A curated playlist for this read:
I’ve always been fascinated by the brain, and the way trauma effects the way we process and record memory. I was 21 when I first realized that I’d been lying to myself for most of my life. There are memories that I haven’t always been able to discern as dreams or reality. At the time, reality seemed to be comprised of things my brain could make sense of easily — which was quite a lot, in my defense. Everything else, the things too complex for effortless comprehension and processing were automatically categorized as ‘dreamlike’. The mind is so egotistical in this way, believing it is the only one who can access memory.
As much as I had convinced myself of particular images that would flash before my eyes being snippets of dreams, I could never quite shake them. Faint memories floating across my consciousness in the most seemingly random moments, though I do not believe in coincidence.
By the time I was 5, I knew the route to every one’s home we frequented, and all their uniquely different rules for being, just by the trees that lined the roads. But I could not, for the life of me, remember that my mother had a miscarriage. there was another baby and that baby was gone. Too complex for processing; straight into the box of dreams. Yet, there was still a part of me that couldn’t forget. Every time I was in my grandparents home I could see my mother so clearly, pregnant, standing at the top of the stairs before me. It was the only memory I had of this time in our lives. A moment when time stood still, and slowly blurred into a dream.
It wasn’t until college, with the help of a school project, that I found the courage to ask my mother if that ‘dream’ was real after all. I was hit with a wave of emotions, all contradictory to one another, when she confirmed it had been real after all. If my memory had been right about this, what else could it be right about?
It was a much different experience in the fall of 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford testified that Brett Kavanaugh, a then Supreme Court nominee, had sexually assaulted her in high school. I was invested in this case, and had a visceral reaction to the days long proceedings. It felt personal. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something similar had happened to me around the same age.
Suddenly, I could see myself in the mirror, 16 and afraid, succumbing to the only coping mechanism that seemed to work in the past. I met my own distant eyes in the mirror and I told myself a different story about what happened that evening. A story I could live with.
It’s not what it seems.
That didn’t happen to me.
I am okay.
Now there I was, five years later, at 21 and without warning, the truth came bubbling to the surface. Suddenly, I was living in a body that no longer felt like mine. A body in pain. A body so raw every touch felt like my skin was set ablaze.
Healing is bloody business. Freedom is bloody business.
Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”
― Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters
What I’ve learned of the truth in these last five years is that it is much like a flood. An overflow of emotion, memory, feeling. Floods are just water remembering. Toni Morrison said “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was…”
One day, while catching up with my brother Ken, I shared some of what I’d been processing and weaving together at the time. He said something that day that validated my experience more than he probably knows. At a time when it felt like I was drowning in my own memory, he reminded me that I, in fact, knew how to swim. “I see your life much like a river. Each part of your story breaks off into another direction, flowing into another river and another, over and over. You seem to know where they are leading you.”
This is the work of re-membering. Surrendering to the truth of our existence. Surrendering to the current of the unraveling — however fast or slow. It is a commitment to knowing, to seeing, to honoring your truth, without fear and without shame.
Shedding layers of armor often means that even though you may finally recognize the person staring back in the mirror, most of the people around you will not. This has been, perhaps, the loneliest part of the last few years. It is no one’s fault, just the nature of change and time. I am not the same, none of us are. Especially when you consider living through a pandemic and now an egregious number of ongoing genocides around the world.
I wish I could attribute it all to this, but it is only a fraction of the truth. The truth being, I moved states away from everything familiar to me so I could feel my pain alone. So I could journey home to myself without the urge to settle back into a restricting and disembodied version of myself. I needed to get away from everything that was familiar in order to really discover the person that I am, and I am just now re-emerging into the world.
I moved where it was quiet, and my nervous system was calm. Where I could lay in the grass and weep, alone. Where I could join writers groups in gardens, and escape to farms on a random weekday with friends. Where I could cry in hot yoga studios and no one would notice. Where the weed was legal, dank, and cheap. Where the only people who really knew me were the baristas and the small circle of healers and feelers, of various ages and backgrounds, that saw me and held me tenderly.
It wasn’t long before I understood that the more embodied I became, the more I breathed life into the memories that once felt like dreams. They became more colorful and the edges, once frayed, started to weave together and become real. And once again, for just a few moments, the truth would take my breath away. Part of me understood this to be an awakening. A realization that I had been disembodied for a very long time and to be feeling so deeply now could only mean that I was more alive than I had ever been. So I leaned into it, so deep that before I knew it my whole life spilled out in front of me. So many pieces of me broken, some unrecognizable, others completely lost. Space was opening up inside of me to become the woman I am. An embodied, free, honest, woman.
Some days I feel like I am still at the beginning. I can still feel the weight of the first tug of the unraveling, a heaviness threatening to pull me under. Then I remember where I have arrived — on fertile ground, where knowing and feeling my trauma doesn’t threaten me like it used to. Instead it is an invitation. An invitation to knowing and loving myself deeper. An invitation to let go. An invitation to freedom.
There are seemingly small moments in our lives, and choices that we make, that completely disrupt everything we once knew to be true and catapults us towards the beings we really are. When the truth came knocking five years ago, I made the most important choice of my life thus far. I chose aliveness. For all its pain, and all its beauty, I promised myself I would feel it.
It’s been five years of returning to my body, and re-constructing my nervous system. Five years of falling apart at the seams, coming completely undone, and piecing myself back together. Five years of finding the courage to keep my heart open despite its wounding. Five years of losing my breath and finding it in a space buried so deep within me, I almost forgot it was the very thing keeping me alive. Five years of falling in love with myself — fractured and whole. Worshipping this body and this heart for all its resilience and all its glory. Five years of an intentional movement practice. Five years of finding love in the trees and the way the wind blows across my face. Five years of pulling myself out of bed, even on the days it threatens to swallow me whole. Five years of finding my voice, my wings, and learning to fly.
I feel so grateful to the people and experiences that have cracked me open, and brought me back to myself. But I am most grateful to the little girl who keeps reaching her hand out to me, leading me into the deepest parts of myself. Together we walk, hand in hand, with the truth of our existence, and we alchemize. These same hands that pull me into what feels too hard, too ugly, too broken to hold, are the ones that gather it all and turn it into something beautiful, something whole, and full of LOVE. It is this love, that I radiate unto all of you, and to all people in search of freedom.
So this is written/living proof that vulnerability and truth leads to the answers and peacefulness for our current and future self needs to truly LIVE!
Sending love to all parts of you healing what an honor to read your truths 🤍