trauma

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Island Blog – Travelling in Light

Last full day, today, under an African sun, and, although I am (always) sad to leave this beautiful country, I am ready to fly back through space and time, to land in my own country, my own life. Visits to Africa heal me, help me move forward in renewed hope, and also allow me, by some magic, to let go of whatever gave me ants in my pants during the year before. This time, I had some tough shit to go through, the legacy of which rippled on through my body and affected my mind in ways that surprised me. I was, I thought, quite in order with myself. Then, when I fell very ill, and cancer was discovered, I still felt in order with myself. I am strong, a warrior, I can overcome this, or so I thought, and, to a high degree and with the assistance of an excellent surgeon and tremendous medical support and expertise, I did, or we did. But the body holds the score, as we all know, so that, even when a mind is made up to survive and thence to thrive, the body lags behind. In turn, this lagging thing affects a mind, so that, although I had moved on, I was constantly reminded of a new frailty. And a new strength. It was confusing, as if a fight was on between body and mind. No matter how clear I was on my decision to move on after such a trauma, I was often reminded that a new compromise was required.

This visit, around family, under sun, inside adventures and conversations, I rise. Not by mental force alone, but with a gentling of body and mind, as if they now move together and as one. I said I knew myself before, but was still aware of anxieties and hesitations around my new limits. Now, I work with those limitations as if they aren’t limitations at all, but just who I am now. And I have learned from this change, this rather strange pretence that I can force a collusion between mind and body, regardless of trauma, as if it was nothing much and blow it away on the winds. That doesn’t work, I know it now, even if that determination has held me up and bright in 2024. What I needed was time to heal and the patience to accept that truth, to walk with it, open and humble, until all of me finally got together again.

We have had many wonderful adventures, all the while sharing ideas and jokes, plans and observations. We have watched the wild Atlantic and swum in the warm Indian Ocean. We have seen humpbacks breach, dolphins burst the waves wide open, colourful birds flying overhead; we have dined and wined and picnicked and walked through Fynbos, Fleis, and across miles of white sand ,peppered with an array of spectacular shells I never see back home. We have seen the sun set the ocean on fire, stayed with friends who live between mountains so high as to disappear into cloud. We have wandered among shops in Capetown, laughed at the terrible driving whenever it rains, and stood in awed silence beneath the upside down stars. And all the while, I could feel the gentle hand of a natural healing.

I know I fly back into winter, but there will always be a winter. I know I don’t have enough warm clothing. I know I will have to drive back to the ferry through tricky weather and that the ferry may not sail through gale force winds. I also know my wee home awaits me, the wood burner, the candles, my friends, my community. I return as me, but renewed, re-jigged, at peace with my life, because I have travelled in light, one that is strong and sustainable, one that tells me who I am, and who I am is just fine with me.

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Island Blog – Inscape

Today was modified. After the busy dogsitting day, I knew I was going to allow myself to phew, a lot. Although I woke fine and dandy, I always do, as it is fantabulous just to wake at all when so many do not, I had a weary in my bones and an oldness sort of thinking. There’s a swingbat on that sort of thinking, because I am old and happy about it but I do not like the slump of it, the challenge of it, (thanks Julie) and, although I refuse to couch, or potato, myself, I confess to thoughts that beckon. You could just flop. You could just allow. You could, trust me, you could. I hear that voice, but I cannot take said voice seriously. I am the daughter of a life, of strife, of trauma and regret. I have witnessed and avoided, I have run away and returned, I have no weapons, no desire for revenge nor violence but I have lived a life that, on reflection, only I could have lived. And that thinks me.

I awoke to cats on, not my tin, but my sunroom roof, cats running, not mine, but my neighbour’s, beautiful tortoiseshells and great mousers. I no longer hear the squeaks of the mouse family within my drystone walls, no longer do they keep me awake at night as they scurry about their ordinary lives of survival in my loft, no longer do I watch them rush across what is to them a great divide as they seek fallings of bird seed. I am mousey silent, and there’s a think. Is it ok that these lovely cats are keeping the mice down, or is it ghastly annihilation? Short term, and don’t we always think this way? It thinks me.

A sudden was a young woman stopping at my door with her dog. Fancy a walk? she asked, and I was in. We walked and talked, I said I can’t go far, and she said no problem, just tell me when you want to go back. Safe in that support, I found strength in my legs and breath as we meandered around her life and mine and we both caught that connection which is everything. Neither of us fit into a category, neither want labels, both have known trauma and difficulties. Well, who hasn’t? I believe that our key is to recognise this and to change ourselves somehow. I am further ahead than she, I know this. Our inscape tells us who we were back then, the business success, the marital contributor, the mother, father, friend. We did well. Yes, we made mistakes, ones we may still hold onto as ID, but we are somewhere else now.

And that can mean lost. I know it. ID is a security. When that is taken away, we can become amoeba, floating aimlessly in our loss of identity. What I have learned is to notice that loss, to halt those aimless thoughts and to challenge them. I may be not who I thought I was, but the very ‘was’ of this lost thing is of my past. Can I let it go, that ID of whom I was and whom I believed in for so long? I am always working on that one.

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Island Blog – The Options Option

I never like being told what to do. Receiving that Tolding, I feel trapped. Trapped with No Options. This Tolding person is not asking me if I want to or even can do the thing he or she just barfed out and I am required to catch it whether I like the shape, smell, story or point of it. I am forcibly contained within four walls, either of the home, the relationship, the school, the playground or the workspace. Limited, big time. No, not limited, because limited suggests an option, even if that option option is as thin as web or as elusive as a down feather in the wind. Trapped describes more accurately.

As children we are required to cope with a deal of confusion when someone at least 4 feet taller than we are tells us what to do. It’s like smoke, pervasive and choking and equally confounding. We cannot see our way through this confusive smoke. We want to run, but to where? We are confounded, surprised, upset and paralised. But we move, we go, we do, because we trust the Tolding person and we do not, yet, trust our young selves. As we grow to adulthood, we may believe we can now, at last, decide for ourselves as to whether or not we obey like slaves. Bizarrely, a great many of us do not grab that option of independent thinking, nor do we grow appropriate courage nor the legs to stand firm when we do not agree with an order. How come? We saw our own parents barking orders quite the thing for a whole childhood and we are now old enough to be parents ourselves. But infuriatingly still we find ourselves running to obey doctors, accountants, lawyers, people-behind-desks, ministers, husbands, wives, teachers, and many many more. We might even obey without realising we obey. What I mean by that is when we find ourselves in a situation wherein we feel obliged to someone, duty bound to someone, owing a debt to someone; guilty around someone. and we do their bidding regardless of how it makes us feel. I could go on, but I won’t.

Options, that’s the ideal. And to know that we have options. Okay, so let’s pretend we know we have options, anywhere, everywhere, with anyone, anywhere, anytime. I like that. But if I am not prepared, and a trigger authoritarian figure commands the daylight, throwing me into shade, I will perform as an automaton. I will react as I have always reacted, confounded, blinded by their command of smoke, puzzled and wanting to run but stuck to the ground. So what is this ‘know’ thing, the one that sings us options? Perhaps she comes all angel like, winged up and offering freedom and and acceptable refusal to comply. Well, she might. But I cannot get a hold of her.

I am learning, through intensive study and research that the most influential mind control is birthed in childhood. And, I get it. These imprints on my mind will always be there and, unless I bother my butt to look at them, allow them and then release them, they will always and forever influence my behaviour and my knee-jerk reaction to current triggers. I may not remember each incident in childhood when I had to obey or face dire consequences, as fact, but I will always remember how those times made me feel, and at that time when I had no voice/no choice I remember feeling hurt, lost, dismissed, rejected, ignored and judged.

Well who didn’t! Maybe that should have been a question, but trauma in childhood, no matter how we brush it away in comparison to someone else’s appalling abuse and cruelty, is real, hence the lack of a question mark. The good news is that options are an option. Just ten years ago, depression was ‘all in your mind’. Now we know different. So many of our ‘now’ behaviours and reactions to others stem from those early days, not because they remind us of the actual events, but because we remember how we felt. So what to do? I believe there is only one way if anyone wants to stop feeling judged, criticised, put down, rejected or mocked. And it is simply Research. There are a zillion books out there now, penned by those who have found a way to shake off their past. We also know now that trauma does not just relate to soldiers coming back from war, or abused children, women, men. You don’t have to have witnessed something terrible. What was once brushed off as nothing much, or all in your mind, now has a spotlight on it. It could be a fear of being alone in the dark, a cold mother, a derisive grandmother or primary school teacher. It could be bullying, marginalisation because you had to wear specs aged 4 and everyone laughed at you. It could be you took ages making a gift for a mother who laughed and handed it back. Do Better. It could be anything. It is, without question, trauma for a child, and the feelings of shame, rejection, hurt and judgement will never leave no matter how long a life you live. What happens is that when someone meets the same feelings as a result of an encounter in the adult world, the welter of emotions is overwhelming. It seems bizarre. We talk it down and scurry on in the same old shoes. But if we want something to change then that change is not external. It is within.

And this is why it is so vital to prepare. preparation is everything. It isn’t about a clever rebuttal, nor a running away, and all about doing the inner work. I know it. I do it. It is the only road to the Options Option.

Trust me.