Two Trainings That Will Transform My Work to Come
Written May 2020:
After watching the documentary, “The Social Dilemma” with my family last Sunday, I’m thinking more deeply about how to shift away from social media. If you haven't watched it, I hope you will.
After watching the documentary, “The Social Dilemma” with my family last Sunday, I’m thinking more deeply about how to shift away from social media. If you haven't watched it, I hope you will.
Though my REAL life is richer for having spent only one hour on social media last week, I’m perplexed by how to stay connected with everyone. How do we share ideas, mourn together, and share our lives? I don't have an answer for that yet. Do you? There has to be a better way that isn’t mining humanity.
I want to share with you what I was up to this past week.
This year has been about acknowledging and healing the childhood trauma I experienced and regulating my nervous system to heal c-PTSD. This has been the most intense, deep work I have ever done (surely underscored by the intensity of our world). I’m immensely grateful to all who’ve helped me get to the place where I could be ready to do it and all the support I have while I’m in here mucking around.
I’ve been working with Rev. Kevin Tarsa on developing our UU services for November (the whole month’s theme is apt, “Healing”). What a gift to be able to serve in this way!
And on my own personal healing journey, I’m especially thrilled about two trainings I began last week. The first goes for 10 weeks and is focused on healing Inherited Family Trauma, also known as intergenerational trauma. This is the unresolved stuff that gets passed through the generations as it continues to seek resolution. With this training, I am healing my own ancestral trauma and learning how to help others. I’ll definitely be sharing more about this fascinating and PROFOUND work that I highly recommend and anticipate offering next year.
The second training is a deepening of my movement practice. This is deep somatic healing medicine that I get to take first for myself and then will be able to offer to others. This type of moving is designed for people with limited mobility, health challenges, depression, anxiety, dementia, parkinson's, in cancer treatment, etc., and yes... trauma.
I’ll boldly say that everybody has experienced some kind of trauma and that unless it’s been worked through, every body is likely holding some trauma, since the only way to really work through it is through the body, not the mind, which we tend to be so fond of in the west.
I’ve learned that one reason I didn’t even know what I’d experienced was called trauma is that it's only been in the last decade or so that we’ve really begun to recognize and work with trauma—as well as what constitutes trauma. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study taught us so much: watch this TED talk from Dr Nadine Burke Harris, “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime”).
One of the issues for me is that the many years of therapy I’d done was primarily cognitive. When trauma is stuck in the body, cognitive therapy is insufficient for healing it. For resolution, it’s essential to go through the body. (Kinda how focusing on talking about building a house won't get the house built!)
I’ve learned that one reason I didn’t even know what I’d experienced was called trauma is that it's only been in the last decade or so that we’ve really begun to recognize and work with trauma—as well as what constitutes trauma. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study taught us so much: watch this TED talk from Dr Nadine Burke Harris, “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime”).
One of the issues for me is that the many years of therapy I’d done was primarily cognitive. When trauma is stuck in the body, cognitive therapy is insufficient for healing it. For resolution, it’s essential to go through the body. (Kinda how focusing on talking about building a house won't get the house built!)
At the same time I am in these two trainings, my dedication to anti-racism connects. I’m reading a phenomenal book I highly recommend: My Grandmother's Hands, by Resmaa Menakem. It’s about racialized trauma and the ways that white-body supremacy is a trauma that has specific and unique impacts on white bodies, Black bodies, Indigenous bodies, POC bodies, and even police bodies.
It feels divine how all these pieces are weaving together as I continue my many hundreds of hours of recovery work over the past 18 months.
Intrigued? Stay connected.
Wishing you LOVE and Healing. 💜✨
