Welcome to my 50th birthday party

Magic is afoot. When I woke up this morning, my house was ten times bigger! All the better to receive you. I spent all day cooking and preparing a wonderful Mexican feast. Now at last, you have arrived.

The pathway is lit with beautiful lanterns. The house looks festive and delicious food smells waft in the fresh forest air. I receive you with a great big hug, but don´t take off your shoes or coat yet, because we are going to the backyard. The medicine wheel Dan has been building, was magically completed this morning and transported to a secret spot at the center of four great old stumps of ancient trees. Each of the bases of these ancient trees is now surrounded by a ring of second growth trees. We stand amid four cathedrals.

Each stump, covered in rich green moss and pastel green lichen faces one of the four directions. The second growth Redwoods tower overhead, and their baby saplings shine with the bright green of youth. Welcome to the heart of the Forest.

We have prepared a tower of wood for a bonfire and a row of tall drums. When everyone has arrived, from the babies in arms to the elders, we begin.

Thank you for coming to celebrate with us. I am grateful for your friendship, I love you and you are very precious to me. It means the world that you are here. For my birthday, I have called you together for this Ritual of Renewal.

I smudge you with fragrant copal, sweep your body with my feathered fan, and we breathe in the AIR that sustains us. We honor the Zayante tribe of the Awaswas nation, who took care of this land for over fifteen thousand years. I call in the directions and rattle you in, and we weave ourselves back into the web of life and belonging, accompanied by our winged and furred and finned siblings, from the tiniest to the biggest, from the youngest to the oldest, and witnessed by the long chain of ancestors looking down benevolently from the heavens like stars. The fire blazes in the twilight.

Your heartbeat follows the beat of drums. We chant and sway. We are the village. The ritual begins. We are filled with gratitude to be together in this clear night, warmed by the FIRE, lifting our voices and swaying our bodies in harmony.

When the time is right for you, you step through the NATURE threshold into the magical world. You approach the EARTH altar, a deep pit in the ground where you can pour all the things you are tired of carrying, the things you no longer want and suspect it is time to let go. A tide rises in your stomach, emotional indigestion. You drop to your knees. The drum sounds are distant, but they sustain you. Even though you take each of the actions of this ritual alone, you know the entire community is rooting for you and supporting you with their drumbeats and chants.

The moist earth smells cool and mineral, but it is not enough to stop you from retching. Out it all comes: the fear that tries to protect you from future disappointment, the old resentments like pebbles in your shoe, your rage and impotence, all the ways you’ve given up and given in, your waves of grief neverending as ocean waves. You wail like a wounded animal, which you are. You just let it all out and ask the EARTH to transform it as only she can.

When you are done, your emptiness feels light and spacious. You can smell the piney essence of the forest again. You wipe your earth-caked hands on your thighs and you rise.

You now move slowly toward the river, by the golden glow of the lanterns, where the WATER altar awaits. The time has come to bathe in the WATERS of peace and reconciliation, to be rinsed clean. Two members of the water clan are there to assist you. They can barely see you in the dim lantern light. You feel shrouded by the darkness. You take off your clothes, garment by garment, and place them on a bench beside the altar. They hold your hand and help you wade into the cold water. You shiver, then take the plunge and bounce back out, dripping wet. Blood rushes to your skin, tingling. You feel so alive! The water clan people offer you a towel. You dry yourself and get dressed again, but you know you are no longer the person who came to this party wearing those clothes. You have been renewed.

You now approach the altar of STONE. On the indentations of a great moss-covered boulder glitter crystals of all colors. Images of all the village ancestors magically appear. Whether you loved them or not, whether they treated you well or not, even your weird uncle, your grumpy aunt and stern grandfather look upon you with new compassion and excitement. Now that they are souls, they see with clarity. All your ancestors, kind, maddening and imperfect say, “We believe in you. You are the hope for the world.”

You feel the continuity of life flowing through your veins. You realize that you are the one we’ve been waiting for. Grateful for all they did to get you here, you make offerings. You take a pinch of cornmeal and toss it in the air. “Please look upon me with benevolence. Please help me make these dreams come true.” You name all your wildest dreams. That every being may have clean water and food and air and a safe home. That we may learn to share and work together. That we may regenerate and repair ourselves and the world. That we may live in alignment with our most precious values. That we may cultivate a way of life that will nurture the next seven generations and beyond…

With your heart full of clarity and resolve, you walk back through the NATURE threshold and rejoin the village. We welcome you with hugs and invite you closer to the fire, to warm yourself and let your hair dry. You have never felt so clearly that you belong. Here and now is where you are meant to be.

You chant and sway. You take a turn at the drums. You rejoice in knowing that your voice and your music is supporting your fellow villagers to go through the steps of their ritual. You know with absolute certainty that together you will bless the world with your gifts and your acts of repair.

And when everyone has gone through the steps of the ritual, and the fire burns low, we thank all the beings of nature and all the ancestors and all the benevolent spirits for holding us in this sacred way.

We safely put out the fire and head back to the house, where I’ve laid out a great feast for you. You eat to your heart’s content, the children run around, people tell funny stories and laughter rings out. Someone picks up a guitar, a harmonica, a drum, a tambourine and we will sing and dance and celebrate long into the night.

Thank you for coming, my friend. It wouldn´t have been the same without you. Thank you for being in my life. Here, take some leftovers home. Don´t wake the child, asleep on your shoulder. Drive safely down the mountain, have sweet dreams tonight and see you tomorrow, when we show up to do the work we came to this planet to do.

Your gift is your presence. If you have a gift for the world that you want to share, you can write it down below.

Everything I Know About Healing Trauma, 2

Dear readers,

If my blog has been so quiet in recent months, it is not for lack of love for you, but because my own recovery from emergency brain surgery 16 months ago has taken a lot of my energy.

The world these days offers us no shortage of violence and loss, and in the past months there have been many situations where I had to stop and follow my own advice, including the self-soothing exercises I offer you in the videos at the end of this post.

Healing Dispatch # 5: Emotional injury is a lot like physical injury

Imagine you accidentally cut your hand while cooking. What do you do?

If you ignore the cut and don’t clean and bandage it, it might become infected. If it becomes infected it will swell and cause pain, not only to the hand, but radiating out to other parts of the body. At worst, an unattended cut can cause fever or worse complications.

So you clean the cut with soap and water, maybe apply an antibiotic ointment, and bandage it so it's protected from getting dirty.

Do you have to tell your cells how to repair the tissue? No. Your body knows how to heal. You can trust it to do so. But first you have to remove obstacles to healing and create the ideal conditions for your body to heal itself.

It’s no different when it comes to psychological trauma. Your body knows how to heal it too, if you let it. Unfortunately, too often we suffer an emotional injury and bear it alone. Or worse, we tell somebody what happened to us and they stab us right back in the wound (I'll return to this in a later dispatch).

But when we feel like we cannot tell anyone about this terrible thing that happened to us, it's like ignoring the wound. It demands attention because it hurts, but we carry on working and doing what’s expected of us, and doing whatever we can to ignore the pain. This is where many compulsive behaviors develop: we may self-medicate or distract ourselves so we don't have to face our pain, but the pain only grows.

When we are avoiding dealing with our emotional pain, a portion of our life energy is spent in suppressing it. It's natural to want to avoid pain, but it always COSTS us something. And coping is not the same thing as healing. Coping allows us to survive and get by, but healing frees up our energy again.

So do you prefer the pain of attending to the wound and creating the conditions for healing, or the accumulating pain of shoving it aside and having it grow larger and zapping your life energy?

When it comes to emotional injury, cleaning the wound means making space to acknowledge what happened. Believing that it was not your fault and that you deserve to heal and be cared for.

Disinfecting and bandaging the wound means that you strengthen your boundaries and try not to expose yourself to the hurtful conditions again while you heal. I realize this puts too much burden on the injured person. We cannot control what others do to us, and certainly acts of violence are squarely the fault of the perpetrator, but we must try to be self-protective if we want our body to heal.

The marathon runner doesn't run on a broken ankle. In the same way, it is a mistake to push ourselves to “function”, to carry on as if nothing had changed, when we have been emotionally hurt.

Healing dispatch # 6: Resources for self-soothing

I created these videos in collaboration with my friend Melissa Manning and the projects she created to help our community after the pandemic and the devastating CZU fire that destroyed many homes here in the Santa Cruz mountains. It is never a bad time to acquire some coping skills to add to your repertoire, so here are some of my best, the same ones I use when I am triggered or stressed. I hope you find them helpful.

If you'd like to learn more about my services and how I came to do this work, you can read my recent interview on Mystic Mag.

Everything I Know About Healing Trauma

Art by Rick Ortega

Are you worried about the state of the world? I am too. That's why I want to share with you everything I've learned about healing trauma in the past two decades of working with survivors and undergoing my own healing journey.

When we live from the present with all our awareness, flexibility, strength and kindness, we can build a more gentle way to be with each other and with the beings of nature.

I don't have time to write another book--I'm still working on the first one--but by sharing these "dispatches" I hope to help you become a wise trauma healer, one who can help yourself and your community in these times of need.

HEALING TRAUMA IN AN IMPERILED WORLD

Dispatch # 1: Safety and Connection

Whenever I teach Trauma Healing groups or workshops, and ask--What does a terrified person need?--, the answer I am looking for is safety.

But the world isn't safe. The world is traumagenic, it generates trauma. Just read the headlines and you'll find plenty of evidence.

Last week a friend and fellow seeker of social justice reminded me that the only way any of us is going to be truly safe, is if we end oppression. If we achieve liberation from racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, from the human supremacy that is destroying the environment...

But so, how can we even talk about safety in a dangerous world?

A refugee cannot begin to heal while they're still on the run with the clothes on their back, their belly empty, their old life in flames. When we flee or fight, all the lifesaving mechanisms of our central nervous system are at work. We are hypervigilant. We cannot feel all our pain. We cannot even digest or sleep. We need to keep going.

A refugee may begin to heal when they have food, and a place to sleep, and some hope for their future. When they have landed and their basic needs are met. When they are in the company of those who will not try to hurt them.

When I've taught trauma healing to a circle of indigenous tribal members, they say, "What safety? Everywhere I look, colonization is staring me in the face."

When I've taught trauma healing to a circle of houseless folks, they say, "What safety? I sleep on the streets every night."

So I've refined my concept of the kind of safety needed for healing. After all, I healed my own trauma while still being the recipient of racism and sexism, while still living in a world where I could be the victim again of sexual violence or femicide.

I say to the indigenous tribal members, "The way you feel when you are in this circle, in the presence of your loving elders."

I say to the houseless folks, "The way you feel when you are in this circle, in the presence of your peers and the Homeless Garden Project staff."

I am talking about being safe for now, safe enough to allow our nervous system to rest. I am talking about being connected to others in a loving, nonjudgmental way.

Our earliest sense of safety comes, as newborns, when we pattern our breath on our mother's breath and our eyes look into her reassuring eyes. If all went well, if we were that lucky, her relaxed breath and slow, steady heartbeat signaled to us that it was ok to rely on her to meet our needs and let us cry ourselves back to calm when the world was overwhelming.

In order to open up just enough safety for healing to be possible, we need to do for each other what the mother does for the newborn. That safety--even if temporary--, accompanied by a sense of connection, is all we need to begin the work of healing ourselves, our communities and our world.

You don't see me in this photo, except for my feet, but I'm there. Both my husband and I were bonding with our child.

HEALING TRAUMA IN AN IMPERILED WORLD

Dispatch # 2: Defining Trauma

It's become a big buzzword, but let´s understand what it is. Trauma is an equation between a person's experiences of terror, loss and violence, and their internal and external coping resources. Trauma happens when a person's ability to cope is overwhelmed by their experiences of terror, loss and violence, resulting in emotional injury.

There are many different kinds of terror, loss and violence.

Around 2002 I used to attend Jennifer Freyd's trauma lab at the University of Oregon. She wrote the book Betrayal Trauma, where she explains what happens when the very people who are supposed to take care of you, abuse you.

When parents abuse their children; teachers abuse their students; doctors, their patients; police and government officials, their citizens; priests, their parishioners. You see the pattern. This can all generate betrayal trauma.

Sometimes betrayal trauma does not happen with a lot of physical force, but rather with power, influence, emotional manipulation, and by grooming.

When the Weinsteins and Nassars of the world abuse their victims, they don't need to hold a gun to their head. Their power is the gun.

Abuse, and certainly sexual abuse, is a crime of power and access. If you are an influential person and have access to another who is less influential, less powerful, less likely to be perceived as a believable witness by our skewed legal system... chances are you can get away with abuse.

Jennifer Freyd said, the more terror there is in trauma, the more likely the survivor is to experience high levels of anxiety. The more betrayal there is in trauma, the more likely the survivor is to experience high levels of dissociation.

Dissociation is the fracturing of our consciousness and it occurs in a continuum. Sometimes it means we avoid remembering certain painful experiences. Sometimes it means we lose memory of entire years of our lives.

I will return to the topic of dissociation in future dispatches. Suffice it for now to say, that anxiety and dissociation are protective, lifesaving mechanisms. The problem arises when they stay with us, long after the time when we need them.

Healing trauma involves learning to access our relaxation response again, and creating integration where there has been fracturing or dissociation.

HEALING TRAUMA IN AN IMPERILED WORLD

Dispatch # 3: Expressing emotion

When an animal is being attacked by a predator, it tries to flee or fight. If it cannot do either, it freezes and plays dead, to try to convince the predator that it died from disease or poisoning and is therefore not good to eat.

When the animal survives, once it is safe enough from the predator again, it shakes and shivers. By doing so it burns up the stress hormones that remain in the body and resets its nervous system.

This mechanism, which we humans as animals also possess, is very effective at protecting life. It is an involuntary and unconscious body response.

The thing is, our bodies don't know the difference between being pursued by a mountain lion, having a big deadline, being stressed about money, or being bullied by other humans. The stress response works, regardless of the stimulus.

Our bodies are meant to enlist our fight-flight-freeze response when confronted with short-term danger, but being exposed to incessant or long-term danger makes it more difficult to return the nervous system to balance.

And yet, our bodies are wired for health. If we had freedom to shiver and shake, to cry and rage and express emotion freely, we would return to balance faster.

The social pressure to perform, to function, to never fall apart, gets in the way of our natural tendency to heal.

Because we are not free to feel the fullness of our emotions after a traumatic experience or loss, we use up a lot of our available energy to suppress and avoid those emotions.

When we experience terror, loss, or violence, we feel sad because we have been injured. We feel angry, because an injustice has occurred. We feel fearful because we are scared it might happen again.

For as long as we don't express the emotions stored up in our bodies, it feels like the terror, loss or violence is happening all the time. This is the repetitive nature of trauma. Even though we try to avoid it, we play it over and over again in our minds. We have flashbacks and nightmares, and we unconsciously reenact situations reminiscent of our trauma.

HEALING TRAUMA IN AN IMPERILED WORLD

Dispatch # 4: Emotional injury rather than mental illness

Trauma theory developed in the 1980s, when health providers discovered that women who had survived domestic violence had a lot of the same symptoms as soldiers who had returned from war.

Dr. Sandra Bloom, author of Creating Sanctuary, one of the best books you'll ever read about understanding and healing trauma, made an important discovery when she ran a psychiatric unit in Philadelphia in the 80s.

Instead of asking a mysterious patient she had misdiagnosed as schzophrenic her usual question, "What is wrong with you?", Dr. Bloom asked, "What happened to you?" And her whole world changed.

The client was not schzophrenic, but had an extreme history of childhood trauma.

Dr. Sandra Bloom began--for the first time--to take extensive trauma history of all of her patients and discovered that 100 % of her patients were survivors of serious trauma, REGARDLESS OF THEIR DIAGNOSIS.

The mental health system had been diagnosing people without asking them about their lives.

When you listen to a person's story, it becomes clear that their "symptoms" are more often a result of emotional injury than mental illness. Depending on how a person was hurt, we can understand their reactions and coping attempts.

What is called anxiety disorders are related to the fear a person has felt in response to situations of danger and terror, physical or emotional. Depressive disorders are related to the grief and impotence a person has felt in response to injury and injustice. Alterations in perception are often connected to trauma memories, which are different from regular memories (more about this later).

So-called personality disorders, considered incurable by the mental health system, clearly have their origins in early childhood trauma. Tell me what stage of development was disrupted by experiences of terror, violence or loss, and I will tell you which "personality disorder" you resemble.

Why didn't we realize this sooner? Because we had normalized the violence that surrounds us.

But when we realize that most people are not mentally ill, but rather emotionally injured, we know healing is possible.