Category: trauma

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Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma :: Trauma

Trauma is a messy beast.  And not only do we have the trauma of our own lived experience swirling within our bodies, we also, in our very DNA, have the trauma of our ancestors.

None of this we asked for.  None of this we consented to. None of this we said yes to.  None of this we were ever given a choice about.

Regardless, it’s there, within us.

And it our choice, and I believe our sacred responsibility, to process, to heal, to dislodge it from our bodies and being.

I have my own experiences with trauma.  As a young child I was abused physically and sexually and psychologically.  In my teens and again in my 20s I was raped. I have been in physically abusive relationships.  I have been gaslighted by people who were supposed to love me, from parents and grandparents to partners to mentors I trusted.

Many of you have had similar yet unique experiences to mine.  Sadly, these experiences are not uncommon, they are not rare.  Sadly, these experiences are the norm.  The statistics tell us this. Our lived experience tells us this.

I share with you that I’ve had these experiences to also share with you that I have done my own share of trauma work.  And am still in the process of doing it.

At the beginning of every single appointment with my therapist I tell her that I don’t want to do this work.  I have told her over and over that I am tired of my trigger responses.  That I am sick of living with PTSD.  That I want all this shit to simply go away.  Because I am D.O.N.E.

Processing our trauma is difficult and uncomfortable and messy.  It is the complete opposite of fun or enjoyable.  It is something I personally had avoided doing most of my life. Because, seriously, who wants to do with this shit?  Certainly not me.

And.

As I have slowly, so slowly, and quickly, oh so quickly, come home to my own body, connected to her sensations and whispers and screams, listened to her stories and memories, I came to know that truly, I need to work through the fear and terror and avoidance and process through the things that were done to me, that I never once consented to, that I never once asked for, so that I can be present and available in my own life, with my children and husband and sister and friends and greater community and world.

That while I never once asked for any of these things that were done to me I have a responsibility to those I love, including myself, to find ways to process and heal.

And in this processing and healing, I connect even more fully to my consent; I connect even more fully to my boundaries; I connect even more fully to my body and her knowing and her sensations, pleasurable, painful and everything in between and beyond.

Even if you are one of the very fortunate (and rare) people who have never experienced trauma in your own life, my guess is that you still carry within you the markers of trauma passed down to you by your ancestors in your DNA.

Trauma is unavoidable in our culture and time.

And while unavoidable, we can process it and heal it and not pass it on to the next generations.

I talk even more about trauma and it’s relation to consent and boundaries in the video below.

This essay and video are part of my new series Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma.  There are three essays total and you can read the essay on consent (with the embedded video) here and the essay on boundaries (with its video) here.

These essays and video series are 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

If you enjoyed this essay, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.

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The complexity of consent Part 2

consent-part-2Last week I wrote about how sometimes consent is a tricky thing, how sometimes our mind will give consent to something, like a surgery, but our body won’t (and really can’t). How sometimes our logic needs to override our body because our mind actually does know better (for example that a surgery could actually save our lives.

The point being that sometimes the giving or not giving of consent isn’t always a straight forward thing.

And, while that is true, it is also true that more often than not, the giving or not giving of consent is very straight forward.

Like the not giving consent for sexual abuse and assault or physical and psychological abuse and torture.

The not giving consent for mundane and yet traumatic things like car accidents or cancer or any disease or illness.

The not giving consent for other people to break our hearts, or betray our trust, or dishonor us in any of the big or small ways.

The not giving consent for our children becoming ill, our parents dying too young, our best friends suffering in any way.

There are million things in our lives that we do not give consent to.  Some of them extraordinary and some mundane.

All these noes that we may or may not have given voice live within us.  In our minds, yes, and also in our bodies.

Every time our consent is disregarded, our bodies know.  They react.  They store the data.

The data of emotions and pain and the color of the walls and slow motion detail right before impact.

This data lives in our shoulders and necks and jaws.  In our chests and hips and underneath our scapula.

This data lives in our intestines and stomach and womb.

This data lives in our blood and bones and muscles and sinew.

The raw non-verbal emotions, the howls and screams and wails, all vibrate within our being. And not only does the disregard of our own consent, from our lived experience, live within our body and being, that of our ancestors does too.

This includes the gaslighting that women have experienced for thousands of years.

This includes the impact of rape and abuse. It includes not having control or sovereignty over our own bodies or lives.

Yes, there a million mundane ways in which our consent is disregarded. Yes, this all lives within us. And the trauma and impact of these mundane, ordinary things, like car accidents, can be quickly and easily dislodged from our bodies.

It is the millions of ways in which our consent is disregarded that are not mundane, though in our culture considered ordinary and almost unremarkable, like rape or abuse or gaslighting, that takes time and patience and focused intention to dislodge and dislodging is made even more complex by living in a culture that continually and constantly traumatizes us.

It may take a lifetime to dislodge some trauma, some violations of our consent.  There are some things that we will only learn to live with, as we also continue to chisel away at the layers.  The hope always being that the more we dislodge, the more we chisel away, the less the next generation will need to do.

In truth, the trauma of being women living in a patriarchal culture makes it almost impossible to completely heal our bodies and minds and spirits.

And.

As we continue to do the work of unearthing, examining, dismantling and dislodging these traumas we also learn to resist and to prevent more trauma from impacting us as deeply.

We learn resilience.

We learn that no matter what, we will not only survive, in many ways we will also thrive.

We learn that our NOes matter.  We learn to honor them and defend them and demand respect for them.

We learn that our boundaries matter.  We learn how to notice them and feel them and know them.  We learn how to honor and respect them.  We learn how to demand others honor and respect them too.

This is not easy work.  It is messy.  It can be dark.  It can at times feel like we are sinking into a deep abyss.

And, as we build our resilience, we learn that this messiness, this darkness, this sinking into the abyss will pass.

We learn hope. We learn to breathe.  We learn to rest and nourish and replenish.

We learn to wield our consent.  To state that we matter. Our Noes and Yeses and Maybes matter.  Our boundaries matter.  Our voice matters. Our essence and being and life matters.

We learn that as we chisel away at our own trauma, we are also chiseling away at a culture that insists on oppressing us.  As we learn to wield our consent, to declare that we matter, we chisel away at the stories our culture has fed us since birth, since our mothers births, since our grandmothers births.  As we learn resilience, we rip away at leash our misogynist, racist, patriarchal culture has put on us.

As we learn, we begin to do different.  And in our doing different, we take back our bodies, our consent, our autonomy, our lives. And in this taking back, we begin to crumble the bricks of a culture that tries to tell us our bodies and lives are not our own.

And this is how we will tear it all down and how, in the end, we will win.

xoxo

Did you enjoy this?  If so, then I invite you to sign up for my weekly love letter right over here.

Isabel Abbott and I have locked arms and joined minds and are offering a six month circle unearthing, exploring, dislodging and embracing our consent and boundaries.  If you’d like to learn more and possibly register, click right here.

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The complexity of consent -part 1

consent-part-1Five years ago, while still in graduate school, I had a day surgery give me a bigger understanding of trauma and the impacts it has on our body.  That semester I fought to be in the Crisis & Trauma class, it was the last time it would be offered by one of my favorite professors and there was a screaming within me that I needed that particular class at that particular time in my life.  I had to fight with my academic advisor and demand over and over to be let into the class.  I didn’t understand the warrior within me who was battling so hard for this class, there was no logic at that time which said to take it now and that I couldn’t take it later.  And yet I knew, my body knew, that taking the class later was not what I needed.  I needed to take it now.  I eventually convinced my advisor and he got me into the class.

Let’s go back a bit.

When I was 18 I was diagnosed with endometriosis.  In the months leading up to this diagnosis, I had horrible and debilitating PMS and periods.  Debilitating to the point that I missed many days of my senior year of high school because I was curled up in a ball on our bathroom floor, dripping cold sweats or tightly curled in my bed moaning and crying and screaming because of the pain in my abdomen, my uterus, my womb.  This pain led to multiple ER visits and one of them finally led to me being fully admitted and having the surgery that discovered and removed, the endometrial tissue growing outside my uterus causing all the pain.

The whole of that hospital experience was awful.  The surgeon, may he be burning in the depths of hell, completely disregarded me.  He wanted me to sign a “consent” form that would allow him to remove my uterus and ovaries if he saw fit (I did not agree to this, but only because my adopted mom was there at my side advocating for me; I was so doped up on pain medication I would have signed anything).  When I asked him if the surgery would leave scars he let out a smug laugh and said in a condescending voice “Of course it will leave scars!”.  After the surgery, a week or two after, in the follow up appointment he told me I would never be able to have children due to the endometriosis, that I would never be able to get pregnant and if I did by some miracle I would never be able to carry a child to term.  These words, his authoritative words, led to some rather risky and stupid behavior during my early 20s and honestly I am lucky that I survived that period of my life as relatively unscathed as I did.

Fast forward to five years ago.  We had been struggling to bring our second child into the world for years.  Four early miscarriages.  Twice with hopes so high that we finally did it.  Visit after visit to more doctors and being told the miscarriages were “normal” for my “advanced maternal age”. More smugness.  More not being heard when I said, NO! This is not normal.  Not for my body.  Not for my family.  There is something else at play. More being disregarded and dismissed.

Each month was a roller coaster of hopes and prayers and disappointment and tears.  And then the symptoms came back.  More cold sweats while curled in a ball on the bathroom floor.  And now, projectile vomiting added to the mix.  After three months of this, it was my husband who observed this was happening right before my period would start.  And so back to my doctor.  My doctor who had been with me over the last almost two decades.  My doctor who had been with me through cancer scares.  Who treated me.  Who knew that I knew my body better than her.  My doctor who I trusted.

When I told her all the symptoms, and all the fertility struggles, and all the All Of It, she asked if I thought my endometriosis was back.  I sat quietly for a moment and said Maybe?  She sent me home and later that day called me with the contact information of the best gynecological surgeon in Seattle and she had a referral into her for me.  I made and appointment the next day.  And this surgeon, this woman surgeon, listened.  And knew.  And knew that I knew.  And we came up with a plan, including a surgery, to help heal me.

Here’s where consent can get tricky.  My mind consented to this surgery. Wholly and completely.  But my body, my gorgeous amazing body never gave her permission.  And so post-surgery the trauma symptoms, that I have lived with since I was a child, intensified.

Back to my Crisis & Trauma class.  In this class, I was learning how trauma lives in the body.  How we can help trauma move out of our bodies.  What we can do as therapists to help others and ourselves heal from this deep wounding that isn’t only about the stories that run through our minds.  It is also about all the ways our bodies scream out and relive the experiences over and over and over again and how we don’t listen to them.

So, thanks to this class, I was able to piece together that my body was traumatized by the surgery.  That we can actually experience trauma even when we give consent to what is happening to us.  That our body doesn’t always understand things in logical ways.  That our body only knows it is frozen on a table and being sliced open and having metal shoved into it and pieces of itself being cut and torn and burned away.

Our bodies are wise and hold much.  And also, they don’t understand the world or our experiences in the same ways our mind does.  And so, in order to heal trauma, we need both mind and body to be connected and listening to each other.  We need to not try to rationalize what our body is experiencing because the logic and rationale of the body is not the same as that of our mind.

We need to listen and heal.

That class on trauma saved me in many ways.  It showed me how I need to listen, we all need to listen, to the messages of our bodies.  And that our bodies will respond to having its consent disregarded, our consent disregarded in the ways it knows how.

Where this has all left me is in a place of questioning and wanting answers.  I want to know the facts and figures and statistics for women who have been sexually abused or raped and the correlation to “women’s health issues” like endometriosis, ovarian/uterine/cervical cancers.  I want there to be research on the real health impacts of abortion on women.  I want these numbers and this research not to have further reason to take our choices away, but rather so we can have more fully informed consent.

Without all the information, how can any of us ever truly give our consent?

I understand, as well as anyone, that sometimes our mind must make decisions to override the consent of our bodies.  If I hadn’t had that surgery five years ago, and the follow-up medical treatments, I would not have my son today.  I also would still be losing a week every month to debilitating pain and agony.  There are times when logic, when our mind, must prevail.

And in those times, after the consent of our body has been disregarded, we need to come back to her.  Back to our body and reconciling with her.  Back to our body and soothing and healing her.  Back to our body and letting her know in all the ways that in this moment, she is safe. We need to let her know we hear her, we feel her, we respect her, we honor her.

Our minds and bodies and spirits are separate parts of our Self, and they are deeply connected to and intertwined with each other.  This must be remembered.  It must be remembered that we cannot heal our body through the power of our mind only.  We must do other work, body work, to help her heal, to help her release, to help her feel safety and comfort.

By connecting to her, listening to her, hearing our body, then we can heal.  We can heal our own pains and traumas, planned or otherwise.  We can shift from spaces of anxiety and depression (because the health of our body affects the health of our mind) to spaces of calm and peace.  We can feel the interconnectedness within our Self and within our greater world.

xoxo

PS – The first draft of this essay was written a week prior to the presidential election here in the US.  I have debated posting in now, and instead focusing more on the outcome and fallout of the election. However, consent, consent in regards to our bodies as women, hangs in the balance again.  Having claim to our bodies, having total authority over what happens to her is now in question, again.  And so, I have decided to post this, as the first in a series I have written on consent and our bodies, as it does directly relate to all that is again hanging in the balance.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, and oh that warms my heart if you did, you can read more of my writing by subscribing to my weekly love letter right over here.  xoxo

Isabel Abbott and I have locked arms and joined minds and are offering a six month circle unearthing, exploring, dislodging and embracing our consent and boundaries.  If you’d like to learn more and possibly register, click right here.

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Grief, trauma and anger

Each week in the Survivors of Suicide group that I co-facilitate, we have new members. More people whose partners have completed suicide, leaving behind confusion, anger, pain, and of course, grief.

Grief. It is such an uncomfortable emotion. I witness people trying to rush through their grief, trying to stuff it down, trying to push it aside. I am asked over and over when the grief will end.

The truth is, it doesn’t. When someone we love, someone who matters to us, dies or a significant relationship ends, we grieve for the rest of our lives. It isn’t always as raw or overwhelming as it is in the beginning, those early months, that first year. And yet, there can still be moments of overwhelming grief, even years later.

Anger is part of our grief process. Not every time, but more times than not we become furious with the person who died “on us” or who left us. There is no logic to this anger, no reason. It just is. It’s an important part of our grieving. It gives us agency. It protects us from the overwhelm of sadness and pain. It motivates us to do something.

Grief, of course, isn’t the only time we tap into our anger. Our anger rushes forward to both protect and motivate us in a million different ways every day. We know our anger is protecting us from deeper pain when we are focusing that anger directly onto another person, for what they did or didn’t do or say. The anger is whispering to us “I know this hurts too much right now, so let me take care of you.”

Anger gives us motivation to act. It wants us to act. To do. Anger is not a being emotion. It has agency and does not want us sitting in it, stagnant. It wants to flow.

Anger is uncomfortable. It represents the dissonance in us. Our very fibers vibrate when we are angry (ever been so mad you literally shook?). It wants resolution. It demands to be heard.  To be witnessed. For us to take action.

The discomfort of anger, or grief, or sadness or any pain, is something we aren’t so good at allowing. Our culture tells us over and over how we must be happy and comfortable at any cost.

So we stuff. We push aside. We tie down. We ignore. We pursue happiness, ever seeking outside and trying to pretend that the turmoil we feel within does not exist.

This stuffing down can work for awhile. Hell, it can work for a lifetime, quite frankly, at some levels, to some degree. Even so, it causes its own dis-ease and discomfort. We wear a mask and so no one sees us, not even our Self, and we are lonely and distrusting of others. Distrusting because we know we are wearing a mask, because we know we aren’t being honest with others or our Self, so how could anyone else be honest and true?

A few months ago, as I lead a Parenting While Grieving group, I told the two fathers there—one whose wife had died of cancer within the last year, the other whose daughter had died in a bizarre accident a little over a year ago—that their very cores and beings were altered by the deaths of their loved ones. I reminded them that being in this space, this “new normal” is uncomfortable. I also most said, And if I had a magic wand, I would take this discomfort away. I stopped myself, and told them what I almost said and then said, The truth is, if I had a magic wand, I would wave it so that everyone could sit in their discomfort and know they are going to be okay.

This isn’t because I’m a sadist.  I don’t get pleasure in causing others pain.

It is because I firmly believe that the majority of our world’s problems are because we absolutely cannot sit in our discomfort. Because we try to stuff down or medicate or blame our discomfort away. Because we are desperate to fix it. Because we cannot stand the dissonance it is trying to tell us about.

But that dissonance, that discomfort? THAT is what brings about change. THAT is what motivates us to look within. That is what gives us the energy to do different.

In grief we are forced to be different, because generally our grief is because of something that was in many ways out of our control. In anger, we are motivated to do and be different.

When someone says something uncomfortable to us, or even says something uncomfortable in our general vicinity, it is an opportunity for us to become curious as to why it is making us uncomfortable. That discomfort is an invitation to explore our Self, our thoughts, our values. It is a chance to dig into who we are, who we actually are compared to who we want to be, and consciously and intentionally decide if we want to do or be different.

This is not to say that people don’t often project their crap onto us. Many do. AND it is still an opportunity to look within and consciously and intentionally decide if what a person said is theirs or ours. AND especially if there is discomfort on our part, or defensiveness, or anger, it is a chance to really deeply look within and examine what that may be about.

I invite you this week, this month, this year, the rest of your life, to settle into discomfort. To allow it to be. To become curious about it, to try to understand it.

I invite you to allow your grief and anger. To let them motivate you to both look within and to be outwardly different from how you have been before.

I invite you to examine your own defensiveness and wonder where it is coming from, what deeper story about your worth is it tied to, and how you can shift from a place of defense to a place of self-exploration and deeper knowing and empathy.

Will you accept my invitation? Together I know we can do this. xoxo

(Today’s post is a revision to a love letter I sent out in July.  Did you enjoy it? Want to read more? Then I invite you to hop on over and subscribe to my weekly love letters right over here.)

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Fluffy Positive Thinking

I’ve been feeling annoyed lately. Like really annoyed. Hell, let’s just name it: I’m angry. Pissed off even. And yes frustrated, disgusted and annoyed too.

Mostly I’m angry though.

I’ve been doing my thing, my work, guiding people to connect to their own embodied wisdom; to shedding their shoulds; to connecting deeply to their whole Self, the Light and the Shadow. I talk about the ebb and flow of this work and how sometimes we are deep in it and sometimes we aren’t. I discuss the importance of rest and replenishing and nourishing and allowing our Self to be.

I talk a lot. I do my best to model this way of being by doing my best to live it myself. Which means sometimes I’m deep in the work and sometimes I’m not, and sometimes I’m deep in my practices and sometimes I’m not and regardless of where I am in my journey or what I am or am not doing, I try to be gentle with me and to allow the space for me to be right where I am.

I’m not perfect. I fail all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, and enough to remember why I have my practices and so I pick them up again and they drop off and so it goes.

I’ve become acutely aware lately of pithy quotes and fluffy positive thinking and this idea that our thoughts create our world and if we only think the right thoughts then all the things will perfect and great.

And it’s pissing me off. And it’s time I publicly call bullshit.

First of all let’s break (ha! I first typed “breathe”!) down this idea of thinking the right thoughts. What the hell are the “right” thoughts? If I have the “right” thoughts that does mean I can magically prevent a loved one from dying? Myself from having cancer? A hurricane from devasting the lives and homes of people I know and love (and even the ones I don’t)? If I think the right thoughts does that mean that life stops and nothing bad will ever happen to me? Will I never trip and break a bone or get in a car accident or catch the flu?

Because if thinking the “right thoughts” means all that, then please, will someone tell me what the Right Thoughts are? What are the exact words I need to be thinking? What is the exact mantra I need to have on repeat on my mp3 player and posted on post-its all over my house?

I’m sure there are plenty who will jump in and tell me what some of my “Right Thoughts” could be. And I also bet they won’t own that and allow themselves to be held accountable for what happens when I do every thing that lets me think the “right thoughts” and then still something bad happens.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for gratitude. I’m all for appreciating all that we have. I’m all for seeking and seeing beauty in the world. As long as we don’t shut our eyes to the Shadow, the darkness, to the really shitty parts of being human and living life.

As long as we don’t blame people (and not thinking the right thoughts) for things like cancer and accidents and layoffs and hurricanes, then yes, let’s all do look to the light – BUT let’s not forget for one moment that there is Shadow right behind us and sometimes we need to turn around and have a dance or three with it.

As long as we allow ourselves and others to grieve, to sink into despair, to speak out about how hard life/parenting/partnering/living/being can be.

Also long as we don’t offer “at leasts” and “look on the bright sides” and “silver linings” and the one I hate the most “well if this shitty thing didn’t happen then you wouldn’t have the fabulous life you have today!”

As long as we don’t try to fucking constantly fix it. And by it I mean the dark, the Shadow, the shitty parts of our Self and life.

As long as we can allow ourselves and others to be right where we are, whether that’s in our deepest Shadows or our brightest lights.

Then yes, I’m all for practicing gratitude, seeking beauty, appreciating what we have and who we are.

…

 

Something has shifted in me. Perhaps it’s connecting to the women who came before me and all their (righteous) anger that lives in my bones and muscles and womb. Maybe it’s that I’m going out into the world more, expanding my circles and seeing more and more of this Positive Fluffy Thinking because of it. Perhaps it’s because three different people have mentioned the Law of Attraction to me in the last 48 hours and now my head just wants to explode.

Bad things happen to good people.

Your thoughts do not control reality.

Focusing only on the positive and ignoring and stuffing down the negative only causes imbalance and dis-ease within. It’s makes us ill, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

I invite you to step into your anger. To open your throat to your roars.

I invite you to sink into your grief. To open your self to body-wracking wails.

I invite you to stumble into your sadness. To open your being to your most guttural moans and howls.

I invite you to dance with your Shadow. To wrestle with her. To play with her. To fight with her.

I invite you to acknowledge and accept your darkest self. To allow this part of you to be. She is not all of you. And she is part of you. I invite you to open your arms to her, and to weep together for all that could have been, all that was lost and all that will never be.

I invite you to be fully and imperfectly human. To connect with all your parts and pieces. To love them all: your Light and Shadow. To allow your Self to be exactly where you are, right now.

 

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