My Fierce Femme Sister Of My Heart once posed a question in a presentation she was giving “How do we transmute our rage so that it doesn’t kill us?” Suppressing it doesn’t work. Denying it doesn’t work. Medicating it doesn’t work. I haven’t consciously tried all of those methods, but examples of them not working abound. So I try to vomit my grief & my rage as often as I can. It’s seemingly endless so I don’t know that I’ll ever get it all out, but I know I don’t want to live with it stoppered inside me growing & festering.
Read MoreSo recently I’ve been saying “Good night” when I go about my nightly errands (so much cooler at night, so I do all of my non-produce shopping & fresh meal acquisition after dark). And I noticed how challenging it was to feel like I was saying “Hello”, rather than “Goodbye”. When I let myself feel it, I noticed that “Goodbye” invokes a closing of my heart energy, a preparing to sever a connection. So instead of feeling open to people as I greeted them in the evening, I was actually closed off to them & their energy. I’d never noticed it before because it’s so subconscious that I didn’t notice what was happening in my heart, in my energetic connection with the humans around me.
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I believe that "healing from trauma" is about regaining access to those parts of you that shut down in order to cope, and/or the things that trauma took away from you. Sometimes the reclaiming doesn't work for you, but it's still important to try. What are the things that your trauma(s) took from you? Are you perhaps unconsciously already reclaiming them? If not, what are small things that you could reclaim?
Read MoreI learned so many things at her bedside that inform my work as a healer. It was at her bedside that I learned how to set a sacred container that engages all the senses no matter whether or not all the senses are perceptible to observers. It was at her bedside that I learned how much loving touch can communicate, absent of words. It was at her bedside that I learned how to be present with intention & love while knowing I was essentially powerless to affect the outcome.
Read MoreIn situations of peril, the body has one goal: survive. Whatever the decision your body made, it was an informed decision. Whatever ultimately happened, whether your rapist was foiled or succeeded in their attempt to rape you; your body was still doing it's job the best way it knew how with all the tools it had at its disposal.
Read MoreTrauma is what happens to a body & mind that survives. Trauma changes us, literally changes our brains: a brain that went through a traumatic incident works differently than a brain that has not. And trauma changes our body in many ways. Whether there are visible scars or not, there are places on our body that hold memories/images/flashbacks/pieces/feelings of the event(s) that changed us.
Read MoreBut still, the truth hidden in my body was that I started fucking men again not because I authentically desired them, but in some kind of unconscious wish to please my dead mother. And my body carried a lot of sadness about it.
Read MoreDe-centering the race/ethnicity & sexual preference/orientation of the victims is a form of erasure. Ignoring that queer & trans POC are more likely to be victims of violence allows that violence to continue.
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