Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas

Not knowing trauma or experiencing or remembering it in a dissociative way is not a passive shutdown of perception or of memory. Not knowing is rather an active, persistent, violent refusal; an erasure, a destruction of form and of representation. The fundamental essence of the death instinct, the instinct that destroys all psychic structure is apparent in this phenomenon. . . . The death drive is against knowing and against the developing of knowledge and elaborating [it].

~Dori Laub, Listening to Trauma

Collective trauma is something that a community experiences together. It is the ways events like the hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters impact the communities that are affected by them and how those communities collectively respond to the event.

Collective trauma can also be seen when we look at racism, misogyny, homo-phobia, xenophobia, able-ism, etc. We see collective trauma in the survivors of genocides and in refugees of extremely authoritarian regimes. The peoples those “otherings” are directed at also experience a collective trauma.

These are traumas that, if you aren’t a part of that community, you don’t experience and may even have trouble understanding. They are also traumas that intersect and many of us are members of multiple “collectives” who experience othering, oppression, and hatred.

A community that experiences a collective trauma is made up of individuals, who each experience and internalize the traumatic event (or attitudes) in their unique ways. How we as an individual may respond to a collective traumatic event is also dependent on our own personal trauma history, our resilience (or lack of), and how our personal and prior collective trauma histories impacted us. How each individual responds to the event also reflects and influences how the collective as a whole responds.

The individual and the collective are intertwined, one really can’t exist without the other.

(To clarify the use the of the word “event” – that word truly only speaks to actual one time things – like hurricanes – and not to the traumatic impact of cultural hierarchies or attitudes or otherings. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have a word for that – so, I’m calling the trauma of cultural hierarchies an “event” even though it is perpetual and most certainly not a one time thing.)

If we look at misogyny (and really all aspects of our patriarchal culture) as a collective trauma, we can begin to have another way into understanding not only how it impacts each of us individually, but also how it perpetuates and insinuates itself within our culture. We can begin to see how misogyny is a key component in what I call Cultural Relational Trauma – how it others women and isolates us from each other and from ourselves. We can see how misogyny impacts all our relationships, with women, men, and non-binary persons. We can see how we collectively perpetuate it through silence, jealousy, and competition.

As women, we have collectively and individually, consciously and unconsciously, bought into the stories of how we are not enough, how we are too much, how we are bad, stupid, untrustworthy, incompetent, frail, fragile, and my all time favorite: evil.

We can see the double-bind our culture, and we ourselves, put us in when we consider sexuality, spirituality, motherhood, womanhood.

We can see how these stories and attitudes have actually caused not only individual traumas (because women are just property after all and can be beaten, raped, used and abused at the whim of their male intimate partner), but have also traumatized us as a collective, leaving us in a place of actually not trusting or believing other women, how we think about what women can and can’t do in the workforce, how we judge other mothers, how we accuse other women of “playing the victim” or the martyr.

We other each other. Even when in almost every way we are the same, and most especially when we have any obvious differences (like the color of our skin, socio-economic status, perceived sexuality, intelligence, education, etc).

And when we other each other, we are buying into, being complicit in and compliant to, and perpetuating our misogynist culture.

Our othering of other women, is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

Our voices running through our minds about how we are too much or not enough is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

Our shame, that we carry and that weighs down every fiber of our being, is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

These are all traumas. These are both the cause and the effect of the trauma. Internalized misogyny is its own trauma that we perpetuate within ourselves and out in our collectives.

I am a firm believer in systems theory. I believe we are all a part of multiple systems, from the micro system of our actual body to our families, to our communities, and further out into the world. When one of us is traumatized, we all feel the ripple effect. This is not only a lateral ripple reaching out to others living in the here and now, this ripple spirals, reach out into the now and also back to our ancestors and forward to the persons yet to come.

The traumas of our ancestors had and continue to have their own ripple effects and collective and internalized misogyny is one of them.

I talk more about all of this in the 12-minute video here. ‘

This essay is the third in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny. I hope you find it 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 (this essay)

Ending Cycles :: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

February 22, 2018March 25, 2018

Defining Ancestral & Inter-generational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.

~Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

I spoke on a panel once with a famous new age author/guru in leather pants and she said that the problem with women is that we don’t “speak from our power,” but from a place of victimization. As if the traumas forced upon us could be shaken off with a steady voice- as if we had actual power to speak from.

~Jessica Valenti, Sex Object

Welcome to my new educational essay series On Ancestral Trauma & Internalized Misogyny. Over the next four weeks I’ll be talking about Ancestral, Inter-generational, and Cultural Relational trauma and their various intersections. It is a chance for us to explore how the past – both recent and millennia old – impacts us today, specifically how trauma has been passed on through the generations, particularly mother to daughter, and become curious about how we can begin to process and dislodge these generations old traumas and woundings.

First I believe it is important to start with defining what exactly I am talking about. These are my own definitions, and while there are other therapists who would agree with these definitions and who use this same language, others may re-categorize and re-name the different types of trauma. I don’t think there is only one way to define these things, however so that we are on the same page, so to speak, I will share the definitions of the terms I will be using, as I use and define them.

Even though other therapists, psychologists, and psychological researchers may use different terminology it is universally agreed that there are traumas that come from our ancestral past, those of our own personal lived experience, and those that are from the culture we live in. This series will be focusing on all three, from a historical perspective. You’ll begin to understand what I mean over the next few weeks.

Ancestral Trauma

I define Ancestral Trauma as the biological trauma passed down to us from our blood relatives. This shows up in our DNA and cellular memory. The field of epigenetics broke ground in the reality that trauma is literally passed down through our bloodlines. It has been found that both DNA contributors – as in both the egg and the sperm – can pass on DNA “trauma markers”. It is currently unknown how far back (or rather how far forward) these markers are passed. Current research has only been able to look at three generations worth of data. However my own suspicions (and I’m not alone in these) is that these markers go back as far as any unprocessed was first experienced, so in theory this could literally go back thousands of years.

It is important to note that these trauma markers or “mutable” or changeable – in other words when we process our own traumas and those of our ancestors, these markers “switch off” and then are not available to pass on to the next generations genetically.

Inter-generational Trauma

This is the trauma that is passed on through our family of origin (so for those who are adopted, this is what has been passed on to you by your adopted family as opposed to those in your direct bloodline). This type of trauma is inflicted through action, inaction, and language. There are certain family “habits” or idiosyncrasies that we can see “passed down.” For example, both my sister and I have our mother’s laugh. We also both tend to have her drunken sailor’s mouth.

Not all things passed on inter-generationally are traumatic.

However, we can also look at child abuse as an inter-generational trauma, as more often then not if a parent physically abuses their own children they were also abused as a child. Neglect is the same way. This of course is not always true – which is to say it is possible to also break this cycle of trauma.

We can begin to see these sorts of idiosyncrasies, be they traumatic or relatively benign, when we look at our family trees and see where divorce, known abuse, child loss, early death, etc show up. Also examining our own actual language – the words we use and the the words we don’t – to see different ways this is passed on.

The key to inter-generational trauma, is that while it is part of our lived experience (for example abuse), it is also not originally or wholly ours, which is an important aspect to remember.

Cultural Relational Trauma (CRT)

This trauma is what in inflicted on us by our culture, or in our meta-socialization. It is how our culture encourages us to “Other” those who are not exactly like us. I believe this is where racism, misogyny, ablism, homophobia, classism, etc all stems from. In some ways CRT is from our families of origin also, however the messages come from beyond those who cared (or were supposed to care) for us. It is the messages we receive from the media, from our neighbors, from our religion, from our laws. It is a more wide spread, and therefore more insidious, message that we internalize.

This trauma is also something of our lived experience, but also not ours. It can be unraveled and dislodged, just as lived experience and ancestral traumas can be processed and moved out of our bodies.

Internalized Misogyny

This, in a nutshell, is our hatred of women as women ourselves. Men can be misogynists, but they can’t have internalized misogyny. When we internalize the messaging of our culture and or family of origin, it is messages about ourselves that we are internalizing.

Internalized misogyny shows up in the ways we judge other women and also the way, as women, we judge ourselves. It is the holding ourselves and others to essentially mythological beauty standards presented by our culture. It is the way we judge other mothers and their parenting, and yet do not offer support for mothers to be “better” parents. It is the way we shame other women, and ourselves, for being too much this and not enough that.

Internalized misogyny is the way we unconsciously do the dirty work of our culture – it is how we are complicit in and how we perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is also part of our ancestral and inter-generational trauma, as well as our cultural relational trauma.

It too is learned, and I firmly believe what can be learned can also be unlearned.

All of these different traumas influence and impact us. Sometimes consciously and mostly unconsciously. These traumas are part of our “Shadow Self” and when we bring them into the light, examine them, and begin to understand them, we are able to then begin to make conscious choices about not passing them on to future generations.

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

This essay is the first in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, and cultural relational traumas and internalized misogyny. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

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

Defining Ancestral & Intergenerational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny (this essay)

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual and Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles :: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

May 8, 2017May 8, 2017

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

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)

January 12, 2017January 31, 2017

Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma :: Consent

On a good day, at our most stable mentally, emotionally, and physically, consent is a complex topic. And when we add in the realities of the stress of our day to day lives, the impact of trauma, and the truth of living in a misogynist patriarchal culture… well the topic of consent can become mind boggling to say the least.

Often we think of consent in very dualistic terms: either it is yes or no, it is given or not given. Yet life isn’t so simplistic as that neither is our consent. Our consent is a living entity that can shift and morph and change given any variety of circumstances. Add to this parts of us can give consent while other parts of us may not. This is often the case, for example, when we choose to have surgery, a surgery that may even be necessary for our survival. Our mind consents to this surgery and perhaps even our spirit, and yet all our body knows is that it is frozen (thanks to anesthesia) being cut open and likely having metal implements stuck inside it and pieces of it, our body, being torn away and taken out. And so, even after having given consent with our mind and spirit, our body may have a trauma reaction post surgery, as a response to what it just went through and doesn’t understand was okay.

For these reasons, the very complexity of consent, it can be challenging to fully understand it. When we add to this that we are raised in a culture that tells women our consent isn’t relevant, it is no wonder that we are often left wondering if we didn’t indeed ask for it or feeling like it doesn’t matter if we say no so why bother?

And yet.

The truth is that our bodies, our beings, our minds, our spirits are OURS, and ours alone. These bodies we each walk around it, these bodies we live and love and grieve and rejoice in, are our birthright. And as such it is our right to say yes or no or maybe or to change our minds a million times in the process.

Yet often we are so disconnected from what we want, from our boundaries, from our bodies that we don’t fully understand what consent even means on any given day.

This disconnection isn’t by accident or any sort of indication of our own character. This disconnection is by design. It is intentional. It is the way our culture controls us, keeps us obedient, compliant and complicit. It is how the patriarchy gets away with treating us as less than human, as objects.

And so. I deeply believe that part of our own journey to understanding our consent is coming home to our body. To moving from a place of disassociation to a place of embodiment. To learn to sit in the discomfort and pleasure of being present in our body, in each moment.

To learn how to be in our body so that then we can actually choose if we want to be in it or not. So we can have the power of decision. So we can be fully informed and take back our consent instead of having it taken from us.

I talk about consent even more in this 18-minute video below. I hope you enjoy it.

This essay and video series is in part to share with you the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Body of Consent. We begin on March 1 (the video says February, we changed the start date to March). If you are interested, you can learn more and register right over here. xoxo

Or if you enjoyed this and would like to read more of my essays, you can subscribe for my weekly love letter right over here.

December 7, 2016December 8, 2016

Patriarchal wounds and boundaries (and why I won’t use the term “Mother Wound”)

patriarchal-wounds-and-boundaries Boundaries and our ancestors and patriarchal wounds. These things are so intertwined.

At some point in our human history, we, especially us women, lost sight of our boundaries. We lost sight of the separation between us and others. We lost sight of our needs and wants. We lost sight of us.

I believe there was a time in our history when we were deeply connected to our Self. A time when we lived in an egalitarian culture. Then something happened or likely many things happened and over time patriarchy arose and with it came all the wounding: shame, misogyny, no longer defending our boundaries, or speaking up or out, or breaking any rules, for fear of torture or death. (Anthropology seems to back me up in this.)

We, women, did what we needed to survive. We still do. We play the game, we follow the rules as best we can, until we just can’t any longer. Some of us never reach that breaking point. Many of us do.

Our mothers did the same. And our grandmothers. And our great-grandmothers. And so on back through our womanline for a few thousand years.

These women who came before us, they wanted us to survive too. They loved us, their daughters. They were terrified for us being in the world they brought us into.

So they trained us. They taught us to obey. To be deceitful so we can get our own needs met, and in this deceit we learned to not trust our sisters (or mothers or grandmothers). To play by the rules while still finding ways to hold onto our Self or to let go of our Self completely. They taught us how to survive in a culture that didn’t consider us fully human, that considered us property, that saw nothing wrong with raping, beating or murdering us.

The ways they taught us to survive equated to playing small, to being silent, to being obedient and docile and doing as we were told. It equated to not speaking up or out. It equated to serving others, particularly men, with little to no regard to our own exhaustion or needs.

This training, this wounding, is often called the mother wound. I’ve used that term, as recently as a couple months ago, and although I’ve used it, it has always bothered me.

It bothers me because it places the blame of our wounding, seemingly, on the surface, on our mothers. On all mothers.

Because we as mothers don’t already carry enough of the responsibility of the ills of the world. Hello Eve and Pandora, just to name two.

The truth is, this wounding isn’t from our mothers. Our mothers, all our ancestral mothers, wanted us to survive. They loved us so deeply and wholly. And they were terrified for us.

How do I know?

Because I am terrified for my own daughter and the world I am sending her off into. And this world I’m sending her into is much tamer and gentler than the world our ancestors, including our own mothers, sent their daughters, including us, off into.

So I have an issue with the term mother wound. Because these wounds we carry, aren’t really about our mothers. They are about trying to survive in a culture that hates women.

All women. Yes, some women more than others, absolutely. Yes, the color of our skin and our socio-economic status and how high our education goes all play a part. And whether we’re married or mothers or how many fathers we have for our children and what color skin our partners have and and and…. Intersectionality is vital in the work of unraveling all of this.

And.

All women are hated in our culture. Matters of degree make little difference when we look at the statistics on rape or interpersonal violence or murder by boyfriends or husbands. Those numbers cross all skin colors and classes and education levels.

This is not to say that we don’t carry wounds from our actual lived experiences with our mothers. Of course we do. We feel betrayed by them for trying to break us so we could live. Our pain and wounds of our lived experiences with our mothers are valid. And need to be processed and healed.

And.

While we need to heal our own micro-lived-experience-wounding, we need to remember the macro of the issue at hand.

It is our misogynist, patriarchal culture that is at fault.

Yes, our mothers are responsible for their actions. Yes, many of them did not do their own inner work so that they would not pass on this wounding and instead taught us healthy ways to survive and still feel comfortable in our own skin. Yes, they screwed up. Yes, they are human.

And by placing the blame fully on our mothers and our womanline, by putting them at the center of our wounding, we are continuing to be complicit and compliant to the misogynist patriarchal culture that created the environment for this wounding to even occur.

So I’ve decided to stop using the term mother-wound. Because it’s not entirely accurate. It’s misdirecting. It only feeds our internalized misogyny instead of helping us dislodging it from our bodies and being.

This is actually part of my own boundary work. Making the distinctions between what is mine and what is someone else’s and what is culture. Unraveling the stories and training that my ancestors have passed down through word or action or DNA (or all three). Learning to listen to my own body and knowing and getting to the root of something when it doesn’t feel right or feels off or doesn’t sit well with me.

This is part of connecting to our intuition yes, and it is also part of connecting to our boundaries. Of acknowledging when something, particularly a commonly used or “known” something, doesn’t feel right to us. Of saying no when that not right feeling comes up. Of doing different so not to pass on something that doesn’t feel right to us in the first place and only causes more wounding and damage.

Boundaries are more than telling someone you aren’t going to let them take advantage of you again. Boundaries are about more than our relationships with other people (though, in truth, a lot of how our boundary work plays out is in our relationships with others).

Boundaries are also about saying No More to a culture that hates us.

Boundaries are about saying No More to passing on the training and wounding of our culture.

Boundaries are about knowing our Self, so wholly and deeply that we don’t question when something doesn’t sit right if that off feeling is valid or not and instead we dig into the why so we can understand ourselves better and then do different in the world.

Boundaries, I believe, are at the base of our ancestral healing of our patriarchal wounds. As we learn more and more about our own boundaries, we heal the pain of our ancestors who weren’t allowed to have their own boundaries due to risk of torture or death.

As we lay claim to our bodies, to our minds, to our spirits, we are defining the distinctions between our own Self and the Self of others. We can know intuitively and immediately when someone is projecting their “stuff”on us as opposed to some critique of our behavior having merit.

Boundaries are how we connect to our Whole Self. Because without boundaries, we cannot define who we actually are.

As we do our own boundary work we learn that boundaries are not rigid nor are they static. They are flexible and have an ebb and flow depending on the people, places, time and events that are invoking them. We may have a more rigid boundary with one person than with another. We may need more physical space from some people than others. And even these boundaries may shift depending on what all is happening in our lives, sometimes needing firmer boundaries with those we generally are pretty easy and loose with.

Even with this being true, that boundaries are more of a fluid thing than not, we must be able to sense these boundaries in the first place.

And, you can probably guess, I deeply believe we learn to sense our boundaries by deeply connecting to and embracing our bodies. By inhabiting them. Feeling them. Knowing on a visceral and deep level what exactly embodiment means.

So we can feel our boundaries and know immediately when they have been breached. And honor and defend them, as we deserve to be honored and defended.

It is deep work and messy work and there is much unraveling and untangling and dismantling that must happen.

And it is so deeply and truly and wholly freeing.

Our boundary work is all a part of becoming our own version of the Unleashed Woman. It is another layer in taking off the leash that was put on us at birth by our culture. It is another layer of coming home to our Self.

And isn’t it time to do that? To come home to our Self? To take off this patriarchal leash? To become our own Unleashed Woman?

xoxo

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