Tag Archives: historical trauma

July Soul Report: The Future is Here~ Slow Down & Surrender

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My first and foremost curiosity is: How are all of you doing?

This afternoon, my daughter said she felt off. Tired. Unmotivated. Had no inspiration. Didn’t even want to put on makeup— had tried several looks that weren’t working. The makeup part is unusual for her. She is an esthetician and a talented makeup artist. 

She asked me if I was feeling off. I told her no. I went on, “You might think mom is being woo-woo, but a veil has been lifted for many of us right now. This veil protected us from certain realities and allowed us to live in illusion.” 

I went on, “For some this is an incredibly difficult time. For others it is a time of celebration. I am celebrating. And, it makes sense that you are feeling off— you’ve gone through some big changes.”

Weep, and then smile.

Do not pretend to know something

you have not experienced. 

There is a necessary dying…

Very little grows on jagged rock. 

Be ground. Be crumbled,

so wildflowers will come up 

where you are. 

You have been stony for far too many years. 

Try something different. Surrender. 

~Rumi, A Year with Rumi, Coleman Barks 

Btw: Rumi is a fucking gem! If you’ve not read his poetry, find some. If you have, find it again!

Currently, I am not engaged with a large circle of people, but from my small circle, I can tell you EVERY SINGLE PERSON I know has made seismic shifts in the last few weeks. I am also hearing from fellow therapists and social workers that clients are coming in with an unusual amount of challenges and traumas. 

Me

For myself, during this time, I’ve faced the deeper, if not the deepest, psychological wound within myself. It is a wound made from neglect. A wound that has caused incredible suffering, and has been passed down to my daughters, and was passed down to me. It is the generational trauma of neglect, which so many of us feel. Which so many of us endure. It is silent. It is insidious. It is ours. Many don’t know it is there. But now is the time to surrender to our childhood, generational and historical traumas. To bear witness to them. To feel the pain, fear, and sadness they hold. To understand them and their message. To release them and be transformed. These traumas need not stay in our minds, our bodies, our souls any longer.  

These traumas wreak havoc and prey upon EVERYTHING— from our relationships to the countries we live in. For example, President Trump has an entire closet (and then some) full of unprocessed trauma that is damaging the United States. But, in this post, I am not going to go into that. The focus for this post is to report that the FUTURE IS HERE. The new paradigm, the cosmic shift, the new reality— that some of us have been talking about for a while— happened. In a very real sense, we made it AND there’s more to come. 

For July’s Soul Report the message I am sharing to help assist us is: Slow Down & Surrender 

June’s Soul Report was also about slowing down, slowing down in order to sense the subtleties of energies, patterns and dynamics. This was to help us prepare for this big shift that has now occurred. 

July’s slowing down is about getting clear now that some internal debris has been lifted. It’s about commitment and being conscious participants in our ongoing personal growth and transformation. It is about creating our own Bodhi Tree (under which Siddhartha Gautama became enlightened) moments. These moments are glimpses of insight about who we are and who we are not. These moments build upon each other to become a lighted chain that leads us to greater awakenings of who we really are.  

The root of suffering is attachment.

~The Buddha

As I reflect upon my own journey thus far, it is indeed true that the root of suffering is attachment. How I experience attachment comes from a psychological perspective that has to do with attachment trauma. As infants and small children, if we did not securely attach to an adult, we have already made our first step into suffering. If a secure adult did not answer our cries for nourishment, protection and affection, we attach to this trauma. If a secure adult did not answer our questions about life or we were reprimanded when doing so, we attach to this trauma. If we were exposed to a caregiver who was addicted, we attach to this trauma. The list of traumas are many. 

As adults we now have attachment trauma. We feel neglected, abandoned and empty. We put out our feelers, literally our feelings of fear and insecurity, and find our fix- the thing to fulfill us. Mine was, and is, a 32-year codependent relationship. For others it can be anything: shopping, success, drugs, gambling……….and the list continues. The cycle also continues. And I, who have spent my entire life living and processing my attachment trauma, want to do whatever I can to help and assist others as many have done for me.  

And that my friends, was a tangent, but apparently a needed one. 

And brings me to what occurs as we process our traumas: space. Space in our minds. Space in our bodies. Space in our souls. This space allows for generosity for ourselves and every living thing. This space allows for greater efficiency so that when new traumas or challenges come, we can process them more quickly and easily. This space allows for our natural desires and tendencies to surface and create a more satisfying, deliberate and peaceful presence. This space allows us to see, perhaps for the first time, what our burning desire is— that blue flame inside us all that keeps us going and brings us everywhere. 

What once kept me going was the desire to fill my empty space. But this was only part of the journey and leads me to discover what actually is within that empty space. I am here now, and I celebrate and anticipate its unfolding. 

I am here to process and hold space with any of you moving through these shifts and changes. I am here to answer any questions you might have about this month’s Soul Report. 

Contact me here.

Thank you, and you’re all doing great work!

~The Soul Reporter

Trigger warning: are you doing it?

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PLEASE READ THIS BECAUSE IT’S IMPORTANT AND I WANT TO BE HEARD, NOT FOR MY STORY, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO DEAL WITH THIS SHIT EVERY DAY (and stay with me, at the end I have a point that I believe needs to be understood):

I’ve had several conversations and confrontations with family (and others) about race. That is bound to happen when me, a white woman, has sex with a black man and gets pregnant at 19. When I was young and met a new boy, my dad would always ask, “Is he black?” This question always left me with a pit in my stomach. “Yes dad, he’s black.” When I met my now husband at 15 I told my dad about him. My dad asked his usual question and I answered in the usual way, but I followed up with, “But he reads and he’s in a bowling league.”

Just the other day in an environment surrounded by people who serve the oppressed and mentally ill, when it came up my husband was black, the next question was, “Ohhh….(awkward pause)…..what work does he do?” I got that same pit in my stomach. I told her what he did, and felt the urge to follow up with, “And he’s a supervisor,” but I stopped myself. Let me say this loud and fucking clear: I DO NOT NEED TO MAKE MY HUSBAND ANYTHING FOR YOU WHITE PEOPLE. He is the man I chose and choose and our love brought two amazing human beings in the world who have brown skin, and since their early years have been treated differently because of it. I learned early on that I can never ever know or fully understand their experience as biracial girls/women living in this world. This is a hard pill to swallow when as a mother you want to go through everything with them. In this instance, I cannot.

When I get into the conversations and confrontations about race and/or politics for that matter, they don’t go well. I get unfriended, unfollowed and was even told by one family member to go fuck myself and another, “no one likes you.” In none of these instances did a family member even consider what I am standing for- my family of color and not just my family- all families and people of color. To me, this makes no goddam sense. But, whatever. I have had enough confrontations to know that I no longer want to use my energy to argue with the ignorant who are steeped in their biases and prejudices.

But here is what I do want to confront and this is the actual point of this post: I am going to school to be a social worker. I’ve had many years of therapy, on and off, and especially lately there is a buzz word we mental health professionals use a lot and the word is TRIGGER. It’s an important concept and it is one I want people to me more thoughtful of.

When people are traumaitized, whether it is war, hurricanes, robbery, sexual assault, accidents or being of brown skin in this country and living with what is called historical trauma these traumatized people get triggered and it can be by anything, but especially anything that brings up the trauma. After my accident, loud sounds made me jump. I had flashbacks of being in the car. People can develop PTSD if these symptoms persist. Anyway, right now specifically, people of color are being triggered constantly and this is what is so bothersome to me right now.

When people post memes and messages that fits their narrative, that they think is funny but has an underlying message of racism, they are triggering people who don’t find it funny, that are living with historical trauma, and probably on top of very recent trauma. When our stupid president talks shit about NFL players taking a knee- that’s a trigger. When someone likes an ignorant post about players taking a knee that isn’t supportive of their cause, that is a trigger.

The insensitivity I have witnessed and witness at present is startling and heart wrenching. Many people do not seem to be sensitive or thoughtful enough to choose their words and messages and behaviors and even non-verbals with the idea in mind of others- how others feel- how others might experience the world. And, I can already here the grumbling. Sensitivity gets a bad wrap. Who has time, and these libtards and bleeding hearts should just get over it and stop taking everything so seriously. Well, just know that if you’re one of these people that thinks this way, in my opinion you fit in one of two places: you are either in so much pain due to your own trauma that you don’t think it’s safe to be sensitive or you’re just really comfortable and stay comfortable within the world you’ve created with people who look and think like you. Or maybe it’s a combo of both.

Whatever it is I am asking everyone, even those who are already super sensitive and thoughtful and I know who a lot of you are, to be even more thoughtful and sensitive. I am not suggesting we do the emotional work for others and became caretakers. But I am suggesting we really open ourselves beyond our narratives and comforts and biases and even what we find as funny and appropriate and consider our words, actions and behaviors first. We have become such a reactive and impulsive group of people and having a so called leader in the oval who is the most impulsive human I have ever witnessed doesn’t help to make us better. Unless of course we use this very disturbing moment we have with this man to become even more of a bleeding heart- to care even more about people, all people, to commit to never bully another human being or to say ignorant, divisive things. To never ask their child who dates a person of color, “Is he black?” This shit hurts and it’s time we all do our best to NOT CAUSE ANY MORE HARM.

The Soul Reporter via Facebook.