On I go...

Funny, pissed off, and warm

Fiona Apple is an artist that I have preciously related to for almost a decade. You know someone that perfectly articulates how you feel? Down to the messy, the trialed, the belligerent? That’s her for me.

Like the collective, I have many feelings by the time the full moon shows her face bright in the sky. Today I am sitting with conflicting emotions. I am angry but comfortable. I mean to be real, I’m terrified, but also this is the most comfy I’ve been with being upset. Little things that would kind of tick me off before, inwardly, are no bother because now I am actually ruminating on what truly bothers me, deep down. The masters of my grief.

Deep childhood wounds

I am not necessarily recommending dwelling on the past, as it is known that there is no going back, I am not doc nor McFly. But something I want you to know is that with buried childhood trauma, that shit doesn’t go away. You rework it & rework it every time you shed a new layer (speaking of Dying A Thousand Deaths). You have to reprocess something as profound as this because with new skin comes new coping skills, newfound realizations and reflections and rectifications. This is the cycle of working with trauma firsthand. It can be spooky, as it sure is for me.

Note * trauma seems to be a buzzword these days, but I am not one to tell you if yours is or isn’t. So if you claim it to be, so it is. *

“Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another”

-The Body Keeps the Score

I am finding myself tapping into angry, but cultivating space for safe anger. The type of anger I wasn’t allowed to feel as a small being. And it glows and grows. To name it, I feel a buzzing in my head, and my fingertips are electric. For me, the feelings bubble to the surface often, overflowing the cauldron. The same entities that have induced the trauma in the first place try to make amends. often. I can’t blame them for trying, but at the same time I can’t blame myself for never fully accepting their efforts. My role will always be the skeptic in this case, and that’s a whole other coping skill, a protective condition.

Subsequently, during all this work, or just trying to move along (which is sometimes all we have the capacity for), the same core trauma and patterns repeat themselves in other stories. The same wound, scratching and scabbing, scratching and scabbing. In my humble, honest opinion, I believe therapy is the pure source to help recover and heal from trauma. But, you must be willing to work outside of the office in order for it to transform.

This being said, there are some things you can do on your own that will help calm the mind, trust the body, and work through feelings that leave you in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode.

Fight- Facing threats head-on.

Flight- Fleeing threat, abandoning ship.

Freeze- Unable to move from threat.

Fawn- Trying to please to avoid threat.

I think so many of us, especially women, fall under the fawn branch. This is an innate response in childhood. The infant wants to make mom and dad happy. If it warrants a response of care they will do whatever it takes to get there. This translates later in life: trying to be a leg up to your boss to avoid being reprimanded, Putting yourself down for the sake of uplifting others, or not speaking up when you are d y i n g to. I cannot emphasize enough how detrimental this is to our bodies and psyche, and yet I am caught in the same predicament. We seem to live in a time where speaking up is so desperately needed yet is criminalized and ostracized. How incredible would it be for us to practice, as individuals, speaking up for ourselves or someone else in a vulnerable position, to see how the collective responds and catapults?!

Our individual work is important for the collective breath to rise. We are the moving parts of the universe. This is my philosophy as a social worker.

So as Fiona says, I hope I am described as funny, pissed off, and warm. Because I am plenty humorous, a warm and gentle being who treats everyone and everything with respect, but also I am pissed off and am done being tamed.

How have you been feeling lately?

I am radically unearthed by an oppressive system.

Abundant blessings ∞

-madison renee katherine