Compost and Shift

When the psyche walls off experiences that are too big for us to heal at the time of their occurrence, it is so we can move on with our lives. When left unresolved, those old experiences call out to us like long lost ghosts yearning to be resettled to a peaceful place.

During a shamanic journey with my healer Chris Faulconer in 1989. I was taken by my interior guides to a crystal cave. There were many framed portraits on the walls and several doors leading to different rooms filled with experiences that had been encapsulated  and labeled for later learning, sifting and sorting and eventual healing. 

One of the doors dropped me down a long vertical tunnel. Howling voices surrounded me. I was in free-fall and panicked until I began to recognize the faces of the screaming women whose portraits lined this tube. They were my ancestors - all of whom had suffered a similar fate as I had. Each had been sexually abused, brutalized, molested, violated, or discounted. The aha moment came. I was not suffering from terminal uniqueness on top of it all. I was one (with millions) of women whose early lives were marked by horrors too big to make sense of at the time.

My take-away from that crystal cave was that the human condition is to be conditioned by our experiences. What messages we choose to take away from what we're dealt determine our future actions. I was dead set not to hand down to my two daughters the imprint of my ancestors. With what was at risk, it was essential that I continue my own healing in order to support them to meet whatever lay ahead with their boundaries intact and a whole host of healed "folks in the balcony." I do believe that when we heal ourselves, the waves of healing extend both forward and backward. To heal ourselves means that our efforts benefit those who came before us, healing retroactively those dear ones who did not have the resource or the privilege or luxury to use tools to heal themselves when they were alive. So many women have gone to their graves (men too) with unspeakable horrors living in their cells.

Healing ourselves also frees future generations from growing up in the shadow of unresolved issues of their elders.

Composting those earliest events is an active process. Just as the detritus of making a meal - eggshells, onion skins, garlic husks - don't go to waste, but break down in the soil and make it richer, so, too, the terrible horrible no-good very bad stuff that happens to each of us along the path of life can be composted and used to make our lives richer. It's not that we discount or look away or pretend that the status quo  is OK, (ie: churches condoning and hiding what clergy has done to children) but rather we can look at what befell us as an opportunity to both heal ourselves and to stand up and help heal our community and society as a whole. 

Sexual violence perpetrated against children is abhorrent when we think about it, but we rarely do. We think it happens over there - to kids far away from our clean and tidy existence. In fact, one in four boys is likely to experience molest in his lifetime; one in three girls is. If you count male and female circumcision - at birth or at a later age, around the globe, the numbers go much higher. What is the unhealed trauma that is at the root of acting out against children? Probably exactly what the perpetrator experienced as a child, leaving him/her compelled to repeat the cycle... trying to make sense of the non-sensical. What happens to us that does not get resolved and made sense of in some useful way calls to us from that haunted cave of walled off experiences. 

The usefulness of forgetting what happened is that we can move forward - crippled, but moving. The usefulness of heeding the call to come back to those walled off places within us is to make sense of the senseless, heal it within ourselves so we do NOT act out on others in our tribe of humans. 

"Shift Happens," reads the bumper sticker.

I'm grateful for shift and for my compost bin! 

CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates)

has some useful statistics and ideas for supporting survivors of sexual abuse. Here is their website:

http://www.cacgrd.org/facts-about-sexual-abuse/

The Innocence of Flesh

There is an innocence of flesh. It offers itself to us as storage container for all the as-yet unprocessed life events we’ve lived through. 

“Here,” says the shoulder, “I’ll hold that punch you would have swung to deck your dad had it been safe to do so.”

“I’ll hold that which cannot be digested” says the gut. 

“I’ll hold the terror of times past”, says the diaphragm. 

Each body, of course, has its unique storage system, logical unto itself, not necessarily identical to these examples, though many times we find these basic patterns operating. Where there has been a movement that wanted to happen but was somehow thwarted, the muscles that would have contracted to make the move are sometimes arrested in mid-move. Think of a tennis player making a great overhead serve. What happens if some force stops the move mid- way? 'Servus-interruptus' can yield a frozen shoulder over time if we don't get to complete the move that got all dressed up only to have its follow-through thwarted. The gut often holds the un-digestible bits, while diaphragms hold the arrested breath of fear, and jaws hold the bite, shred, tear response which wants to complete itself.

When confronted with the contortions a body is holding as it lies down on my healing cot, I ask silently, “What CAN have happened to this body (person) that made this pattern of contraction (storage of unprocessed material) seem like a good idea at the time?” A second question is, “How may we support this body to differentiate then from now and to discharge the hyper-adrenalized, hyper-tonic (rigid, tight) muscles?”

So much of bodywork is about developing new working orders… suggesting and helping integrate new levels of organization that may be healthier; new job descriptions for body parts. Sometimes a neck will be thoroughly convinced that its job is to hold the entire world together, when in fact, its primary job is simply to hold up the head. Confusion sets in when the old working orders come into conflict with basic physiology. It manifests as pain or discomfort or limited range of motion.

Listening to the innocence of flesh we discover the brilliance and absolute sanity of this storage system. Fascia, muscles, bones, organs, lymph vessels, the circulatory system, indeed, ALL systems of the body offer themselves up with a selflessness that is endearing. I find it touching, and celebrate the wisdom of the body at every opportunity. “Smart body,” I reassure clients. “Your body has always known how to protect you. Sometimes it got thwarted, by gravity, timing, or freeze being the best option, but it has always known how. It’s our job to listen to the ‘fisherman’s story’… about the one that got away; what the body would have done if only it had the time, space, and chance.” 

Often in a traumatic impact of any sort, things happen so quickly, there’s no time to defend ourselves. (Think fall or car crash or assault.) In other scenarios social proscriptions or contracts may have prevailed that we had to freeze and submit to violence done to us rather than fight back.(Think surgery, domestic violence or children at the effect of out-of-control adults.) We were most vulnerable when we were too little to defend ourselves.

In the case of surgery, there is an artificial and enforced freeze called anesthesia. 

Empowerment can be restored. We can change the default setting of “freeze” so that we have our full complement of survival mechanisms restored. There’s FIGHT and FLIGHT just under the surface where a FREEZE has immobilized us - even the artificial freeze of anesthesia. (Body knows no difference between a skilled surgeon with a scalpel in her hand from a back-alley attacker with a switchblade. Body wants to kick, punch, and/or run away.)  At some point freeze was the perfect survival response. Thwarting of fight/flight may instill physiologic shame (oh, my body couldn’t get me to safety; I couldn’t defend myself in that case; my body failed me.) In fact, our body did the very best it could given all the parameters.

Let us celebrate the wonder, generosity, and intelligence of innocent flesh, thanking our body for the clever job it did to get us through that (whatever our "that" was) and still be alive!

Let's celebrate aliveness as long as it's ours to celebrate!

Snow Business Like Show Business...

Stacey, a barista at Moody's Organic Coffee Bar in Mendocino, says the last time it snowed here was in 2011, just a dusting. This morning's surprise was three-inches on my and my three writing buddies' cars, less than a hundred feet above sea level. Mike and his wonder dog Mookie graciously and almost anonymously cleared all our front windshields as we three gals cleaned the fridge and prepared to pack out of our Air B 'n' B of four days. It was stunning to write and look up from the page and see the ever-changing steely Pacific.  The varied light show played all day!

When I lifted my trunk lid to put suitcases in, all the snow from the back windshield fell into the trunk. It gave me the giggles. So incongruous is snow in my world.  I started whisking it up with the handy-dandy dust pan my honey gave me for sand and stickers and leaves, Oh, My! and tossing the part-hail, part-snow, part-sleet onto the already muddy dirt driveway.

Robins in the yard were surprised and delighted by the treat of sluggish, half-frozen worms for  breakfast. Guess they were moving as slowly as I was - not wanting the glorious write time to end!

I wonder how snow looks to the whales under the surface. They're migrating south toward Baja California - their favorite spawning grounds. It was snowing ON the ocean! How extraordinary that is for California!

The novelty gave Moody's coffee customers stories to tell while we all waited in line for our lattes, cappuccinos, espressos or Americanos. The last time I felt a similar sense of permission to gush enthusiastically to strangers and to listen to their experiences was when the Golden State Warriors won the basketball championship in 2015 (the first of three times!) Throughout Oakland and beyond, barriers melted away between classes, genders, races, and ages. Everyone was talking about their experience of the winning game and Love for the Dubs. 

Sunday morning in Mendocino, the topic was cold white stuff falling on everyone equally.

Next, I suppose the water-cooler-hot-topic will be the Oscars. With so many films with diverse casts, I think it will be a record-breaking year that will lead many to sigh, "FINALLY!" 

This is Show Biz at its better... not Snow White.

 Snow on Mount Cobb above Healdsburg... Pens and Needles Writer's Retreat at Bishop's Ranch, February 4 through 7, 2019

Snow on the deck of the Air B 'n' B in Mendocino. That's the glorious Pacific in the background.

February 7-10, 2019 we four writers holed up writing and riding out the storm that dumped SNOW on this part of the world!

Backyard where fat robins found half-frozen slow-moving worms for Sunday Brunch.

 Four cars waiting to be cleared to drive home. 

 Front porch covered with powdered sugar.

Mookie Dog on Mike's lap. Terrific Mascot didn't let the Muse go missing for any of us!

Love, Love, Love, Love, Love!

It's in the air.

February is the month lovers are reminded to do something (by Hallmark and candy sellers) to honor their beloved.

For my beloved and me, the anniversary of our meeting (1-2-1972) always re-kindles the disbelief we share in our great good fortune to have met.

He sat reading the bookbindings while the party was happening behind him. My friend said, “Mark, come join us." He did and told the funniest story about arriving in LA in 1969 with four flat tires he hoped to fix with his first pay check, but the bank wouldn't cash it. 

Righteously angry, he stormed out. Behind him, the bank door shattered. Aaack. He ran-walked home, changed clothes and went back to work. 

Laughing so hard at his acting out the story, I nearly peed my pants. 

Humor! I fell in love immediately… forty-seven years ago.

That's 100 words!

OK... how do you tell a love story in 100 words... tweets? (I don't tweet) On FaceBook? Nah.  I wouldn't dare post material this sensitive. Sending to a magazine that's soliciting such stories? That may be just the ticket!

Hmmm... how to hone a love story to a distilled and delicious roux that captures the essence... Give it a go, Melinda! Give it a go.

Other salient points may need to be cut, maybe even the details of the story he told that day... maybe just say that he made me laugh. Maybe, say when he called the following Tuesday to ask me out,  I was moved and tickled and loved the sound of his voice.

Maybe the end-of-the-first-date-kiss which I initiated is important.  After all, the story I wish to tell is about my falling in love with him.

What other details are important? Oh, on the second date deciding to get married but waiting four months to give his NY family time to make travel arrangements.

Or, maybe the bit about calling his brother to tell him the news, and his brother's excited enthusiasm... or, his sister's delight... or, his father saying, look I can't even take care of my own life, how can I tell you what to do with yours? Definitely, his mother's very long, very loud SCREAM (I heard it all the way from NY to California!), when Mark told her he was going to marry me after only a month long courtship... and that I was a shiksa! 

As Valentine's Day approaches, I'm struck by the appropriateness of writing about love. I know several couples whose love for one another seems to have increased over the years. 

Love abounds in February as well as every other month. I wonder if some couples have a favorite time of year to be amorous?  Our time seems to be year long, including during the summer when he's at summer camps for the duration... and we miss one another mightily.

Love  Love  Love  Love  Love  Love  Love  Love  Love

Here is another found poem from a recent entry of a piece I wrote on 750words.com 

Kinda fun! They tell you what words you used most often in writing that day! Did I mention the first month on 750w0rds.com is free?

another called essence

four give he her 
him his long love 

mark maybeme my over 

she story told years



Happy Valentine's Day