Tag Archives: trauma transformation

questioning the broken story

patterns-closeIn Tuesday’s post, I said: How we tell our stories matters. The words we use for our stories matters. The metaphors and symbolic language, the imagery – all matter, all influence how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, our physical being, our agency, our history and our possibility.

For instance, consider the story inside the word broken as it gets applied to survivors of violence. Broken is commonly incorporated as a metaphor into survivor stories – he left me broken. He ruined me. She left me in pieces. He tore apart my soul.

I climbed into this fragmented narrative, this narrative of fragmentation, when I began to identify as an incest survivor. Identity is a story: we don’t just take on a label when we identify as something, we take on the narratives that accompany that identity – we have to interact with that identity’s story. The incest/trauma survivor story contained these: “broken, ruined, dead.”

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opening to new stories

Thomas King writes, in The Truth About Stories, “Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous.”

What is a story? It is a rehashing of events, a narrative, an anecdote, a lie, a truth. The dictionary isn’t helping me here, just giving me synonyms. What is a story? It’s a telling or a making up. It’s offering an account of an experience, so someone else can can come to know or understand what happened. It’s a fabrication, a weaving into existence something that wasn’t, that didn’t exist, until we put it into precise words.

 Story is contextual. And who determines a story’s context? “She’s telling stories” is the way some folks call us liars. But we know what truths come from storyteller’s mouths.

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What was it in me that expected and wanted to live?

dancing is the solution

Good morning this Wednesday morning. How is your heart today? What is the light doing with the edge of your teacup, with your mirror, with your windowpane? How are the words finding you? This morning I was up early, 3:30 and the body said, Ready? Let’s go. I had almost two hours with the candle and the notebooks before the light came. That’s some heart-feeding time there.

But don’t I always go back to the same places? The dreary trauma, the swollen girl lost and locked inside? Isn’t there more to that child? Where else can I find in that girl to fall into? What about the endeavorer, the explorer? Talk back to the girl who spent a lifetime listening to birds, harvesting sourgrass to eat, investigating every backyard, gulley and alleyway — what constitutes her humanity now? How did her curiosity survive all that he put her through? The only way I can think is to keep writing. But these bones aren’t mine anymore.

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begin again

graffiti of a stone self wearing a manacles that have broken free of their chainsGood morning this Monday morning. Outside, the light is just bringing me the green of everything that’s finding fall to be a delight; inside, the candles remind me that the day is still early. I tend to berate myself if I haven’t started writing before 6 (let’s not even mention 7), but today there’s a different voice in my head. The dog has her ball. Today, morning looks like something of promise, not a place of loss.

This is the song in my head this morning, ringing over and over, singing me into this morning. And this is what I want to say today – it’s not too late.

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touch(ed)

graffiti of a hand, fingers poised to snapGood Thursday morning! It’s cool here so far today — the tea is skullcap & moroccan mint: relax and wake up, I guess.

Sophie has learned a new game that I adore — we got this at puppy school. I put out my hand flat and say “Touch,” and she puts her nose to my hand. She learned this quick, partly, I think, because I am so excited about it, so we practice a lot. When I first watched our teacher demonstrate this trick with her assistant’s dog, I was underwhelmed — So, she touches your hand with her nose. Big deal. It’s not like she’s really doing anything. But then we learned it on the first day of class, and I learned that she is doing something! I can’t stop asking Sophie to touch — it feels like a real connection between us: I ask, and she reaches her neck forward, or looks around for where my hand is, finds where her nose can go, then presses out, reaches for me. She’ll come back to attention, when she’s distracted by smelling for deer, to give me a touch.

What a wonderful thing to teach your pup to do, to get to ask them for, to get to accept from them. When she’s curled up next to the couch and it’s time for bed, she won’t budge (so far) for come, but she came running last night when I asked her to touch!

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passionate reason

pictograph graffiti -- an eye, a heart, and a female sheep (eye love ewe)This morning it’s nice and cool out — I woke up to the commingled sounds of birds waking and foghorns warning. Nice to be in that space between alarm and exuberance.

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We’ve got a full house for this weekend’s Writing the Flood — that means more opportunities for folks to connect with one another and build writing community. Plus I’ve got all these new workshop ideas after spending a weekend with AWA facilitators. I’m looking forward to Saturday!

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renewing old strengths

graffiti of a small green-eyed child reading a book, with a stack of books next to her; the title of the book reads, "the more I read/the more I know"This morning we just had clean, flush air that was bulbous and bright with the early morning sun — the light reflects off the windows in the houses across the bay, on Belvedere Island, and they look like talismans, no, like beacons. No animal friends, though — well, lots and lots of birds, always.

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Writing the Flood is on Saturday, 7/23 this month — want to join us and give some time to your writing?

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when do we let our dreams come true?

stencil graffiti, all green capital letters: Stop. Look upGood Friday morning! Here’s a longing for you, a hello from young lettuces, strawberry plants, new eggplant leaves, tall mint and basil, furry borage leaves, tiny, reaching arugula. No owls or deer on our walk this morning, though we did meet a couple of dogs, and at least one of them we didn’t bark at, so that’s some progress.

Last night I dreamed that my home, our home, was a homebase for a good friend (who, in this real life, just recently moved far away) — she was a world traveler who would come back and stay with us whenever she came through town. She had her own key, could let herself in, and I met her in the bathroom, when she was showering, and I was filled with this kind of deep joy to find that she’d come back. It was a sense that what we had was enough to share.

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small screech sounds, something full-moon related

graffiti -- a crescent moon smiling at the young child sitting at its pointTime for a 15 minute write — the dog is rolling around a toy that releases food when she turns it. this is helping her slow down when she eats. I could have used one of those at several different times in my life. We are working on sit-stay, working on heel, working on walking with a loose leash. We are testing and pushing each other. Yesterday was her first bath at a pet store up in Strawberry Village. Is this what I want to be writing about? Yesterday, on my self care day, everything was all about Sophie. Even the time that I took away from her, letting myself go to the cafe for some writing after her lunch (the first time I’d left her alone when I was by myself — the Mr and I together had left her alone, walked out of the house together, but this was the first time she and I said goodbye just the two of us, and the first time I walked back in to let her know I’d always come back), I spent writing about her or listening to a podcast about training your dog to walk on a loose leash. I guess that’s what new furry-baby-parenthood is like.

We had a couple of frustrating walks yesterday, she and I; she was too excited (how I hate using that phrase for a puppy — isn’t it her job to be excited?) and I wasn’t doing a good job of calming my own self down. I thought about how dogs can read and respond to emotions, and how, when I’m tense and anxious, she’s going to sense and react to that. And that stressed me out, too, given that I have spent the last 30 years feeling tense and anxious a good percentage of my everydays. So here’s another thing she’s going to get to help me work on — my quality of presence,  being actually all the way here, being solidly in this moment with her — calm and focused, clearly in charge. Since these are all things I’ve actively avoided being for a number of years, it makes sense, I guess, that I’m frustrated and in the midst of a serious learning curve.

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“change is the only poem”

cartoon of a brown-haired woman with a megaphone standing in front of a crowd all holding signs -- the ones near her say, "The moment of change" "is the only poem"

"the moment of change is the only poem" -- Adrienne Rich (artist Karen Rustad created this image for her freshman year 'graffiti wall)

Good morning!

I should be getting in the shower right now, not just starting my blog post.

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