The body is the last to get it, the last to let go of its stored trauma. If the last ten traumatic, nervous system deregulating years were all that we needed to heal that would be bad enough, but they aren’t the sum of this fight or flight, sleepless, intense out of sync-ness.

Life has been piling on since the day we were born. Most of us brought in past life baggage as well, piles and piles of it. Those who missed that bonus were either too young a soul or had been embodied enough times to experience all the classic escape routes and recognize them for what they are — dead ends.

I don’t presume to know where you are on the nervous system dysregulation bell curve. I’ve incarnated enough times that you’d think I’d be regulated, but in this crazy world, I’m not, at least not all the time.

Sleep is where I notice the dysregulation –waking up, not falling asleep of back to sleep easily. Some nights are good, others not so much, and I haven’t been able to tie it to anything in particular. There doesn’t seem to be a cause, other than life. It just is. This body is slowly working through all that has come before.

I like so many women have been through years of trauma. I was lucky, if you can call it that. I was never raped but that doesn’t mean I was never sexually assaulted. I experienced attempts several times that assaulted my peace of mind, my willingness to go out by myself, that assaulted my freedom. I also experienced lewd comments and unwanted touching. Bodily autonomy isn’t something women take for granted when a man can grab your ass or worse.

Add to that the years of mental abuse, the name-calling, gas lighting, the attempts to make me question my words, my memory, my sanity, the overpowering force that was exerted on decisions, the invisibility, the way that energy permeated everything, and perhaps worst of all, the unwanted, consent driven by religious programming marriage bed sex. He called me frigid. I thought he was right, but I’ve come to appreciate that It’s not frigid to recoil from sex with an abusive alcoholic.

Trauma.

We all have our own versions. Yes, even the perpetrators. Theirs is just different.

Last night I awoke at 1am and had difficulty going back to sleep. I lay in bed and listened to my mind, to my body and was surprised at how much of the old story remained hidden in my cells. How can something hide while screaming silently? It does.

When Kenny died, I was crushed. My grief was intense. He was the first person I had truly felt safe with, and his cancer ended that era of refuge, but with his help, with my continued inner work, with life’s unwillingness to leave any stone unturned, I had come a long way in healing old trauma … or so it seemed until the world stage brought so much of it back up.

It’s funny how trauma remains stuck in the body, how it digs in deeper, how it hides in the shadows. It doesn’t give up without a fight. But life, it’s persistent. It is constantly offering a way through. Right now, it is collectively offering us an opportunity for redemption. It is showing us where our trauma hides, holding a mirror up that we cannot look away from.

Last night I heard myself speaking to my body. It wasn’t something I thought about and then did. It wasn’t even something I was aware of until I had been speaking for a while. What caught my attention was how gentle and loving the words were, how blameless and encouraging they felt.

It was like a heavy veil had lifted, the veil made up of self-recriminating self-loathing that part of me that said I should have known better, that demeaned myself for being taken in, that didn’t understand how I could have allowed it to happen.

But the words cut through all of that …

It’s okay.

You’ve got this.

You take hits that knock you down, but you always get back up.

There’s no need to be on alert anymore.

You are strong enough to handle whatever life throws at you.

You know this.

Whatever happens, you will know what to do or say.

You’re amazing.

Relax. Breathe.

You can let go now.

If my words resonate, they are my heart’s gift to you.

You’ve got this.

Image: freepik.com