Category Archives: Uncategorized

soon he’ll be on his way to us

Posted on February 28, 2014 | 1 Comment

Good morning. When I woke up, the rain was falling in heavy, translucent sheets. Now, the rain has paused — the sun peeks out, and I’m looking for rainbows.

I’m often looking for rainbows. That, and four-leaf clovers. I’m a Pisces. We believe in signs and luck and serendipity.

This morning, the ever-shifting background image on computer’s desktop reads Trust Your Struggle. I take a deep breath, read it again, and then again. Trust your struggle, Jen. What does that mean? I have fifteen minutes before I need to be in the car to go south to see my sister and the baby still living in her body, the baby that everyone is ready to meet, most especially my sister. And it’s probably true that the one who wants to meet him next-most is his papa, but I feel like I come in a very, very close third.

I have barely written about this small one who is about to transition from one existence to another, from being in his mother’s body to being out in this terrifying, exquisitely beautiful world. What could I say to him? What can I offer? How will I or any of us be able to protect him, when there are so many dangers and his whole job is to grow away from us and find his whole path? I don’t say his name — it feels important to hold it inside my body for now. So I call him small one. His papa calls him Junior and little guy. My sister has names for him, I’m certain, that no one will ever know.

Maybe my mother has names like that for me, and for my sister — the names we had when she carried us. The names she gave us before anyone us had ever seen the color of our eyes. What if she had remembered to say those names before the monster got his claws into our bodies? What magic could have happened then?

I am trying to Get Everything Done before the baby gets here — finish all the writing projects and all of writing ourselves whole’s administrative tasks, write our grants, send workshop information to schools and colleges in this area and elsewhere, prepare for the workshops that are currently ongoing. Every morning I sit down to the computer and think, Ok, you have to finish everything. Then I freeze, or frenzy, and come up for air some hours later feeling frantic. What kind of a model will I be for this small one? Will I be someone they can look up to, or an adult who abandoned her dreams? I stop even here, thinking I should check my email, get ready to go down to see my sister, get in the shower, quit stalling. I have to finish it all: once he gets here, he’s the only thing I’m going to want to pay attention to. We want to front load all the goodness and connection. We want to load him up with love. We want him to know, in these first hours and weeks of this next phase of his life, that all that exists in the world is love. He will have years enough to discover that isn’t true — and in the meantime, he will get a foundational promise in his soul that then we will all of us endeavor to keep: you get to be safe in this world. You get to be honored and adored. You get to be fed and warm. You get to be exactly and only yourself. You get to discover and cry and laugh and play. Your boyness gets to encompass multitudes, all the masculinities and femininities. You get to be whoever you are.

Of course, I won’t get everything done before he emerges — most of these projects don’t have a “done” button, anyway; they are endlessly repeating and ever re-emergent. Like raising a child, I guess, is never “done.” This is the first child born into our family, the first for my sister or me. I will not tell you about what messages I got from my stepfather about any children I might bear,and I don’t know what he said to my sister — I will say that for a long time, I was afraid for any children I ever came into contact with. I will say that it’s a kind of miracle that my sister is having this baby. I will say that I think this child is fortunate beyond measure to get to live on the inside of her body, to get to know intimately the sound of her breath and heartbeat. Something will stop when this boy is born, and something entirely new will begin; I don’t mean his breathing and engagement with the world — I mean, more selfishly, that a kind of death that we were promised will unbecome, dissipate, dissolve into a wisp of smoke that we can just blow away.

~~ ~~ ~~

What is it that you’re frenzy-ing to finish? Could you take a deep breath and listen to what your struggle is trying to tell you? Where does your writing want you to go today?

Thank you for honoring what scares you today, and for walking hand in hand with that terror. Thank you for your presence and awareness. Thank you for your words.

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let’s say I could see your broken wings

Posted on February 26, 2014 | 5 Comments

Good morning — the light is just shifted from dark grey to heather blue, and rain is streaking onto the windows. The candles are quiet in their glass cages. What is bringing you to the page today?

Let’s say everything is changing. Let’s say it always was. Let’s say I’m always afraid when I sit down to the page — I don’t know what I’m going to say, and I’m certain that whatever I do say won’t come out right. Let’s say I want it to be right. Let’s say I compose on a bag of bones. Let’s say the coffee isn’t cutting it anymore. Let’s say the candles are humming and erect next to me. Let’s say I found a way home. Let’s say I don’t know what home means. Let’s say it’s opening its eyes inside of me. Let’s say there was a place in my body that asked for now. Let’s say I don’t know what that means. Let’s say now spreads its quiet wings around the flames of my insides. Let’s say I tangle with the past. Let’s say I am afraid. Let’s say I do not live in the moment. Let’s say the fingers are forgetting how to work. Let’s say the heart is breaking down. Let’s say I am aghast. Let’s say you are. Let’s say we weren’t ready for any of this.

Let’s say it used to be good. One day it was good. There was a moment of good between us. There was an idea of good. There was a breath. A hope. Let’s say we both had our own dreams. Let’s say the dreams fitted against a knowing that we had forgotten all the words for. Let’s say we weren’t able to climb the trees of our own dark insides anymore. Let’s say we saw in the other someone who might be able to open our locked doors. Let’s say we still believed in fairy tales and knights in shining armor. Let’s say that no matter who you are, you always hope for a knight in shining armor. Let’s say no matter who you are, you always want to be somebody’s knight in shining armor.

I wanted to save you — let’s say that. Let’s just say.

Let’s say I thought it wasn’t hopeless. Let’s say I convinced myself. Let’s say I wanted to hear the names you never shared with anybody else. Let’s say I believed you never told those names to anybody else. Let’s say I sat there while you called me names. Let’s say I ate your accusations like breakfast. Let’s say I was your whipping boy, the safe release, the escape valve, let’s say I was your penitence — or I was my own. Let’s say I thought I deserved it. Let’s say I made all your excuses for you, before you even had to take in a breath. Let’s say I could see your broken wings. Let’s say I knew we were both wounded. Let’s say I said it wasn’t your fault. It was where you came from. It was what you’d been through. Let’s say I could understand rage. Let’s say I wanted to understand what it was like to be you in the world. Let’s say I wanted to get inside your skin. Let’s say I was afraid I could never be enough for you. Let’s say I wanted you so badly I thought my teeth would break. Let’s say I set myself aside for the sex of us. Let’s say I finally understood how people could do that.

Let’s say I tried to be enough for you. Let’s say I tried to be the good woman, the open-handed woman, the woman you deserved, the mother of all good women, the woman that was all small smiles and nods, all feeling and compassion, who could take your slings and arrows for what they were: the wails of a despairing child. Let’s say I wanted to cradle your despairing child. Let’s say I imagined you could cradle mine. Let’s say you dropped me on the floor over and over again. Let’s say I made your excuses for you, before you ever even had to take in a breath. Let’s say I got up from the floor, dusted off my knees, and reached for you again. Let’s say I began to understand my own madness. Let’s say I couldn’t trust what I saw myself doing. Let’s say I put your needs before my own, because it’s so easy to say that, the words are right there on the cover of every book in the library. Let’s say I took off my mouth, then my hindbrain, then my hands, then my shoulderblades. Let’s say I couldn’t understand how I could still be screaming. Let’s say I couldn’t imagine my life without you. Let’s say I found myself in a now that was choked me. Let’s say I got tired of being an emotional punching bag. Let’s say that cliche is too easy. Let’s say the harder words: I got tired of tending to wounds that you both insisted that I make better and insisted didn’t exist. Let’s say that I finally recognized the madness. Let’s say I saw how heartbroken I was. Let’s say I still carry your heartbreak, because I was never, never, never supposed to put it down. Let’s say your accusations are lodged in my body lodge like poisoned arrows or the quills of a broken porcupine. Let’s say you persist in me. Let’s say I put you down. Let’s say I opened the wings of my body to find you chewing off your legs. Let’s say I lifted off the carcass of your despair. Let’s say I can’t do anything to stop it. Let’s say I stopped needing to do anything to stop it. Let’s say I let you do it. Let’s say I let you do it.

Let’s say I let you do it.

Let’s say I was conscious every step of the way. Let’s say every time we came to a fork in the road, I thought, here’s a good chance to get away, and then stepped with you deeper into the forest. Let’s say I thought I could save you. Let’s say I thought love was about fighting and struggle and saviors. Let’s say in the beginning I was thankful for the fights. Let’s say I felt blessed. Let’s say I was so glad I had someone who would tell me what they really thought, and didn’t need to protect me. Let’s say I wanted you to not to protect me. Then let’s say that changed. Let’s say it didn’t change. Let’s say I wanted you to see what your words did when they hit the ledger of my body. Let’s say I wanted you to understand. Let’s say I thought that eventually you would notice, you would get it, you would say you were sorry. Let’s say I finally understood that you could not see, that your eyes lived somewhere else. Let’s say I finally understood that you didn’t think you were doing anything wrong. Let’s say I found the unbridgeable crevasse between us. Let’s say I understood finally that it wasn’t my job to fill all of the holes that life left in you. Let’s say I’m still sorry for those holes. Let’s say I am still speaking into the ones you left in me, whispering into my own body, trying to figure out how to unarmor enough to let the deepest wounds heal.

~~ ~~ ~~

This is a morning write. Twenty minutes on the timer, and I just let the fingers go. Here’s a prompt: Begin with “Let’s say-” Complete the phrase, and then begin again. Follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go.

It’s all important: the recognitions and the blindnesses. Thank you for what you allow yourself to see. Thank you for the generosity of your words.

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come back

Posted on February 21, 2014 | 3 Comments

Angel breaking through the wallGood morning. The music is going, the coffee is percolating, and the rose blooms wide open, like my body. I am surrounded by the books that I love and the home I have made for myself.

I want to tell you that I never believed I could get here, to this place, of possibility and celebration. I reach back into the years of despair, if only to remember again what it felt like to wake up hopeless, if only to remember what it felt like to not ache, not believe. I hoped and longed for and wanted but did not believe I deserved. I did not ever see myself getting here, to the place I wanted: a body that was certain of and curious about itself, hands filled with words and joy, a little apartment in the city that was a haven for language and resilience. But that is what I have.

Today’s post is brought to you by this quote from a poem by Kallie Falandays:
“I want to give you your history back.
Your fingers back. I want to tell you yes.”

and by this quote from Carl Jung:

“In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

This morning I want to say yes. I am afraid, and I am resolved. These are the things that I can do. I can write sex, I can adore poetry, I can wonder at the mystery of the world. I can find words for the tenderest absurdities that occur in the erotic body, I can be a woman who clawed her way back into her own skin. I can remember what it was like to feel outside of my own bones. I can laugh at what wants to dissuade me. I can long for your yes. I can find words for this now of our recovery. I can be the girl with the birds in the back of her throat.

I may never be the safe and clean thing you’d hoped to birth. I may be always sharing words of danger with the strangers who hover around your shoulders.

The poet says, “I want to give you your history back. I want to give you your fingers back. I want to tell you yes.” I want you to know your essences, I want you to feel the importance of your presence on this earth surging through every one of your cells. I want yes to sing through your every syllable. I am speaking to the hardened and to the lost. I am speaking to you who is stuck in her bed. I am speaking to the old me, to the me I’ll be again: despairing and certain she will be forgotten. I am speaking to the one who knows for sure she will never desire again. I am speaking to the broken, to you who do not believe you will ever be welcome to to unfurl.

I want your myriad, cacophonous voices. I want your heavy stories. I want the words that lodge at the back of your throat. I want your mysteries and countenances. I want the history that you have not been allowed to share. I want to hear why you’re sure it’s your fault. I want to listen to you. I want the room to listen to you. I want you to take up all the airtime you need. I want you to talk for hours. I want your words to fill the world. I want the lenses to focus in I want everything to center on you. I want you to tell us. I want you to say it. I want you to put them into words, all those hauntings that shred the edges of your consciousness, your everyday walk to work, your now.

Come back to us. Don’t keep all your songs to yourself. Allow yourself to offer the generosity of the horror that lives in your bones. Do you understand me? Your history is not your burden to carry alone. You are not meant to do this work alone. You are meant to have other hands help you in the carrying, other ears and lungs and legs; it is not meant to be that the deepest intimacy in your life is between you and your violator. Do you understand me? You are meant to settle into the circle of darkness and light that we all share. You are meant to be a part of this humanity, this collection of desecrations and holy knowings, this confabulation of traumas and resiliences. You are not alone. No one will know your story if you do not share it with us. No one will know what you saw and felt and know if you do not release those ephemera and terrors into language.

We need all the wordings you can wonder yourself into. We need them to know you, and to know ourselves. Get lost in the sorrow if you have to — of course, sometimes we all have to — but come back soon. We need what you have to tell us. The essence of you is a necessary part of this earthly existence. Tell us what you have seen.

Thank you.

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Write Whole Online begins in one week!

Posted on February 16, 2014 | 1 Comment

starburst graffiti from berkeleyOur next online writing group begins soon, and a few spaces are still available! Read on to learn more…

Write Whole Online
Six-week writing group open to all survivors of trauma begins February 24

For those not in the Bay Area and therefore unable to attend in-person workshops, or for those uncomfortable with or less inclined toward joining us in person, we’re offer online versions of our survivors (Write Whole) writing groups. Participation in the writing groups is all asynchronous: you access exercises and readings, write and post your responses, and offer feedback on others’ writings as works best for your schedule.

I will offer two prompts plus a topic for conversation every week — at the end of these six weeks, you will have a surprising and powerful new collection of writing, and a strong new online writing community.

No special software required–just a web browser, Internet connection, and desire to write into your deepest stories.

The fee for this six-week workshop is $225. Some scholarships are available, and we can always work out payment plans. Contact me for details and with questions: I’d love to write with you!

 

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love your community on v day – believe and then take action

Posted on February 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

Good morning good morning. How is the morning where you are? Here the day is just dawning, and the air outside is a hazy, misty blue.

I have been trying to write about Dylan Farrow and her adoptive father and her resilient naming of his actions and the way the whole world has something to say to her about it. I want to write about how, when you tell your story, things get better — because of course, people believe you, people will listen, people will take action. But, of course, that’s not true. We know that’s not true. Many of us told, both directly and indirectly, and were not protected or were not believed.

It’s hard for me to write about this. The people tell me that I have to be articulate, calm, composed, and objective when I write or talk about sexual violence and sexual violators (otherwise I’m just another angry victim shooting off her mouth). If I speak about W.A. and his actions (both copped to, like marrying a very young woman who had been a surrogate child of his, and not copped to, like sexual abuse of an adoptive child), or if I speak about how horrifying it is that the Interweb wants me to understand that they’d very much LIKE to believe Dylan Farrow’s story, but, oh, look, she was a child who didn’t tell the story the same way every time, and, oh, look, her parents were involved in a really terrible custody battle and her mother was very, very angry, and oh, look, the conditions under which she was supposed to have been abused are totally unbelievable and oh, look, W.A. is a pretty great guy who makes all these films and has all these big Hollywood films who’s never been accused of child abuse *before* and oh, look, there was no physical evidence, and oh,look,the cops came and other authorities came and they investigated and they came to the conclusion that no charges should be pressed and that means that, sorry, Dylan Farrow is probably a liar but it’s not her fault because she was just a kid and she was being manipulated by a lying, scheming, money-grubbing, crazy mom — when I speak about all this, I have to be quiet and calm and composed about my response if I want anyone to listen to me.

Here’s my calm response:

There are kids who lie who are also raped.
There are kids who are in the middle of terrible custody battles who are raped.
There are kids who are sexually violated under the most unbelievable of circumstances. I don’t know if you can surprise me anymore, given the stories I’ve heard. Would a terrible claustrophobic climb into an attic for just a few moments to act out sexually with a child he was supposed to be caring for? Of course I believe that could happen.
There’s often no physical evidence of sexual abuse, with kids or adults. The fact that this continues to be a standard that has to be met in order to prove that violence has occurred astounds me.
Many, many people who are seen as pillars of their communities are also sexual violators.

None of these so-called logical reasons make me question what I’ve heard of Dylan Farrow’s story, nor anyone else’s. This, of course, isn’t just an issue for famous folks with major media connections — this issue of how we talk about survivors telling their stories has a huge impact in our communities. If we want to end intimate violence, we need to undo the culture of isolation and silencing that surrounds these violences. And in order to do that, we have to communicate to survivors that they are going to be supported when they come forward.

My sister and I were lucky that we both were abused by our stepfather in similar ways. What a completely awful sentence to write — yet, this is why I say it: when we went to the county attorney in Omaha and revealed who it was who had been harming us for the past decade, we were sure that she would run us out of her office. This was a man who was known in psychotherapy circles, a man who had friends in the court, a many who worked with child abuse victims at Boys’ Town, a man who acted as an expert witness in child sexual abuse cases. You’re going to tell me he did what? There was, of course, no physical evidence, and we were there with our father, a man who had plenty of reason to be completely furious with our stepfather and our mother, both — and a man to whom we had both told a lot of lies about what was going on in the house on 57th Street in Omaha, NE. There were lots of reasons for us to expect not to be believed.

We got lucky; I don’t know how else to say it. The County Attorney said she’d never heard of him (I’ll never know whether or not that’s true), and sent us to speak with detectives — something neither of us was prepared for. We each met with a male detective, separately and alone, and each spoke to those men for a couple of hours, at least, I think, telling our stories. It turned out that we corroborated each other. That’s maybe the only thing that put our stepfather in jail. If either of us had come alone to the courthouse, told our story alone, been expected to defend ourselves with the rest of the family contradicting us, his community contradicting us, what hope would we have had of finding any justice?

(Not that the criminal justice system is set up to offer justice to victims and survivors of intimate violence — it’s set up to protect property and capital. But that’s a different blog post.)

Today I am thinking about the ways that we as a public will make excuses for the men and women who are violent towards others, and the ways that we work as hard as we can to continue living with our own denial, to not have to step out of our comfort zones, to stop listening to music that we liked or stop reading books we liked or stop watching movies we liked or even stop hanging out with friends we’ve liked because we decide we no longer want to support their actions toward others — even if we never directly witness those actions ourselves, but because someone has been able to take the extraordinary action of speaking out into and against that massive cultural denial to say, “This person has done immeasurable harm against me, and I can’t be the only one holding them accountable. I need my community to stand with me.”

My sister and I were lucky; our family believed us, and the community that our stepfather had participated in didn’t obstruct us — they didn’t support us, exactly, but they also didn’t come forward to call us liars.

The community, very often, doesn’t want to stand with the violated. We want to stand with the person with the power. The abuser is infrequently abusive in public; they reserve that behavior for private performances. It’s the survivor who can be challenging for us — so visibly angry, so demanding. So we, their community, feel more drawn to the person who laughs, not the person who’s angry. The person who seems calm, not the person who’s agitated. The person who’s easy, not the person who’s difficult. We, the community, in choosing to stay comfortable, also choose to stand against what we say we believe.

On this valentine’s day, people will enjoy loving, tender, and sweet romantic connections with themselves and their loved ones. And many, many people are going to be harmed by their significant others — both physically and in ways that leave no marks whatsoever. Someone you know is going to tell you something that has happened to them or is happening to them and you aren’t going to want to believe it — you aren’t going to want to have to believe it, because believing is going to mean that you have to change in some way. Believing your friend will mean you have to change how you see and/or behave toward both parties — your friend and the person who has hurt them. This can be difficult, sad, or scary. Standing up for your friend, and your community, means you have to choose to act out what you say you believe about undoing a culture of silence. It means you have to walk your talk.

Maybe let this be the place where your own writing begins today — how can you walk your talk with someone in your community today? How would you have your community walk with you? Give yourself ten, twenty minutes on the timer — and follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go.

Thank you for the ways you show up for your community, and for the ways you allow your community to show up for you. Thank you for the generosity you show yourself as you move through your layers of tellings. And thank you for your words.

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extra:ordinary – how something is made flesh

Posted on February 5, 2014 | 1 Comment

(Our final post in the extra:ordinary project (stories of everyday survival and resilience) comes from Renee Garcia of Berkeley, CA — a stunning piece that tackles this idea of monstrousness that so many survivors live with, and reveals the tremendously creative work we do to keep ourselves living and alive. Thank you, Renee, for offering this beautiful piece as the finale to our project.)

How something is made flesh

no one can say

1.
How something is made flesh no one can say. She knew the story of her birth. She remembers in bits of static and some old pictures that didn’t get burned up in the fire, and some stories people told about her being born. Not a boy. Not a boy. She knew from some stories and the pinched look on her mother’s face and the vacant dreamy look on her father’s face that she was never born not really. Not in the made flesh sort of way. She was born like a story they told themselves about having a baby. Because that’s what normal people (not monsters) do. They fall in love (and they did fall in love with their broken-ness and made themselves as one (like monsters do with magic) and they had a baby. Little white perfect baby clothes. A white crib. The house scrubbed to brightness. They had a baby who cried all the time. They had a baby they were not equipped for as normal people, as broken people made as one, as monsters made by the dark shadow whispers in his ear saying take this flesh and eat of it. As the dark shadow whispers in her ear saying take this flesh and kill it-this will destroy everything and besides it won’t stop crying.

2.
She knitted herself a person suit from watching how other real people acted. She made herself a person suit from feathers she tore into strips, from bacon fat, from red clay gathered in the foothills of the Sierras, from old stories she dreamed from her real ancestors from long ago. She knitted herself up with her broken hands and didn’t mind the pain. Giving birth is painful even when you are making your self. Her own flesh that she crafted that smelled like the earth and bread baking and wild flowers that were really just weeds. She used tree bark and the trees allowed it. She used other people’s stories and dropped consonants from when they talked too fast. She walked until she was used to it. Her feet were the best thing she made. She made them from poems and old church hymns and wild grasses and river rocks. They were sturdy and determined and kind and could carry her for miles and miles. She threw away the original flesh, it had gotten ruined and who says you can’t make your own flesh. She is only sorry she forgot the wings.

3.
How do you unmake human flesh no one can say.

So easy the hand over the mouth. So easy the underwater bath. She remembers being underwater as much as she remembers air. She remembers becoming flesh painfully over a life time because she was othered into the sheets and coated in bleach and dressed up like a doll and taken into the world silenced and golden with pretty. People said so. Little perfect dresses and shiny black Mary Janes. She was pretty and a good child until she learned how to climb the tinker toy scaffolding she made when they were asleep all normal people sleep (and monsters too) and then she was a bad child but that made her real. A real live something. Girl was wrong. Boy was just a dream. A real live creature. The one that lived in the trees and listened for the bird song and shot hoops in the back yard where she cleaned up all the dog shit from all the dogs she loved and he disappeared.

4.
Who can say how flesh becomes human or human becomes monster. The monster is in everyone. We want to have it be dark and mysterious and impossible. We want hollywood 3D glasses and popcorn and screams and relief that there are no monsters. There are monsters everywhere. Not under the bed. Just under the in breath. Human, monster. It’s waiting like our cells wait to mutate. When cancer breaks in, or some other dis ease that says you belong to me now. Monster is the same. It’s just a state we occupy or don’t. Monsters are made by human flesh made flesh in an equation that is as ordinary as cracking an egg into the fying pan. It’s a choice often it’s a choice. Some of us get made that way. But monster is a tribe too.

The word “monster” derives from Latin monstrum, an aberrant occurrence, usually biological, that was taken as a sign that something was wrong within the natural order.[1]

5.
Something was wrong with the natural order. Sure. She knows that as she looks at the family tree on the big butcher paper and she draws vines around the throats of the one’s she hates in her own loving way. She can’t cross them out and un-make them, it’s too late. She can only decorate them. No off with their heads magic doesn’t work backwards at least not until she deciphers the mysteries of time travel. Then who can say. And if she takes their heads will she take her own because they came first or will her own determined flesh making win out over the sperm and the egg. She can’t complain and doesn’t this is how she got herself this how she started before she made her own consecrated flesh. These are the stories she does not tell her children. She only tells herself.

6.
Sometimes she becomes flesh and real and breathing in the touching of another and another touching her. Skin to skin. Warmth. Breathing. Loving. Fucking. She is alive then and fluid and moving and it’s like all the sunshine days rolled into one and falling from a high tree before the ground bites her back with it’s gravity rules. The falling is a flying without wings and it tastes like all the good things. Like wild berries and hot sourdough bread and lips in the first kiss or the last kiss. It tastes like real and round and hard and sharp and she never doesn’t feel baptized and saved from the darkness then. She is a real live girl now even when the flashbacks arrive on cue, like a line of toy soldiers that demand their viewing in formation until she knocks them over or turns them into art with a blow torch and glue and paint and glitter.

7.
This is how she is made flesh. Writing herself into her own story. Drinking iced tea that is strong and almost bitter and adding lemon. Her mouth wakes up. Digging in the dirt and tasting it. Dirt tastes as real as anything else and it’s organic. And free. Remembering that she used to bleed. Forgiving the moon for everything. She is made flesh over and over again by wishing it so. She will finally learn how by heart when it’s time to let the flesh go and become a cloud walker again. Who can say how flesh is made. We say it and say it, we tell the stories and tell the stories and we make it so.

(Thank you, Renee, and thank you to all of our extra:ordinary project contributors — and to all of you who read and shared these words and manifest, every day, the extraordinary resilience, that beautiful work of remaining, in the aftermath of trauma.)

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extra:ordinary – the story of a normal girl

Posted on January 29, 2014 | 4 Comments

(This week, I’m offering my own contribution to the extra:ordinary project (stories of everyday survival and resilience) — what does it mean to have to try and find your way back into a humanity you are afraid doesn’t want you, or that you don’t deserve, after you escape from trauma or violence? How many of us are living that question right now?

Be easy with you as you read; I talk somewhat explicitly about sexual violence and psychological manipulations in this piece.)

•§•

The story of a normal girl

It happened again the other day. Over dinner, some friends started talking about their teenage years, sharing sexual coming of age stories.  Normal stuff: how old they were when they first touched themselves or touched someone else, parents who were clueless about who they were fooling around with, what kind of sex they were having and how young. They told the stories of how regular girls try on on these experiences of being grown up – how they learn to flirt or play or shut someone down.

Women bond over these stories: how we negotiated the travails of adolescence, learned to navigate the nuances of adult womanhood, learned to relate to sex, men, boys, our bodies, femininity, other women.

I sipped my tea, quiet, disappearing. I did not participate in the conversation. I never participate in these conversations unless I know I am with other sexual abuse survivors. I listen and wonder. It’s like eavesdropping on people who were raised in another country or maybe on another planet. They speak a foreign language, one I lost the grammar for when I was fifteen years old. I know some of the vocabulary, enough to make it sound like I am a native speaker.

I can pass myself off as one of them for a little while when I need to. It’s not that I don’t have my own stories of awkward early sexual fumblings in the back seats of cars with boys – it’s that behind and around and beneath those fumblings was my stepfather’s mouth, telling me what to do, how far to go, when to stop, and then, after, demanding that I tell him in detail about every erotic encounter so that he could put his hands in his pants at the thought of it.

I had few casual sexual explorings. I learned sex at the hands of my stepfather, who undertook my/our education and indoctrination when I was a young teenager. (At least I had the great good fortune of an unmolested childhood, save for the sexual harassment by strangers and from elementary school classmates, but doesn’t every girl deal with those?)

As a teenager, I understood that my family was different from my classmates’ families. I assumed—as I assumed about the woman friends in conversation the other day—that the other girls in my class did not spend parts of their weekends watching sex films with their stepdad at his psychotherapy office while he encouraged them to masturbate or let him touch them. I assumed other girls weren’t studying oral sex techniques in porn movies, weren’t being instructed to practice on their stepfather’s bodies, weren’t having to pretend to enjoy their stepfather’s oral and digital and genital attentions.

I know now that many of them were being abused, too; not because any of them told me—simply because of statistics.

•§•

My stepfather wanted to be the leader of a cult, I think, but he was not charismatic enough to draw throngs of followers to him. He instead preyed on his wives and, in our case, their children. He used the tactics of cult leaders, though: controlling our worldview and cutting off outside contact from family or other influences; using sex as a training device, control mechanism, punishment or “reward” that we were supposed to strive for; sleep deprivation; demanding that we learn and obey his strict rules, then changing the rules without warning and punishing us for not knowing the new rules; indoctrinating us into the behaviors and beliefs he said would help us to evolve to a higher state of consciousness while flouting those rules whenever he wanted to. (When I read through this checklist of cult characteristics, every single one is familiar to me.) He trained my sister and I to bring other followers/victims to him – I succumbed to that training. The person I brought him got away, though not unscathed. I got away, too, not long after. It took me about ten years to really believe that I was not a rapist or perpetrator, and that I deserved to be alive.

•§•

As I got older, into high school and college, the disconnect between my real self (who I was at home with my stepdad) and the self I pretended to be out in the world became an unbridgeable crevasse. I had to work harder and harder to look like someone normal, given what was expected of me when I got home after school and on the weekends and, later, on breaks from college. I felt wholly separated from everyone else I knew, even after I got away, even after I began to connect with other survivors, even after I learned how common, how normal, the experience of sexual abuse is.

I know now that this experience of disconnect from other people, this profound isolation and sense of monstrousness, is also normal.

 •§•

I broke away, finally, from my stepdad’s control at the age of 21. I lived under his control and domination until I was a senior at Dartmouth College, an ostensibly smart, supposedly take-no-shit college girl. How many victims do you know who have phone sex with their rapists? I certainly didn’t know any. How could I call myself a victim when I had an orgasm every time he raped me – because he would not stop until I did? How could I call myself a victim when I had to say “yes” every time he “asked’ if I wanted to have sex? How could I call myself a victim if I had convinced others to do what he wanted them to do, if I acted as his mouth and hands, if I’d become his emissary, puppet, and clone?

And if I couldn’t claim victim, how could I call myself survivor?

 •§•

For me, it has been a manifestation of resilience that I stayed alive and wanted to have any relationships with anyone else at all, ever. I had every reason not to want to be around people, build relationships, be expected to trust others. I let myself not have those relationships for awhile. And then, when I found the loneliness too much to bear, I started to teach myself, and let other people teach me, how to be in human company.

 If I’d participated authentically in that casual conversation a few days ago about sexual “explorations,” I would have said something like this:

“I first got to third base with my stepdad when I was in 8th grade, or before, maybe, I can’t remember.”

Or

“Yeah, we didn’t have instagram or digital selfies when I was a kid, but my stepdad had his Polaroid that he used to document me and my sister, and that worked just fine for him to record our naked bodies.”

For me to participate in these conversation is to introduce the story of trauma into what was supposed to be something sweet and light and fun. My story comes in like an anvil. Sometimes I choose to drop the anvil in, though, because keeping silent just reminds me of all those years I acted like a regular, non-molested girl.

Sometimes folks are uncomfortable when I share these stories. More often than not, though, it’s an opening for others to share their own secreted-away stories of violation and violence, an invitation to break the silence. And I remember—I realize, all over again—that I was regular — just your normal, average, sexually-traumatized girl who has had to refind her place in human community.

 •§•

I want you to imagine with me what it would take for a 21-year old young woman, who has been controlled and manipulated since she was 12 or younger, to decide that she deserves to be free. She lives across the country from the place where she grew up. Even after leaving home, she continues to obey to every one of her stepfather’s demands. She tells him everything she does. He has convinced her that he can read her thoughts and that he has spies watching her—he already knows what she’s doing and so it will behoove her to come clean, to prove she is trustworthy. He has convinced her that he will kill her and anyone she loves if she attempts to leave him. She is smart, naive, brainwashed, and terrified. She tells no one about her life, about the things her stepdad makes her do, about how afraid she is that he will make her do these things for the rest of her life. She has relationships with young men her age; her stepfather wants to hear the details of their sexual encounters. When he is bored with them, or when he thinks she and the boy have grown too close, he will demand that she break up with him.

Forget getting free. I want you to imagine what it would take for her to get up in the morning and decide to go to class.

This is a girl, I would say now, who fucking well deserved to go dancing, who sure as hell deserved to get drunk. Those were two of the practices that saved me, that got me through. Other practices include (but are not limited to!): endless hours of writing, taking care of pets, therapy (eventually), lots of crying, long and meandering walks, getting involved in work that was of service to others and politically relevant, eating too much, isolating, getting overly involved in organizing work, fantasizing, reading, having sex, and playing around with BDSM.

Imagine that girl who was 21 went dancing in jeans and a tank top, flannel shirt tied around her waist. Imagine she suddenly wasn’t trying to be anybody’s video vixen, she learned to bounce, spin, and sweat. I mean, sweat. This girl—who developed asthma at 10 years old, who was divested of her physical agency, who stopped doing all sports, who had stopped moving except when and how her stepfather told her to—she remembered how to sweat.

Imagine it’s 1993 and “Everybody’s Free!” is pounding through the flashing lights and the awfulness from the smoke machine and she is drenched. She is not yet free but she is dancing, and her body is sweating,  teaching her how to get free. Her body is teaching her. Soon, she will listen to her body, and she will walk away. She will not be afraid to die. She will not die. She will get free.

That is her resilience, dripping shimmering her face, dripping over her neck and down her back. That, there, what you said girls aren’t supposed to do: that’s her resilience.

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What we attend to, what we love

Posted on January 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

butterflytree_smGood morning, good morning. It’s dark and warm outside my Oakland city window this morning. We’re having a heat wave in the middle of winter, which is all fine and good until the reservoirs run out of water. My candle is lit and the coffee (decaf, but still) is brewing. This morning I woke steady and restless, ready to write and also wanting to burrow down under the covers for another several hours’ sleep. Do you get like that when there’s too much to do and you want to do all of it at one time?

I want to apologize for being absent here. These days I am doing a lot of other writing, mostly (as you may have noticed!) away from the blog. I spend my morning-pages in the notebook, and then open one of several book projects and get to work at editing. Last year I generated hundreds of pages of material for these different projects; I’m now wading through those words, reading to see what I’ve got, how much of it makes sense, and what more needs to be added.

This poem is my mantra these days. I’m working mostly offline on writing tasks that need more than a single sitting to generate, shifting myself away from the fragmented immediacy of social media, including the blog. I have created a writing schedule, and am allowing myself to focus in and deep — because, well, let me tell you a secret:

Although I love and believe in and will continue the writing groups, what I always really wanted to be was a writer. First and foremost.

They say what you attend to reveals what you love. I set forth an intention, in this new year, to attend more to my writing. I have four projects I’m actively attending to these days: Sex Still Spoken Here, the Erotic Reading Circle anthology (which I’m co-editing with Amy Butcher and Carol Queen); a book of essays and prompts for trauma survivors (and others!) who want to use writing to heal and transform; a novel about three sisters who have to learn how to relate to and trust other (and the rest of the world) as grown women in the aftermath of their stepfather’s abuse during their adolescence; and a collection of short pieces from the Coming Home project (about reembodying our erotic self after sexual trauma). There are others, too: a couple of ebooks about transformative writing practice; collection of things that might be called poems (but I would never be so presumptions as to call them that); a gathering up of the pieces I’ve written and performed recently about femme; and, naturally, new novel.

It’s a lot.

Plus, there are blog posts to write and edit (especially for the extra:ordinary project), emails, articles, letters of recommendation. There’re book and writing group proposals. There’s writing to read and respond to for my manuscript group, and workshop sessions to prepare for. There’s writing all around me, all the time. I am immersed. If you’ve contacted me recently and haven’t heard back, it’s because I’m deep in the aftermath of finally deciding that I need to get my work out into the world. This intention takes as much attention as I can give it, since there are still those voices in me that want me not to forget that I’m a fraud and a laughing stock, not to mention a terrible writer, and should take my fingers off the keyboard and go back to what I’m good at, which is helping other people get their work out into the world. Period.

So I go slow, and I focus. I don’t talk about the various writing projects very much, except to give their barest descriptions, until I’m well on my way toward completion. The more I talk about a story or essay or book, the more I lose creative steam for its writing. It’s as though, if I talk the story out, I’ve accomplished what writing would accomplish: putting the words into the world. So I keep the tension inside, and let it emerge through the pen and keys.

These days I’m often offline — after several hours writing and editing, the dog will need to go outside, and I have to shift to another way of being in the world. We go for a run, we go to the beach or up to the hills, we move our bodies. I spend time with people I love. I check email just once or twice a day. This is a good balance for me. I breathe deep, I stretch and move, I read, I cuddle. I sleep, wake early, light the candle, and begin again.

What are you attending to this year? What would it mean to give something you love, something that maybe you have been neglecting, more of your attention? Are you getting ready to believe that you deserve what you love, what has drawn itself to you in this lifetime? Rumi said, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” What if you believed that for ten minutes today? What would that mean for your writing, or your life? Give yourself some space with this idea in your notebook, and let the words draw you someplace surprising…

Thank you for being here with me, for reading these words, and for all you share with the world. Thank you for the generosity of your attention. Thank you for your words.

 

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Dirty Words: Announcing our new monthly erotic writing playdate

Posted on January 23, 2014 | Leave a comment

MuchaScribeComing in February!

Dirty Words
a monthly erotic writing playdate
A half-day erotic writing group open to all
Fourth Saturday of every month, 1-4:30 pm
First playdate meets on Feb 22!

Ever read through a sexy short story and thought, “I’d like to do that!” In this monthly writing group, you can try your hand at some explicit erotic writing.

Come together with a fun and supportive group of writers and dive into your own sexy and surprising new writing! This group is designed to leave you more confident with sexual language, erotic expression, and your own writing practice. You’ll receive immediate and concrete feedback about what’s already working (and hot!) in your writing, and will leave with several new pieces of work.

Don’t be surprised if you find, as have previous participants, that you’re more comfortable discussing your own sexual desires after practicing writing about fictional sex! Bring your notebooks or laptops and your most open mind.

Unless otherwise noted, this group meets on the fourth Saturday of the month. Fee for this group is $25-50, sliding scale. Limited to 10 writers!

Your Dirty Words playdate mistress will be Jen Cross, founder of Writing Ourselves Whole and co-facilitator of the Erotic Reading Circle, who has been leading erotic writing groups since 2002. She tours nationally with the Body Heat queer femme porn tour, and her work has been widely published; find her writing in Women in Lust, The Healing Art of Writing 2010, Visible: A Femmethology (Vol. 1), Best Sex Writing 2008, Nobody Passes, and Naughty Spanking Stories A-Z 2

No previous writing experience necessary! Workshops held in San Francisco at the Center for Sex and Culture (1349 Mission St.); pre-registration is required — please write to jennifer@writingourselveswhole.org or click here with questions or to register.

 

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Another chance to write your story this winter!

Posted on January 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

Rockridge HeartsAre you seeking a space to write that will welcome the depth and complexity of your whole story? Do you want the weekly invitation to write and the knowledge that you will receive honest, kind and generous feedback about your words? Join us at Writing Ourselves Whole, and let your writing flow.

We’ve had to juggle the winter workshop schedule at Writing Ourselves Whole, which means you still have time to register for our survivors writing group or our general-topic daytime writing group:

  • Write Whole: Survivors Write, open to all trauma survivors, now begins Monday evening, February 10 (meets 8 Monday evenings, 6:30-9:00pm)
  • Meridian Writers, a new, general-topic group open to all writers, now begins Wednesday morning, February 12 (meets 9 Wednesday mornings, 9:30am-12:00pm)

Read on for more details about these groups! Contact me if you’d like to join us, and please feel welcome to forward this information to those you think might be interested in joining us.
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Workshop descriptions:

o In the Write Whole: Survivors Write workshop, you’ll gather with other trauma survivors to create new art and new beauty out of life’s difficult and complicated realities. Learn to trust the flow of your own writing, and receive immediate feedback about the power of your words! Remember: we’re open to ALL trauma survivors, and ‘survivor’ is self-defined! Fee is $350; partial scholarships are available for all trauma-centered writing groups.

o Meridian Writers invites you to join a new community of writers who are connecting more deeply with their writing practice. Find your center and write your story. New Wednesday morning group forming now! At the end of our nine weeks together, you will have a new creative community, and a strong body of original writing. Spaces are limited to 9 writers per workshop session. Fee for our regular 9 week workshop is $425. Fees from this workshop help support Writing Ourselves Whole’s workshops for trauma survivors.

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No previous writing experience necessary! All groups use the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method. We meet in Oakland, near Lake Merritt, close to several BART stations. Space is not wheelchair accessible. Spaces are still available, though limited, and pre-registration is required! To write with us, email Jen at jennifer(at)writingourselveswhole.org.

I look forward to writing with you!

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