Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
I've been meaning to start blogging about my childhood sexual abuse for. awhile now, but somehow always I'm always finding something else to do. Spurred by my latest impulse, I was going to spend all available time finding the perfect image (there are some great ones of kintsugi) instead of actually writing. I could do that forever, but I'm just going to start writing instead, ringing one bell at least.
I'm about nine months into recovery now, as my memories started coming in December of 2013. Feeling solidly past the crisis (more on that later), and occupied by a lot that is actually happening in present time, I told my support group this week that I noticed my mind wasn't on recovery and that I'm not actively in healing at the moment. Truth is, it is always happening, but there are waves, lulls, resting places, and rapids.
I will write here not only about sexual abuse and trauma but about the intersect of trauma and madness, the connection between unimaginable wounding and alternative states of consciousness. The childhood experience that left me, in many ways, unable to function for much of my life has given me extraordinary gifts as well, which I am learning to use along the way. What happened to me at age seven was so horrific, and so impossible for my psyche to comprehend, that it packed it away like a dangerous treasure, hidden so deep I didn't know it was there for 32 years. Deep in my psychic subterrain, it created space for itself, like sand creating a pearl, or a foreign body creating an abscess, like water dripping into stone and creating an underground cathedral. As one of my first bodywork teachers said upon touching my abdomen and connecting with my center, "I know, you could go for miles."
That space gives useful capacity for moving energy through bodies, and is effective in places where more tangible clinical techniques just won't do the job for my massage clients. I've used energy work as a tool for almost two decades, and I've always seen it as light, usually golden white, sometimes specific colors. Lately, for the last week or so, what I've started to see instead has been patterns of light against darkness, gold and jewel toned webs of flowers of life and other patterns moving between my hands and places of hurt. This has been interesting and useful in my work, and I didn't take it particularly personally. Once this week I laid on a hand to a tight neck muscle, and though I'm usually in control of what I do energetically, I could not stop what happened. Trying to send energy in, energy just poured out, that flower of life web morphing out of control, funneling endlessly into my hand. Unable to change it, I grounded it into the earth and waited for it to run itself out. As soon as it did and I was able to run some clear light back in, I disconnected.
So there's been a lot moving this week under the surface, and last night it got personal. I've come to realize, through therapy and support group, that my tendency to think I'm under attack relates directly to my sexual abuse and that the minute I feel threatened or uncared for, I think it's a life or death situation and I escalate accordingly. My beloved (partner of thirteen years, partner in recovery who has played a huge role in my healing, and as my closest companion, most frequent trigger of said fears and most frequent recipient of said escalation) made a joke that felt, to me, disconnective and not gentle, and I, having learned some about stopping the cycle of escalation, opted to sleep on the couch.
Along with all this energetic movement, my body has burned with what feels like low grade fever (my temperature is normal) all week. As I lay there on the cool leather, under the ceiling fan at high speed, the heat increased, and my closed eyes started to see, first the patterns I've been seeing, and then those took shape into a room, a recognizable space, which was spinning endlessly, terrifyingly. I saw the room where I was violently raped by my grandfather and two other people, and recognized pieces of the images that surfaced nine months ago, but the images kept morphing and distorting like in a fun house mirror. Terror, sheer terror. Spinning, fevered, heart pounding, nauseous. So afraid.
I realized in group two weeks ago that I've never been able to feel, to experience the fear that must have been present for me at the time. It was so much, so extreme, that even recovering my memory, seeing the "movie" of what happened, I could not allow myself to feel the fear. I noticed this with detached surprise last week, and deduced that maybe that's why I always take things so personally, and think I'm being attacked, because I am putting the fear in relatively safe places to feel, or maybe just that it's leaking out because there's so much of it. I've noticed too that I am less fearful of people than I was a year ago, and less likely to perceive attack or take offense where none was given, and noticing how different (and better) I feel than that person I was a year ago. The fear is moving, and getting less overwhelming, and/ or I am getting more able to hold it. Last night was the first time ever that I have been able to feel it. It probably doesn't sound so good, but it's a huge fucking victory. Alleluia, sister, I say to myself. The fear will not win.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen
I've been meaning to start blogging about my childhood sexual abuse for. awhile now, but somehow always I'm always finding something else to do. Spurred by my latest impulse, I was going to spend all available time finding the perfect image (there are some great ones of kintsugi) instead of actually writing. I could do that forever, but I'm just going to start writing instead, ringing one bell at least.
I'm about nine months into recovery now, as my memories started coming in December of 2013. Feeling solidly past the crisis (more on that later), and occupied by a lot that is actually happening in present time, I told my support group this week that I noticed my mind wasn't on recovery and that I'm not actively in healing at the moment. Truth is, it is always happening, but there are waves, lulls, resting places, and rapids.
I will write here not only about sexual abuse and trauma but about the intersect of trauma and madness, the connection between unimaginable wounding and alternative states of consciousness. The childhood experience that left me, in many ways, unable to function for much of my life has given me extraordinary gifts as well, which I am learning to use along the way. What happened to me at age seven was so horrific, and so impossible for my psyche to comprehend, that it packed it away like a dangerous treasure, hidden so deep I didn't know it was there for 32 years. Deep in my psychic subterrain, it created space for itself, like sand creating a pearl, or a foreign body creating an abscess, like water dripping into stone and creating an underground cathedral. As one of my first bodywork teachers said upon touching my abdomen and connecting with my center, "I know, you could go for miles."
That space gives useful capacity for moving energy through bodies, and is effective in places where more tangible clinical techniques just won't do the job for my massage clients. I've used energy work as a tool for almost two decades, and I've always seen it as light, usually golden white, sometimes specific colors. Lately, for the last week or so, what I've started to see instead has been patterns of light against darkness, gold and jewel toned webs of flowers of life and other patterns moving between my hands and places of hurt. This has been interesting and useful in my work, and I didn't take it particularly personally. Once this week I laid on a hand to a tight neck muscle, and though I'm usually in control of what I do energetically, I could not stop what happened. Trying to send energy in, energy just poured out, that flower of life web morphing out of control, funneling endlessly into my hand. Unable to change it, I grounded it into the earth and waited for it to run itself out. As soon as it did and I was able to run some clear light back in, I disconnected.
So there's been a lot moving this week under the surface, and last night it got personal. I've come to realize, through therapy and support group, that my tendency to think I'm under attack relates directly to my sexual abuse and that the minute I feel threatened or uncared for, I think it's a life or death situation and I escalate accordingly. My beloved (partner of thirteen years, partner in recovery who has played a huge role in my healing, and as my closest companion, most frequent trigger of said fears and most frequent recipient of said escalation) made a joke that felt, to me, disconnective and not gentle, and I, having learned some about stopping the cycle of escalation, opted to sleep on the couch.
Along with all this energetic movement, my body has burned with what feels like low grade fever (my temperature is normal) all week. As I lay there on the cool leather, under the ceiling fan at high speed, the heat increased, and my closed eyes started to see, first the patterns I've been seeing, and then those took shape into a room, a recognizable space, which was spinning endlessly, terrifyingly. I saw the room where I was violently raped by my grandfather and two other people, and recognized pieces of the images that surfaced nine months ago, but the images kept morphing and distorting like in a fun house mirror. Terror, sheer terror. Spinning, fevered, heart pounding, nauseous. So afraid.
I realized in group two weeks ago that I've never been able to feel, to experience the fear that must have been present for me at the time. It was so much, so extreme, that even recovering my memory, seeing the "movie" of what happened, I could not allow myself to feel the fear. I noticed this with detached surprise last week, and deduced that maybe that's why I always take things so personally, and think I'm being attacked, because I am putting the fear in relatively safe places to feel, or maybe just that it's leaking out because there's so much of it. I've noticed too that I am less fearful of people than I was a year ago, and less likely to perceive attack or take offense where none was given, and noticing how different (and better) I feel than that person I was a year ago. The fear is moving, and getting less overwhelming, and/ or I am getting more able to hold it. Last night was the first time ever that I have been able to feel it. It probably doesn't sound so good, but it's a huge fucking victory. Alleluia, sister, I say to myself. The fear will not win.