Beyond Language

I am increasingly invested in articulating a wider truth about sexual violence recovery – that it is not overnight, and it might be something we negotiate for life – not because I want to overwhelm or intimidate survivors, but rather to affirm and bring to the surface what so many of us already know to be true from our own experience. I share because resourcing more and more survivors with tools, practices, rituals, healers and possibilities for resilience that are not fixed but are ever-evolving, allows them become their own best expert - the authority on themselves and their lives. Through this simultaneously organic and intentional process they may be empowered to pave their own way, to recognize they are unique yet not alone in this dynamic struggle, and to fully own through post-trauma embodiment, their own truth about trauma, grief and pain. Having felt so much beyond what words alone can measure, we have glimpsed the self beyond ourself, the immeasurable breadth of who we are, the knowing that understands the unknown, and it seeps now – into our cells, our dreams and our laughter. I have highlighted four healing arts practices that have supported my journey to heal after sexual violence, acupuncture, yoga, massage and art therapy, in the hopes that survivors will have a clearer understanding of how these techniques might help them. Importantly, since talking about trauma can be triggering, survivors can feel confidence that these methods do not require having to tell their story in order to deliver healing and thereby have more options available to them.

Read more here. 

Travel and the Inner Compass of Healing Trauma

I spent a few years of my life working abroad and while that time held some of the most exhilarating experiences I’ve known, it also contained long phases of loneliness, confusion and an overwhelming doubt about where my path would lead. I became accustomed to the highs and the lows of my day to day, and when I was in the space between – not entirely inspired, not totally lost, I was in a bit of a dull fog. It was during those plateaus in my experience that I would long for then familiarity of home – but where was home? My mind would be restless, unable to fully land in my body – leaving a sense of disconnect from myself and the surrounding environment. Everything and everyone would become strange, and I would begin to feel a rising vulnerability much like a still open wound.

The new world perspective I was catalyzed into after sexual violence, the recovery and re-organization of the pieces of my life afterwards, reminds me of the roller coaster ride of my voyages abroad. Of course, the impact of trauma itself can stir up such a sense of foreignness both with yourself and the world around you – language escapes you, memory is out of order, things are not as they seemed. You sit on life’s periphery looking from the outside in, never finding connection through the images and faces around you and no longer sensing it on your own.

For someone who hasn’t both traveled extensively (or who hasn’t felt themselves a outsider in a world where others seemingly feel at home) and survived sexual violence, my sense that the two experiences are in some ways quite parallel may feel like an exaggeration. Yet, as a survivor, I look to any revelations I gain, however slight – on my yoga mat, in the woods, while playing a keyboard, from my dreams – and seek to weave them into the bigger picture of how I can experience and understand the fullness of my Self. I believe that my daily, seasonal and annual witnessing of the ongoing cycles of love and loss can teach me humility, compassion and strengthen my courage to keep going. When a metaphor for healing emerges, I fully dive in.

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When the Rape Myth is Your Reality

After 11 years of researching, teaching and listening to private testimonies about sexual violence, I have heard the majority of the societal stereotypes (rape myths) that silence survivors’ stories and minimize the depth of these traumatic experiences. Our national denial of the truth of this interpersonal trauma creates a false sense of safety that we use like a shield to cover our ultimate insecurity – which is that sexual violence can happen to any of us. Believe me, the unwillingness to face the reality of our fear is not shocking, there are many days I wish I could buffer my brain from the images that lurk just beneath the humble courage of this self-identified survivor. Still, there exists no phrase we can methodically repeat to ourselves, no drink, no drug, no physical exercise, no new adventure, and no relationship that can actually erase the memory of sexual trauma.

If we are lucky, we learn over a lifetime how to establish enough grounding within ourselves through the utilization of healing techniques that specifically serve us, so that we can develop the confidence to practice not resisting such memory and let what must emerge to finally move through and out of us. Whether our memories surface through emotions, through subtle and not-so-subtle physical sensations or through our dreams, we can begin to carefully explore how to allow, and ultimately, how to re-direct our pain into the life-force that cultivates the healing of a heart that is equally supple and strong. That inner power can feel like a flickering flame on a cool summer night – occasionally bold, clean, curved edges and extending upwards and outwards with the single purpose of enlightening the surrounding space. Often though, that flame is wavering, hanging on, and just about to burn out until the wind settles and it expands into and beyond its original fullness once again. That kind, quieting of the weather catalyzes the next wave of our relief.

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Orienting Towards a New Relationship with Time After Sexual Trauma

How does sexual violence change you? Can we actually quantify an impact that is ongoing? How do you measure injuries that move and change like tides, ebbing and flowing nearer and further from the shoreline of your pain? Does time truly heal all wounds and how does trauma change time? What part of our pain is born in the past, shadows our present and trails us into our future? What, if any, part of our human spirit transcends time after trauma?

Our society constantly quantifies the movement of time, always forward on the clock, the inevitable turning of the pages on our calendar – dates, anniversaries, appointments, beginnings and endings – always relating to time. As survivors of sexual violence, times and dates can concurrently be intensely significant – looming ahead and overwhelming our thinking, while at other times, lost in our attempt to outrun the immediacy of the moment with our past tracking not too far behind – the idea of time is irrelevant, intangible and inconvenient. Ultimately, however, our nature as humans causes us and those involved with us before, and particularly, those who remain involved after sexual violence, to look to time as an indicator of where we should be in our recovery.

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Reintegrating the Body, Mind and Spirt After Sexual Violence

The journey to heal after sexual violence is not a sprint and it is not a marathon—unlike other wounds, the ones of the spirit can linger for a lifetime. For many survivors healing is an ongoing practice, with ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and can be both exhausting and exhilarating at different points along the way…Based on my experience, I believe the benefits of working to integrate mind, body and spirit after sexual trauma through holistic healing arts remain unparalleled. Coming back into the body, connecting with one’s spirit, and addressing healing on deep, non-verbal and even energetic levels can also feel more accessible and meaningful to some survivors or may facilitate their moving through or towards the next ‘season’ of their healing journey.

As trauma has been known to disrupt the parts of the brain associated with language and speech, approaching healing through the body and spirit may be a more effective intervention for some. Not to mention the fact that words alone cannot quantify the magnitude of such an experience. I have felt and I have witnessed how simply drawing the mind into the sensation of the body, the feeling of the heart, the awareness of the natural rhythm of the breath, can create an invaluable shift or insight for a survivor. When you survive sexual violence, an event that takes many people out of their body, the healing arts reveal and return the gift of embodiment, which serves as an anchor for self-preservation.

Read more here.