
at night when no one else is alive
or awake
however you choose to see it
and I live in my own flames
sometimes burning too bright and too wild
to make things last
or handle
myself or anyone else
and so I run.
run run run
far and wide
until my bones ache and lungs split
and it feels good.
Hear that people? It feels good
because I am the slave and ruler of my own body
and I wish to do with it exactly as I please 
~Charlotte Eriksson, You’re Doing Just Fine

There is a lot of talk about body love and body acceptance out in the social media world. It would seem that we are supposed to love our bodies no matter what, no matter how we feel they betray us, no matter what has been done to them.

Love is a strong word, a powerful emotion. And frankly, I don’t know that I will ever love my body. In early February Ijeoma Oluo wrote on IG about whether she could accept the love of another if she didn’t love her own body (you can see her post here). The post came at a time that I really needed to read it, as I was going through a particularly bad patch of hating my body. 

I don’t know if it’s true that we are unable to truly accept the love of another if we don’t love our own bodies. I think there may be a bit of chicken and egg there, in that having someone love us, including loving our bodies, may help us to love our selves, including our bodies, a bit more. 

But what I do know is that there are definitely times in my life when I hate my body. I hate it’s shape and size, I hate its stretch marks and cellulite, I hate how its aging, I hate how it aches and hurts and doesn’t seem to be able to move in ways I want it to, in the ways it was once able to. It’s not every day. And there are also days that I love certain parts of my body, but never the whole all at once.

While part of my complex relationship with my own body is due to our societies emphasis on what bodies “should” look and move and be like, it is also true that part of my hatred and anger stems from the abuse my body has endured, and how it has responded to this abuse. 

I live with an “unspecified autoimmune disorder,” which means that I have several “markers” of various different autoimmune disorders, but not enough in any one particular one to state “Oh, you have X”. This translates to doctors sometimes don’t know what to do me, and any “treatment” I do is a lot of trial and error and mostly done on my own. This means that sometimes I have chronic pain, but sometimes I don’t. It means that I have a blood clotting disorder that I need to manage. It means my endocrine system needs a lot of support. And it means that what this managing and support looks like can literally need to change from day to day.

I know that my autoimmune issues stem from the abuse my body experienced, Iexperienced, as a child. I know that the sexual and physical and emotional abuse all have had their long lasting impacts. I know the whys and how my body is the way it is.

But that doesn’t mean I like it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t infuriate me. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when I hate that my body feels the need to be impacted, to respond, to cry out about the pain it has endured.

And.

My body has survived horrible things. It has kept me alive for over 47 years. It has birthed two babies. It has run two half marathons. It goes on hikes, it snuggles my children, It functions in all the ways it needs to to not only keep me alive, but also so I can raise my children, do my work, and now enjoy my life.

So. There we are. The both-and of it all. Yes there are times that I hate my body and there are times when I am in awe of and grateful for it. But love, I don’t know that I’ll ever get there, and who knows, maybe I will.

In doing my own work of processing the trauma from my childhood, I have been able to come back into my body, to learn to tolerate the uncomfortable times as well as the pleasurable ones.

Because when we are dissociated, when we are disconnected from our bodies and from the here and now, it is true we are able to avoid the discomfort our bodies often express, but it is equally true that we don’t experience the pleasures that we can also have.

Coming back into our bodies, sounds so straight forward. In some ways it is, but in others it’s not. We are each complex beings and our journeys to trauma processing and being able to tolerate all the sensations and emotions we experience can be complex too. There is forward and back. There is progress and regression. 

Coming back into our bodies is not the same as loving our bodies. We can be present in them and not love every part of them.

And.

With time, we can learn to be grateful for what our bodies have endured and still kept us alive. We can learn to be in awe of all our bodies have done and do. We might even begin to start to like certain aspects of our bodies, both its physicality and its functions.

And maybe, we learn to love our bodies as part of our whole Self, an integral and necessary part of who we are.

Maybe.

We’ll never know though until we begin the journey.

/…/

The next cohort of Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivorswill begin on April 14 and registration is currently open. This six month program is part support group, part practical coping and embodiment skills, and part psycho-education. During our time together we will utilize the first phase of the Trauma Informed Embodiment™ approach I have developed. There is a sliding scale fee, and alternate payment plans are also available. To learn more go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/tieforsexualtrauma

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Sitting in discomfort

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

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Love is not a victory march

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.

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Secular Blessing for Becoming Unleashed 2018

The work of a lifetime, the process of individuation, is widening of that spotlight so much that everything is illuminated and you are conscious of and can see your All.

~Sera J. Beak, The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark

May we…

Unravel our stories of not enough, seeing in them the lies we have been told that have nothing to do with us.

Revolt against the idea that comfort at any and all costs is necessary for our survival

Dismantle the shame we carry in our bones and being

Embrace our beauty, our power, our voice

Realize we no longer need to compromise our integrity, our values, our love for our Self, in order to be loved by another

Release the tales of how we are too much and allow them to scatter on the wind like so much dust

Reclaim our birthrights of respect, honor, and real, honest, and mature love.

Learn to be accepting of the in-between spaces and unknowns as we move through this work, through our lives, through this world.

Find the ways of being that strong, resilient, soft, and loving that have always lived inside us.

Amen.

…

There is still time to join the Becoming Unleashed Circle 2018.  Registration will close at 10pm PDT Monday October 1.  To learn more and register you can go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/becomingunleashedcircle .

In case you missed the essays exploring the topics and ideas we’ll be examining in this circle, you can find them at the links below:

The Impacts of Inter-generational & Cultural Relational Traumas

Releasing our stories of too much, not enough, & shame

The Goo: A time of Renewal, Restructuring, Re-evolving

Reclaiming our power, strength, & daring 

Why the Becoming Unleashed circle?

The essence of Becoming Unleashed

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 

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Reclaiming our power, strength, & daring

 

Without the ‘dark’ I would never understand how light the ‘light’ really is. And while I don’t care for the dark, I do appreciate what it does for the light. ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Change is supremely inconvenient, uncomfortable and naturally scary. Yet we only move through life through the process of change, reinvention and renewal, and so bravery is our quintessential rebel for pushing us past our own limiting beliefs and behaviours. Bravery is feeling the fear, immersing yourself into it and through it so you can come out the other side. ~Christine Evangelou, Rocks Into Roses: Life Lessons and Inspiration for Personal Growth

A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that the people in the story change. ~Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Within each of us is strength, power, and daring.  Our own.  That of our ancestors.  Within each of us is resilience, love, hope.  Within each of us is a knowing, a trusting, a believing.  It is there.  We may not feel it.  We may not be able to admit it is there, we may not be able to see it, but it is there all the same.

The work of reclamation is to unearth and reclaim these parts of our Self that we have buried, pushed down, ignored, or truly did not believe existed.  It requires us to reclaim our bodies as ours, our strengths and skills and talents, our inner power and knowing, our courage, bravery, and daring to break patterns and cycles, to become the people we want to be.

Reclaiming those parts of our Self we thought lost, or worse that they never existed, is work that can only be done after the work of releasing and creating space, and allowing for the time of renewal to integrate the openness into our being.  Once that space exists and is truly a part of us, we can begin to see those parts of us we couldn’t before.  Those parts of us that we were told were vile, were ugly, or simply weren’t there in the first place.

Reclamation is the time of deeply and viscerally realizing that what we were told is “too much” about us is actually our strength, our power.  Of realizing all the ways we were told we are “not enough” is actually where our courage, our bravery, our daring lives.  Of realizing all the shame we carry isn’t ours, that we were never meant to have it living within our being.

Then, once we have all these realizations and can feel them in our bodies and at the core of our being, the work of reclamation becomes relatively easy.

I’ve described all these stages of this work in a linear fashion, first one then the next then the next.  And while it is true that in many ways one stage does need to proceed the next it is also true that we are constantly doing all these stages of this work simultaneously.

I envision the path of this work to be like a three dimensional spiral.  We travel along it, around and around, up and then down, revisiting the same narratives, the same wounds, but at different layers and from different perspectives each time.  The work is perhaps never actually “complete” and yet with each layer we find our ways closer to the person we truly want to be, the person we truly are, and finding more and more freedom from the leash of our own trauma and the trauma of living in our current western culture.

I talk more about these ideas in the 6-minute video here.

This essay is the fourth and final of a four part series I have written exploring our narratives of too much, not enough, and the shame we carry and how we can release them and reclaim our own strength, power, and daring.  I hope you have found it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the fall online women’s circle Becoming Unleashed.  We begin October 1 and space is limited to six women.  You can learn more here.

In case you missed the previous essays, you can find them at the links below:

The Impacts of Inter-generational & Cultural Relational Traumas

Releasing our stories of too much, not enough, & shame

The Goo: A time of Renewal, Restructuring, Re-evolving

Reclaiming our power, strength, & daring (this essay)