IMPERFECT Lady

Holding it all Inside.

I didn't catch the speakers name, but heard her on Sirius radio say, "trauma is experienced in the right brain and stays there until you express it.  The left brain categorizes our experiences and it needs to be expressed or it gets left on the right with no way out."

I had never heard trauma explained quite this way.  I had looked at trauma being felt in the body, but I hadn't considered the brain, except to note that my category lady was filing things in a haphazard way.  And actually, she was doing a fairly good job without the experiences noted of abuse.

When you connect the trauma and file them in correct categories, you then get a complete picture of reality. 

As a child, my trauma was not allowed to be expressed or let out of the right brain...so there was a divide between what the left brain was saying and what the right brain was holding on to.

I believe that while the right brain is holding on to trauma, it leave little room for creative tasks, or space for love, peace or joy. The overall humming of trauma, the screaming fear muffles out the music of our souls.

When my niece spoke up, she opened a pathway to my left brain, allowing the trauma to escape my right brain. It started as a small trickle, but a waterfall of expressions flowed forth.  In a short amount of time, my trauma which had been stuffed in my right brain for 40 years finally made connections with my left brain.

It is quite incredible how the two sides are designed to work together and when the right side holds back expressions how frozen you become or numb and unexpressive in all areas.

When Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor spoke of the right and left brains, she wasn't speaking of childhood sexual abuse, so I failed to understand the meaning of what happens when traumatic emotions get lodged inside and have no way out.

Dr. Jill did say that the duties of the left brain is to weave the most plausible story with the least amount of information.  What I hadn't considered is how a story is written minus expressed emotions.

It was shocking to be me as the first trickles of traumatic expression flowed forth, for it was very alarming in the velocity and strength, the years seemed to have added volume and force...or perhaps it was exactly as a 6 or 7 year old would have felt it at the time of the original event.

Incredibly horrific and wildly freeing at the same time.  Like riding a wild horse yet fully in control.  Experiencing traumatic emotions, riding their waves to freedom...expressing and releasing myself from the years of holding it all inside. 

 

 

Freedom

Martha Beck writes in Leaving the Saints,

"My defection from Mormonism changed me in the same way Adam's disability did: it became an open-ended tragedy that I wouldn't give up for anything in the universe. (not even my own planet) because it helps me let go of beliefs that had damaged my soul.  An erswhile friend of mine in the Oak Hills Forth Ward once said he thought the only prayer we offer spontaneously is "Why am I in pain?"  Knowing that I am considered wicked and perhaps insane by people that I love is so painful that it continually drives me to this prayer, drives me to seek sustenance even more stable and powerful than human acceptance and company.  Please, Please, Please, Please..."

"When I persist in this prayer, sooner or later (the more I practice the more it becomes "sooner") something wonderful happens.  My status as an untouchable feels so terrible that something deep inside me finally lets go of it, of all identity, of all attempts to prove or please or control anyone.  At that moment, I rediscover the stillness in my own heart of hearts.  Then I feel its connection to the Stillness all around me, the gorgeous, blissful Stillness that holds every heart, every mind, every tree and rock in its infinitely loving embrace."

"I am here. Always.  I am always right here."

"And it is, it is, right here, nearer than near: connection, comfort, safety, belonging.  Home.  Lao-Tzu said, "The master can travel all day without ever leaving home," and while I'm no master, I have returned home frequently enough to know he was right.  I'm starting to believe that my homing instincts will guide me back anytime I consult it, from anywhere in creation.  I think that may be the reason for this whole terrifying excruciating mortal existence, to wander away from home, then find your way back, so many times we learn from our toes up that no matter how far afield we may stray, we can always, always, always get there from here."

Martha and I both found that outside of the family and church community there lies a new home.  One that resides inside of us...without that I know I would have certainly died.

She writes about her new path..."I was teaching career development, helping students create successful lives. But to me, that didn't neccessarily mean huge salaries and a Donald Trump social profile.  It meant learning to go home and stay there, in that place where joy is not dependent on wealth or image, and even the deepest sorrow is a guide toward healing and happiness.  During my years in Utah, through all those days of spiritual trial and effort, all those nights of psychological struggle, I'd developed a repertoire of techniques that helped me do this.  In Phoenix, I began teaching these techniques to my students."

"You'll know when you're in the wrong job interview," I'd say during a lecture, "because the pit of your stomach will tell you to get out. Your first priority should be stillness, attention to what you really know and what your really feel.  Don't 'network' into meaningless relationshiops with colleagues who bore you; find the people who can make you laugh all night, turn on the lights of your heart and mind. Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it's not a safe bet, even if it looks like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you're wrong or bad or crazy."

"What I was really tellng them was how to be a Leaf in the Stream, though of course I never  called it that.  Nor did I quote Jesus' question, "What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  I rarely used Buddhist terms like awakening or right action. But all these concepts, all the things I'd learned in my search for God, drove every piece of advice I gave my students."

"I also started writing books and articles, on many topics but with only one theme, Dante's theme: the journey through the inferno as the road to heaven.  Paradise lost and found."

"In my case, the inferno-road led through Provo, Utah, the well-meaning bureaucracy of Mormonism, the community of Saints.  Yours probably passes through some other territory, but we all make the same trip.  We believe without question almost everything we learn as children, stumble into the many potholes and pitfalls that mar any human endeavor, stagger around blindly in pain and outrage, then slowly remember to pay attention, to listen for the Silence, look for the Light, feel for the tenderness that brings both vulnerability to wounds and communion with the force that heals them.  Don't worry about losing your way, I tell my clients.  If you do, pain will remind you to find your path again.  Joy will let you know when you are back on it."

"I still make the journey every day, which is why I wrote this book. Many people, especially I myself, have asked me repeatedly why I'd do such a thing.  I hate conflict, have an enormous fear of being disbelieved, and remember just enough of the old-fashioned Morman temple ceremony to be paranoid about lethal reprisal from the lunatic fringe of my father's fan base ("and whether they will slay me, I know not..."). But much as I dread the consequences of openness, I know the consequences of secrecy are worse.  I've read research that indicates that people who hide a history of traumatic experience live shorter lives, less healthy, less happy lives than those who tell their stories. I know, at a much deeper level, what keeping secrets did to me, and even more to my father. He did more than die for is religion; he gave it his life.  He almost gave it mine.  The memory of that is awful it leads me down Dante's road many times every day and each time, the awfulness makes me keep going, all the way through hell and back to paradise."

"Once I am home again, I know that my father's true self is not the same man who lied and covered up and sacrificed his children's happiness for his religion..."

"Even if I never know the explanation behind what happened to me as a child, I do know this for sure; Whether my father had the freedom to choose his thoughts and actions, I do.  I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions,free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss,free to seek the way home until I find it."

"All the great religions I have studied, including Mormonism, hold that this irrevocable soul-deep liberty is the key to the end of suffering and the beginning of joy.  The Buddha said that just as you can recognize seawater because it will always taste of salt, you can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.  About a year after I discovered I'd become a life coach, I stumbled across a Buddhist prayer that felt so true to me it almost stopped my heart.  The last section goes like this:

"As long as space endures,

And as long as sentient

beings exist,

May I also abide,

That I may heal my heart

The miseries of the world."

"Of course I am not saying I can fulfill the promise of the prayer, only that I want to die trying.  Maybe I already have died trying, once or twice."   Martha

 

What I recognize most in the similarities between Martha and I, was the cost of speaking out and finding our own inner peace...and how we will repeatedly go back to the fire if we feel we can stop the misery in another, by speaking the truth.  We are willing to die again and again...in order to have freedom.

Recognize the Real Me.

I wonder why it is so hard to look objectively at your self, why it is so hard to see that which you are. Doesn't it seem literally impossible to overlook yourself while you are being yourself?  Why is it that we can't feel or sense our own powerful energy and it is running within our bodies? 

 

What I believe to be true is that I was taught to not pay attention to my feelings, to disregard the pulsing emotions, to hide or pay no attention the signals of my body.

 

In fact, the body was so full of sin, just disregard it completely, or pray hard that you can overcome ITS urges.

 

I was taught to become the enemy of my body and I did such a wonderful job, I created a life separated from my body.

 

I never spoke of my bodies signals, the fear that raged or the rage and anger and fear or injustices, the overwhelming immobility of choice, I used my body but never truthfully connected to it.  Well not in words or actions.

I had a life and my body came along for the ride, but we were each other's enemies.

 

Its needs and mine were at odds.

 

What I discovered is that the signals of fear that my body put forth matched the reality of my childhood, compared to the actions that I had displayed.  I acted like nothing had happened...that my father's rape hadn't occurred.  My body however, never, not once forgot. Each and every time I was in his presence, I felt uneasy...pushed back, like an invisible wall arose.

 

Yet, my actions showed none of that happening in reality.  I pretended to pretend to pretend that all was okay.

 

What strikes me so is how I was able to NOT join with my body, but to live a life once removed.  That my outward display shown none of the signs from within. 

 

Like a bad dashboard, all my readings were false.

 

While I understand in order to survive, I had to have a false dashboard, it now seems totally crazy.  People didn't know me, all they really knew was the false readings I was displaying.  But, underneath a whole different story waited to be told.

 

The story of the body.  Its emotions and feelings are rarely displayed accurately on people's dashboards, instead we say Yes when we mean No.  We feel its unkind to speak what we feel, not realizing we are disowning our own bodies...creating a chasm that we may or may not get back across.

 

This space between what we feel and what we say widens each time we speak against our feelings or act in opposition to what we feel. 

 

My life and my truth were an ocean apart.

 

The life I was living in comparison to what I was feeling were two distinct drawings...and my feeling inside that I ignored carried my truth...and the false dashboard I presented out of 'kindness' crashed to the ground, for there was nothing holding it up but pretend.

Pretending that I had different emotions than I did.

Pretending that I was okay, alright, fine, perfect...

Pretending overshadowed my truth...until I couldn't recognize the real me. 

 

(As Alice Miller's book states, "The Body Never Lies.)

 

Quiet Strength of Kindness

I watched my daughter with Finn, how gentle and quiet her voice was and how he listened and followed her lead.  He has an ear infection in both ears and needs twice daily drops. 

I was prepared for a struggle of holding him down and wrestling to get a few drops in.

The first few times we did have two people...but he showed us quickly that one person was enough.  One gentle quiet speaking trusting loving person...was all that he needed.

He isn't happy or eager, but resigned.  We can't know if he intuitively knows this is helping his ears or is he simply following what his soft spoken master is telling him...

I have been given the gift of watching her mother him with soft hands and a calm voice of love and steady kindness.

My unnatural instinct has been the opposite. 

Driven by fear and out of control inside...I mothered without the quiet strength of kindness.

The Majority Vote.

Martha Beck writes in "Leaving the Saints"..... After a family therapy session where Martha  remained the one lone family member willing to see abuse.." I could see that my siblings' truth, as well as that of all other Latter-Day Saints, would always be based on group consensus.  I read psychology tests about the effects of socialization on perception, pondered the famous experiments by Solomon Asch that demonstrated how subjects who didn't know they were being tested changed their perceptions in order to agree with other people. Shown two lines, one long, one short, in the company of people who all claimed that the lines were of equal length, the naive subjects almost always agreed with the majority, rather than the evidence of their own senses.  They not only said that the lines were equal; they often came to actually SEE them as being equal." What is alarming and comforting at the same time, is that my family isn't any different from the test folks, who automatically side with the majority. That very few will use the evidence of their senses and stand alone. She also wrote about losing her family, " It would have been less painful to lose my family to war or natural disaster; less shame, less confusion, less personalized energy.   I did lose them you see.  I've never really been back. Though there isn't an official "no contact" rule between us, my siblings and I stopped most communication after that bloody battle.  I hear from other relatives that I am the black sheep now, the traitor to our family's code, the enemy of every thing we once stood for together...." And the last few lines that caught my attention..."Sometimes I think there is not enough room in the Universe for the sorrow of that exile." Being exiled from your family for going against the majority vote.

New Mitten Tree Lady...

Let's see if I can get the Lady standing upright....

Playing With Art

This picture was taken with the ipad, the ipad that I am shipping back to Apple tomorrow. It just didn't work in sending stuff out to the internet, but was perfect for receiving.

The lighting wasn't the best, but thought I would try and see if this works. I had been looking for a way to post pictures....

Let's see if this works.

Your Life Inside Out.

Chapter 24, Leaving the Saints, by Martha Beck.   "My hardest labor, however, happened in my head and heart as I made the transition in my spiritual quest from Camel to Lion.  This phase of inner change involves one of the most dramatic paradigm shifts in the human psychology repertoire: the move from what psychologists call an "exogenous locus of control" to an "endogenous locus of control."  It means the process of dropping one's dependency on external structures and establishing a sort of moral guidance system that comes from within." "I'd spent the better part of three years trusting external structures and organizations, keeping every rule of every spiritual discipline I could imagine, quieting my own resistance, aiming for total obedience and humility. But continuing to do this would mean protecting the Mormon Church by keeping a dark secret, which would isolate me in a life of smothered rage and hopelessness.  It felt wrong.  I was in what felt like a no-win situation: my internal moral system was directly at odds with my family, community, my ancestral religion." "Something a bit like this happened to me once before, when I'd rejected the advice of every obstetrician and adviser at Harvard by deciding not to end the pregnancy that later produced Adam.  That time, however, I'd known in the back of my mind that millions of Mormons, including my natal family, would agree with my decision, This time, the child I wanted to defend was my own five-year-old self, someone who no longer existed except in my memory, and the people I would offend were my flesh and blood, my ward family, my brothers and sisters and my Brothers and Sisters." "The Chinese have a phrase to describe the confusion that accompanies the change of dynasties: "when the earth turns over heaven."  I kept remembering this phrase as I slogged through my days, watching everything I 'd thought solid and reliable fall into the sky,while unexpected new beliefs appeared in parts of my mind and heart I had thought were empty space.  I diapered my babies, taught my classes, wrote my dissertation with the dull mechanical effort, robotic on the outside, tumultuous within..." What I love most is that there is actually a psychological term for transitioning control from the outside to within.  I wonder if they note that you will be going against your family of origin, IF they too chose not to transition control to within, that if you structured your life to fit a certain religion, that too will drop away?   Just interesting to be a text book example, but knowing the personal details of this switch. I had intuitively called this, "Living Inside Out." And that is exactly the street version of endogenous. You literally will be turning your life inside out.

I am now a stranger...

Being a living ghost as I bump into my old life still catches me off guard. I am restrained by inner feelings and emotions; the easy flow of contact is no longer possible. Even a Hi is loaded down with years of silence, confusion and pain.  The old days and estrangement are at odds. So, I walked by and she never looked up.   The death of our old relationship stands and a new re-birth hasn't been born... I, a ghost of yesterday, my old life, the co-dependency and dysfunction.  She still very much alive there...happy. We both know it and feel it.  We are more comfortable apart than together, for we no longer match, our ideas, our thoughts and our actions no longer fitting in that old comfortable 'family' way. Sisters of estrangement. Old familiars now awkward encounters... I see my old self and barely recognize her...she sees the new me and I am now a stranger.  

Energy and Feeling Good

Slowly but surely my physical body has been pushed to the far reaches of my life, again.  Well, I notice it when it creaks and aches and feels ouchy, when my neck and jaw are tense and in pain, when my middle is so expanded that I feel bundled up in a winter coat...and there is a faint feeble calling of the yoga mat. I am not sure why I wait for physical discomfort, for loathing and self recriminations, but that seems to be the way. That when I am on a winning streak, like 340 plus days of yoga, I lose the 'desire' or whatever that is. It seems like all kinds of things came rushing in or crowding over My Time...that while  tended this or that, I forgot to leave time, space, energy, Or I forgot to say no more than yes and slowly 'other' things overwhelmed my space. I have spent tons of hours on my inner awareness and self control, self freedom, etc. But I keep a healthy distance from the body's needs. My mind and soul feel at peace in a very open liberal place....and yet my body still feels in prison at times.   Over-run by old habits.   Habits that seem not of mind or spirit, but just residual affects from my old life. In fact my outside (body) where my spirit and mind live needs to catch up with the inner work. Maybe it is time to put the same intensity and focus on flipping my body. My body is the odd man out.  It is not free. It is not at peace. My body can't do a thing without me setting the intentions, putting IT on the list, at the top and finding ways to serve it and give it the same sacred intensity that I gave my inner landscape. Time to clean up my outer body act...finding new alternate habits that will bring in energy instead of lowering it. I un-naturally turn  away from my body. Somehow I can do this when forced, but it isn't natural for me to be kind and desire good things and wanting to serve my body energy lifters...but I am more natural at neglect. It is like I am in control of neglect and out of control for goodness. And my body still tries its best to deliver all that I ask of it, but with hurdles and speed bumps.... with me fighting it each step of the way. I fight doing yoga and eating foods that deliver good energy and instead dump in sweets and foods that drain me.   Maybe it is time to switch the fight around. To fight for energy and feeling good.