It is brave to stay in my body, it is wise sometimes to leave it

If you are someone who struggles to stay in your body.
If you are someone who has leaned into dissociation as a survival strategy.
If you are someone who struggles to connect with the sensations and language of your body.
If you are someone who encounters deep pain when you touch into your bodyscape so it’s like: okay, why the heck would I even go there?
If you are someone who has been should on to stay with your body as if it’s easy.
If you are someone who has been admonished and shamed for shutting down, numbing out or disconnecting from parts of your body.

This love note is for you.

There is wisdom in living in our body. In embodying the skin and bones, the muscle and cells - the nervous system that works towards equilibrium and survival in any way possible.

There is wisdom in leaving our body. In disconnection, in dissociation, in numbness and avoidance and not being ready to go there.

If you are someone who has experienced or experiences chronic pain, chronic illness, or traumatic experiences, the body might not always feel like a safe place to be. It might not feel like a thing we can trust. It might be a place that betrayal has happened, or is happening. We might feel or have felt this from the hands of someone/thing else, or in the disappointment we may feel about our own body and its processes and how they impact us and our lives.

I want to say that this (this being whatever you feel, whether I have named it or not) is so fucking valid.

It makes sense if connecting with our bodies is hard. It can be wise to move slowly. It can be helpful to work with someone who gets that bodybased approaches might be super challenging and that it’s not a one-and-done deal. It can be affirming for someone to say:

Look at you. Look at the ways you have survived.
Look at the ways you are surviving.
And before we try to change a thing —
Let’s start with honoring the hell out of that.

Shall we?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Jess

P.S. I am over the moon to be sharing so much about bodies, embodiment, pain, the nervous system and trauma with y’all! Like, really and truly. ❀ Tending to Chronic Pain, a 4 week journey for meeting our pain & our selves with growing compassion is opening soon. Click here to join the waitlist!

Sometimes the things that happened to us are unspeakable but often our body knows the words

Sometimes the things that happened to us are unspeakable but often our body knows the words, holds the experience, makes muscle memory of the truth. Somatic knowing and memories are valid, even without the traditional narrative that so many expect.

In a world that doesn’t make space for survivors’ stories and truth, the body can be testament. The body can be holy ground of hot knowing and surefire knowledge.

And as humans with brains in a society that gaslights, dismisses, minimizes and pathologizes, even the brilliance of our body might come into question from our brain from time to time.

Perhaps our body has a knowing that doesn’t pour itself into 26 letters and words. Perhaps our body speaks to us through symptoms, symbols and dreams, whatever it takes to unleash the truth and dare (or hope) to be heard. However your body expresses its held experiences, this truth, your truth, is believed and held here. So are you.

What is a Traumaversary?

If you have ever experienced strange (or deeply familiar) bodily sensations, flashbacks, returns to old coping strategies, and waves of grief and sadness (among many other possibilities) before the anniversary of a traumatic event rolled around - you might have experienced a natural response to a traumaversary.

Traumaversaries are the anniversaries of traumatic events, and these times can be so tender and potent. A lot can emerge, including things we might have felt “done with.” It’s natural to experience flashbacks, big feelings, old coping strategies, and physical and somatic sensations.

Our body and being can remember the timing of a past traumatic event. Just as certain smells and sounds can trigger a trauma response, certain days, times of year, and holidays might bring up residual trauma and re-experiencing.

Sometimes, our being remembers concurrently with our brain, and we know we are in the thick of a traumaversary. At other times, we might not consciously realize what is happening. This can feel especially confusing and overwhelming, as the responses we are experiencing can seemingly come out of nowhere.

Everyone’s experience with traumaversaries is as unique as their being and as their traumatic experiences. And there are some common threads. If you feel alone in the struggle of making it through traumaversaries, know that many survivors struggle silently, or with those closest to them.

Traumaversaries have a tender place in my heart, and so do all of you.

In the coming week, I’m going to be sharing more about traumaversaries and offering some support around navigating them, including my upcoming guide - Tending To Traumaversaries. This offering comes from a very soft and fierce place in my heart. As often happens, I am offering you the support I have needed myself.

I hope that even if this offering isn’t right for you at this time, these posts feel supportive of your healing and can help remind you that no matter how lonely it can be as a survivor, we are never alone.

And if this does sound like something you are needing, click here to learn more. I’d love to offer up a bit of support.

Love and care to you all,

Jess

I honor your survival

I honor your survival.
I believe your survival.
I am in awe of your survival.
I support your survival.
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I know that the word “survival” is past tense and sometimes you are still surviving.
I know there aren’t enough strong supports and soft places.
I know it can feel incredibly alone and too fucking hard and painfully endless.
I know it is tiring. So so tiring.
I see you keeping going.
I see you stopping to rest.
I see you itchy and struggling to pause, to receive rest.
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I honor and hold and bow to your experience. To the late nights and bitter resentment and fearful holding. To the adaptive coping mechanisms you needed and wish you didn’t need any longer. To the weariness that pulls on your heartsleeves. To feeling misunderstood and out of place, where is my place, where is my story’s place? To all it takes to survive, to keep surviving - I honor and hold and bow to all of that.

if your body was trespassed

content warning: sexual assault. please take care of yourself before, during and after if you decide to read.

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If things have happened to you. If Bad Things have happened to you. If fingers went somewhere without first asking, if fingers stayed even if you asked them not to, if it was something that wasn’t a finger, which doesn’t make it better or worse- just different. If you were young, if you were 32, if you were in a relationship, if you were on a date, if you were the baby or child someone was supposed to be protecting. If you can’t remember but your body does. If you remember all of these details that keep coming back to you, hauntingly: your noodly body on the hood of the car by the side of the road on the mountain and he’s saying: there’s a car coming, look like you’re alive.

If there’s two cars coming. If you were moaning. If you were split in two pieces, one ghost of you beside yourself (is this where the expression comes from- beside yourself?) and you in your body enough to get through it. If part of you (seemed? was? acted?) into it and part of you felt trespassed. If you didn’t have time to feel anything because you were calculating How To Keep Yourself Safe. If Keeping Yourself Safe should never have been your job.

If when it’s over (except it’s never really over, it lingers like campfire smoke still on you) you are blaming yourself, wondering why you put yourself in that position. If you know you didn’t put yourself in that position, a Bad Thing happened To You, but the thoughts still keep coming. If you think, I’m too old for this, as if there’s an age at which it’s acceptable, because there is not. If you were still seeing the person who was sweet and not right for you but never would have raped you. If you were raped, or just violated. If “just” doesn’t exist in this scenario.

If you drank so much because he kept handing you the klean kanteen. If you being drunker than him was part of the plan. If you had said something stronger like “what the fuck are you doing? why are you doing this?” (those words never left the inside of you and you imagine them there- a scream in a room with no one to listen, a piece of tropical fruit, sickly-sweet-rotting) what would he have done. If he asks, did I do something wrong. If he says, should we call it a night. If you pushed him off the side of the mountain.

If you drive him home. If you count the miles on your maps app. If you make the appropriate amount of small talk. If you are shivering but not from the cold. If, for better or worse (worse, worse, worse), your body knows how to survive this. If he across-the-car hugs you goodbye and hopes you had a good time, did you have a good time. If he keeps asking unanswerable questions. If the dissonance just sits there like sweat coming off his skin.

If you sob into your sheets. If a shower washes nothing clean. If while you lather soap you remember his hands and your body freezes, wilts. If you got through it, and you’re tired of getting through things. If you tell your friend you felt relatively safe. If he assaulted you, so how safe were you really. If you let yourself cry for the places he touched, the deeper places this touches. If your friend asks, how did you survive the drive home. If it’s the same way you’ve survived everything else.

if things are dying, let them

If things are dying, let them. A hand in hand at the bedside and wounded wailing, let it. Grief that carves through you like a river with teeth, let it. A busy mind grasping to make sense of this wieldly liminal space, let it. Itchy old skin about to peel off, let it. Molasses middle and more questions than answers, let it. Drifting away from the wise center of you into the dark of despair and doom, let it.

Death finds everything. Eventually so does birth. Never on our timeline. Not without labor pains. And though it’s hard (so hard) and we are gritting all of our teeth: let it, let it, let it. 🌑🐍🥚