Tough Cookie 💪🍪

Today my friend said something about how she is one “tough cookie” and it made me smile so big because I’d been thinking the same thing. I love the sisterhood we share. To outside observers this friend & I really couldn’t be more different. She is a single black woman living in NYC studying fashion. I’m a single white mom living in the Midwest working a 9-5. But this friend and I have all this inside stuff in common; not the categories we fall into, but the determination, the passion for life, the courage. We share that. This friend and I met in high school, and over the years we’ve had very different experiences but the entire time our lives have ran parallel; it’s like we are meant to know one another. We cross paths effortlessly. We are meant to share these moments. Sometimes you can’t see a persons inner strength under the facade their outside appearance can & does present. You think fashion or you think mom and “tough” is probably not the first adjective that pops in your head. But man: this friend and I both have overcome a lot. And we both continue to push limits, both those we feel externally placed upon us and those limits we put upon ourselves. So while I can’t deny the very real differences we have, we share the will to face a world filled with obstacles and roadblocks. Women are told all the time how we ought to show up – often in mixed incongruent ways. We share the courage to follow and speak our Truth in the face of shaming criticism and even hatred. We share a fierce independence, intellectual curiosity, and the desire to transcend the roles prescribed for us. We want more. And we’re tough cookies together.

Obligatory flex pic

The Cops

k.flay manages to speak the thing I think so many of us felt at one point or another. I’m not super familiar with her music, but I can’t stop thinking about this song.

Rapunzel

Oftentimes I feel like Rapunzel, locked away in a tower, separate from the world. Even though physically I’m with you, it often feels like I am light years away. All my life I wanted to be rescued, wanted, loved, just as any child does.

There was no unconditional love in my family of origin. My survival for as long as I can recall has depended upon my ability to take care of others. As long as I could keep them I happy I might be safe. If I’m needed I won’t be abandoned. I was not ever safe, so I built thicker walls around my isolation, insulating myself from the world. No one can hurt me if they don’t know me. No one can reject me if they don’t really see me. No one can rescue rapunzel if she doesn’t let them know she’s there. As a child this helped me to survive the unthinkable, somehow giving me the fortitude to hold on & manage a sense of normalcy. Cocooned in my own world I was not vulnerable & I could separate myself from my reality. No one outside could see the reality and so no one could see me.

Now that I am grown I still want to feel safe. Learning that I deserve to be loved for me & not because I am needed has been scary. Knowing I had to leave a toxic situation because my children deserved better meant I must deserve better too. I still don’t know how to feel safe; even though physically I am fine, how do I get away from the memories & demons in my head? Oftentimes I’ve been so caught up being the prince rescuing others from their own towers of isolation that I have not seen the mighty fortress which I built around my own tower. Impervious to attack, these protective walls no longer help me, they just lock me away from any authentic relationships I might have. Tearing down these walls is a necessary pain. I want to be close to others. I want to be able to tell someone – anyone – how I really feel inside. The only way I can do that is if I let you see me instead of the walls. And once I destroy the fortress maybe I will be strong enough to take a risk & let down my hair.

From The Madness Vase

“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase

Piñata

“Piñatas”
After Tina Mion’s “Pinata” painting

To the man on the bus I overheard tell a woman in conversation – presumably a friend:
“you are too ugly to be raped…”

…Dear man on the bus,
Tell the one in five women of this country, that they are beautiful,
their four counterparts, spared torment ugly.

Tell the one in three women of this world,
That you will not make piñatas of their bodies.
Watch morsels of them, spill greedily
to the famished smiles of your ignorance
Shaped like bloodthirsty children. How your words
Hit repeatedly, until they broke open
Like shattered papier-mache cradle
How their blood flowed like candy until Hollow insides
Jaws mangled into misfortune from when they tried to scream
For Legs torn crucifix
Loud cry of eyes muted
Tell them how beautiful their silence is.

…Dear man on the bus
From smothering cat-calls,
to quickened pace of trek home
Rape with a dress on.
Rape without a dress on.
Raped as children, who couldn’t even dress themselves.
Tell them how ugly their consent was.

Tell the depression, the post traumatic stress
The unreported. Tell Mahmudiyah,
A footnote in the history of crimson Iraqi sands
How beautiful the military’s silence is
Cloaked in how we don’t ask, and they
didnt tell, in the name of country.

Tell Elizabeth Fritzl
How pretty the flame of her skin was,
that turned her Father a torturous moth of incest
‘til she gave birth to 7 choices she never had

…Dear man on the bus
Tell my 11th grade student, Lauren
That she wanted it, her beauty had them coming.
Tell my 7th grade student, Mickayla
That she wanted it, her beauty had him coming.
Tell my 3rd grade student, Andre
That he wanted it, his beauty had him coming.

Tell the 8 year old me,
The God in me I loved fiercely was so gorgeous,
that cousin twice my age,
wanted to molest the Holy out of me,
Peeled raw
until I was as ugly as she was.

Rape is a coward hiding its face in the make-up of silence.
A murderous fruit, that grows best in the shadows of taboo.
A Vietnam prostitute with red white and blue skin,
A murmur of bodies left vacant
by the souls that spend years, pills, poems, and death
trying to learn to reclaim them.

…Dear nameless assailant
How this bus carries the burden of your stick and blindfold Patriarchy
that has only taught you to treat women like ceiling strung jugs
Violence claws up from your throat,
Like a monstrous accomplice to the 97 percent
that will never see jail

…Dear man on the bus
As these words fall out of your mouth,
I pray no one finds your children beautiful enough
to break open, making a decorative silent spectacle out of them.

The stumbling blocks

“Abuse when you are a child is not ‘daddy issues.’  It is a psychological stumbling block for adult relationships.  It is amazing to see by our actions and what we accept just how much of the abuse we experienced is internalized.”   – an anonymous survivor

“As the survivor struggles with the tasks of adult life, the legacy of her childhood becomes increasingly burdensome.  Eventually…the defensive structure may begin to break down.” – Judith Herman, M.D.

“Repetition is the mute language of the abused child.” – Richard Rhodes

Just when you think you are done, here you are again, learning just how deeply the experience has impacted your day to day actions.  You want to think the coping skills you used to survive (the same ones that destroy your ability to function in adulthood) have moved on and that you are finally “arrived.”  Nope.  They are a part of you and even as you grow they hold on, “like the resonances of a temple drum that aren’t heard so much as felt in the hearts cavity.”

In recent months I find myself confronting my initial childhood trauma more directly than ever before.  There is no more denying that this is still with me, and perhaps my need to confront it head on is stronger than ever before.  Research says that oftentimes survivors experience a “change in equilibrium of close relationships” such as a birth, death, divorce, etcetera that precipitates a break down of the defensive structures built up out of necessity as a child.  This is a GOOD thing: repeated trauma in childhood essentially deforms the personality, causing adaptations to maladjusted/dysfunctional norms.  These adaptations are immature psychological defenses needed by a child to survive, but they prevent the development of an integrated person in adulthood.   So this breakdown of defensive structures is a positive step, despite the fact that it is painful in this moment.  Pain is not forever.

I am learning quite a bit about the neurological and psychological aspects of trauma, and honestly I find comfort in studying the academic research related to the day-to-day experiences I am having.  What I am learning is that the way I show up in life right now makes perfect sense in light of the trauma I experienced as a child.  For example, I struggle with having a narrative of my abuse.  I feel the memory of it, but I can’t tell you linear details.  Science tells us that this is because our brains do not process trauma in the frontal cortex (where narrative and stories are held).  In a traumatic event, our higher brains (executive function) shut down and all memories are stored in our lower (this is the brainstem, which controls the essentials such as breathing) and mid-brain (the mid-brain includes our limbic system – the fight or flight/danger emotions).  In addition, the frontal cortex isn’t even fully developed until adulthood.  As a result, I cannot verbally explain my abuse and it almost feels like there is a wall locking me in; it is like I am this close to explaining something and having it all make sense, but the words just will not come out. There is a doctor, Bessel Van der Kolk, who is doing some really fascinating research on this.  If I could, I would just sit in this gentleman’s office and let him map out my whole head.  Knowing that scientists can actually SEE the PTSD in my brain through a scan is refreshing.  It gives me a name and therefore a bit of a solution.

In addition to the neurological science, the psychology of trauma tells me that based both on the skills that I have and the skills that I lack that it makes sense that I have chosen relationships which require me to relive the trauma.  My relationships are textbook: “driven by the hunger for protection and care” and “haunted by the fear of abandonment or exploitation.”  My keen sense of empathy?  Strong sense of loyalty? Although these traits can be incredibly positive, they are also hallmarks of a person who was abused as a child and learned how to manage it best they could.  When they are out of check, the tools I used to survive become like kryptonite and can get me into trouble – choosing partners that aren’t healthy, numbing my feelings with instant gratification, care-taking in order to feel wanted as opposed to doing it out of pure composition or selfless love.

There are three major forms of adaptation: dissociative defenses, development of a fragmented identity, and pathological regulation of emotional states.  Children in an abusive environment have to adapt  – finding safety in unsafe homes, power in helplessness, control in terror; all these things must compensate for the failures of adults meant to care for a child, whether that adult is the abuser or the adults who did not protect the child.   In order to adapt, children learn to disassociate (called “double think” by Dr. Judith Herman) which is essentially to minimize, rationalize, or excuse abusive behavior at a minimum, but can be a trance like state or a completely fragmented personality.  I tend to shut down in emotionally charged situations, oftentimes I make excuses for the abuse my father subjected me to (and for the adults who did not protect me, for that matter) and I even dissociate in environments that remind me slightly of the abuse.  At times this is not enough, and children learn to blame themselves (“double self” or seeing themselves and their innate badness as the cause for the abuse). Double self can lead to all sorts of behaviors, many of which I see in myself:  Overachieving to camouflage the problem and to placate abusers, difficulty right-sizing emotions for the issue at hand, feelings of intense shame or guilt, and development of contradictory identities (debased and exalted selfs).  Issues with pathological regulation lead to states of dysphoria – the coalescing of grief, fear, rage, and aloneness.  Some children cannot manage the feelings and they come out in physical responses – self harm, gastrointestinal issues, migraines, etcetera.  Others experience hypervigilance – I am overly aware of changes in mood or tension around me, and sometimes I catch myself falsely identifying cues as dangerous that really are not.  All of these adaptations allow the child to survive abuse and preserve the appearance of normality.  However, upon arrival into adulthood, these adaptations become a prison.

These defenses have been being chipped away since I was much younger, but it is kind of similar to peeling an onion.  The outer layers are easier to manage; the center is stronger and definitely hurts more. I see now that I am able to love and protect my own children in ways I have never been able to lend to myself.  No one ever loved or protected me the way I do for my children.  I deserved to be honored as a child in that way, so now I am working to give that to myself.  I am in the center, and with the breakdown of these more insidious core defenses I am in a place where I am both excited confused.  Who am I now?  How do I sit in quiet without my mind wandering to dark places that I can’t escape?  What could I do that I haven’t done before now that I can shed these adaptations?  Who do I WANT to be? What am I afraid of?  Practicing intentional mindfulness, listening to my true instincts, and by being gentle with myself I am working to answer these questions and to try and be awake for this journey.  When I catch myself slipping into the old coping mechanisms, I am working not to shame myself, but rather to remember that 30 years of adaptation to dysfunction won’t disappear overnight.

I am not damaged, I am not weak.  I have overcome more in the first chapters of my life that some people will ever experience. Finally I am in a place where I can write that, mean it, and know that I do not have to go backwards ever again.

Books that relate to this post:

Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman MD

The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook by Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D.

The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz

Catalyst for Change

Lately I have been reframing the way I have been looking at my life.  It is really easy for me to despair about how unfair something is, or to be filled with anger at the unjustness in the world.  Rather than wallow in that space, I have began to see the more recent challenges in my life as a catalyst for change; the opportunity to see that there is space here, time to to really focus on the core of me.  The tools I developed for living as a child in an abusive home do not work for the life I want to have; it is only in this new place of discomfort that I can finally put them down.  I want to feel free, to feel at peace, and to relish in this sense of autonomy I am feeling for the first time in my life.

Mpls mayoral election

Politics are so off-putting. For once I want a candidate who is authentic and that I can get behind. As easy as it is to get frustrated with my peers’ apathy with the process I have to admit that I understand. The game playing has real impacts on lives. I’d love to see a candidate who focuses on equity, privilege institutionalized into our systems, and education who can get real and make true change, take political risks, and actually lead. I’m completely torn about this Mpls mayoral race and honestly I think it matters more than people realize.

They put the food on the table but

Sometimes I hate music fans because they feel like they own this person & this emotion that they don’t authentically understand and that is half my heart…. and I’m just home making sure the wheels stay on. And then I feel like an asshole for feeling that way for like 6 million reasons that I’m too impatient to list off right now.

How the anniversary went

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death.  Every year this date is difficult for me, but more so this year.  I am not sure if it is just all the changes going on in my life or that I have been more intentional about my healing; it is probably both.  

I arrived at my office in tears in the morning, and sat in the parking lot looking at my reflection telling myself; “get it together, you can act calm, you can do this for a day.”  I took deep breaths trying to relax and went into work.  Anticipating that this day might be rough, I had planned several meetings and structured my day heavily.  By the end of the work day I was actually feeling pretty good.  I picked up my daughter from school and we played on the playground for an hour.  I cooked dinner for my kids and enjoyed their company.  I spent time with friends and stayed out of the emotional downward spiral I had been starting down that morning.    

This is progress for me; being able to get out of that dark place.  Usually once I begin down that road I have to go through a full process of anger, sadness, fear, regret, and then acceptance before finally some peace comes to me.  This time I was able to see where my thinking was getting me and turn it around.  In the morning, my brain was telling me, “you are a murderer.  You are so crazy and so damaged that you made your father kill himself.”  Even as these thoughts flowed through my mind, I knew they weren’t true.  My father raped me, repeatedly for years.  His father had abused him, he was a drunk, and he was already a very sick person before I was born.  There is no question that abusers were themselves, abused.  There is no question that he knew the damage he had inflicted upon me and could not look himself in the mirror.  

The week before my father died, his wife at the time had left him, he was being investigated for abusing me, and he had called into work sick every day.  My father, despite having a disaster of a personal life, owned a successful business and was an extremely intelligent hard working man.  His calling in sick was so incredibly out of character.  That’s how I knew.  So here I was, the victim of his abuse, trying to take care of my father from 200 miles away, begging him not to harm himself.  I remember him asking me to please lie to the police, that he would get therapy.  He said he wanted to die, that he couldn’t go to jail.  I had begged him not to kill himself; I had known he might do it.  That night he went to his small town’s high school homecoming football game.  He watched from the stands and my childhood best friend saw him.  She later told me that he was clearly drunk and seemed very strange.  They spoke for a few minutes.  Then he left.

That night my father drove himself home from the football game, parked in his garage, closed the door, and left his engine running.  He started his lawnmower too, I suppose to be sure that his attempt worked.  The next morning was a Saturday.  I went to work at my crappy high school job in the mall.  I had a gut feeling that something just was not right.  I called my dad’s business partner and told him that my dad wasn’t physically sick, but rather had been calling into work because he was severely depressed and asked that he go check on my father.  The business partner and a couple of my dad’s employees went out to my dad’s house and found his body in the garage.  He probably would not have been found for a couple of days if I hadn’t called.

 

His death is not my fault.  Even though I know this intellectually, my heart does not fully believe it.  Over the years my ability to manage the loss has improved, but I don’t know that you ever get over a suicide really.  Especially when you play such a pivotal roll in the events surrounding it.  Like an airplane that has been through a war, the protective exterior riddled with bullet holes, I feel like my soul has holes and I have tried desperately to plug them with whatever might make me feel whole again.  As a result I have ended up in relationships that are no good for me, that only further drain me.  

Just recently I finally understood why I continue to end up in these scenarios: I have a fear of abandonment so I will caretake others just to be needed in order to prevent being left again.  Between my father’s death and having a childhood filled with abuse and no one protecting me, fear has a grasp on me.  There is no “normal” or “right” way to cope with trauma, there are just the tools we learn to get by.  Once the trauma has passed, those tools stop working, and that is the point at which I have arrived.  I have outgrown the tools I had.  The crazy thing about it is that I know that I already have demonstrated the courage to overcome my fear, even though I often don’t realize it.  I got myself into college, managed to survive a horrific childhood, have been fiercely independent for most my life, I have raised my children as the primary caregiver, I have always worked, gotten all needs met, and still managed to have a pretty awesome life.  

Which brings me to the point I am at now, where I am asking myself two things:  What are you afraid of?  What do you want?