How Dare You Call Me Traumatized

Late April 2019

Columbus, Ohio

This was written during the month I spent with Paul Linden, educator of embodiment and peace-building within the body. He is a specialist in body and movement awareness education, and his work focuses on the interplay between self-exploration and effective action. I attended my first workshop with Paul the summer of 2018 - I returned the following spring and stayed for a month at his live-in student. During that month, I explored my somatic shadow, inviting new emotions to emerge from the depths of my subconscious as we worked through my story, my bitterness, and my power. I also befriended Paul on a personal level. I enjoyed running with him through the woods, bicycling together through the suburbs of Columbus, driving him to appointments, and going out to lunch with him at his local cafe. He teaches Aikido several times a week so I attended every class I could, befriended his students, and joined his colleagues around town doing similar work in the field. Some of which I helped co-teach Paul's educational movement system, Being in Movement, in their Delay the Disease class for people with Parkinson's Disease, which Paul has been living with for 17 years now. I also attended Taiji push hands classes and shadowed middle eastern dance classes taught by his friends. Overall, it was period of grace and learning as I began a corporeal shift that's led me to where I am today: brave enough to share a journal entry from my time there.

Here it is:

Today Paul made the assumption, in a roundabout way, that I was traumatized - or rather, I held a felt sense of trauma in my body. Which of course, as my mentor, I considered it his "job" to point such things out to me, and guide me to a better place. Of course that's why I'm here, to learn from him. But this "guru" archetype I see him in, that's all on me. I need a teacher and I know it. I'm beginning to think I place perfection too heavily upon the human form.

But today he said something along the lines of, "I can assume, someone, at some point, taught you how to be..." and he didn't finish the sentence. He just looked at me. "How to be quiet," I thought... quietly. Then we talked about how this came to be, who I learned it from, and how it's manifested in my life. I told him how I taught myself how to be observant, how to listen to everything around me without making a sound. I thought that's what putting others first looked like - like standing in the midst of their shit without being drowned by it. That the benefits of selflessness far outweighed being selfish. Except I happen to like drowning in my emotions, except they weren't my own. And I was drowning anyway. So all the while I profess "I do this for you" but really enjoy the "weighing me down" I let happen to me. All the while, unbeknownst to me (or perhaps perfectly 'beknownst' to me) allowing myself to drown inside myself, slowly becoming at home in the depths of my waters - deeper than anyone knew - absolutely at peace without oxygen.

Because without air, without breath, I am devoid of the resources to speak up. To exhale, to inhale, to create movement. And so, I sat calmly, drowning comfortably into the pit, as he poked the bear within, who very weakly growled back, "I'm not traumatized. I'm fine. I'm just here to learn. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm content with helping others find their voice even if it means silencing my own. I love seeing others flourish. I'll give away my vitality if it means watching another one blossom. Because I am deprived, hidden, away from view, and stiff. And that's fine. I'm fine."

Or perhaps I wasn't drowning into the pits by that point. Maybe I was floating into the ceiling, looking down on my body from the top right corner of the room. I do that sometimes; my eyes give it away. Either way, the honesty was too much to bear. I had to leave my body, that's why I became the bear. The medicine bear trance from a few days ago has me really thinking about bear medicine, and why everyone else's trances were with the bear, but in my visions I was the bear. What did that mean? What would bears do? Growl with honesty?

The words this bear replied with terrified me, because that didn't sound like me. It didn't sound like anyone really, not even a bear, because living creatures normally want to keep on living. And this voice sounded like it wanted to die. In fact, I know she wanted to die. So I picked up my sick bear, who awfully reminded me of a broken winnie the pooh, held her as my own, and followed Paul's advice. I accepted the unacceptable: "I, Sarah, feel at peace with drowning in my skin." Not literally of course. Just in my emotions. "Just."

I feel happy when hopeful, thinking about the death and rebirth of self, completely content with being collapsed in the present and proud of the future. A future I have no way of knowing, and no interest in preparing for. This seems logical, really, because what hope did my environment have to offer me? There were some destroyers of worlds, content with taking advantage of people content with being taking advantage of. An unwillingness to fight back, to even stand up plagued my culture. Wait a minute - my culture? What culture? And everyone else sat on benches, waiting on messages from the sky; walking, and breathing, and shitting when they're supposed to. An absolute and unwavering disregard for the truth of "other." Because what is truth is everyone has one? What a joke. And there has to be "other" because if we were on the same team, then who would we fight? And how would we find glory? And would we WIN? The biggest joke.

But how can I identify myself without this identification culture - this "other" culture I seem to be born into. It doesn't feel like mine yet they force me to wear the clothes. Wait, that's a lie. I like the clothes. Still, the clothes separate us, the illusion we all like to believe is an illusion. I was voted "Most Unique" my senior year of high school - I didn't really feel that different from everyone else until that day. I've spent the past ten years wondering... so are we different - or the same?

It seemed noble, really, to believe in something so deeply. But my power of belief was shadowed by the confidence in the people who raised me. Teachers couldn’t be outsmarted. Parents couldn’t be questioned. Preachers couldn’t be understood. Knowledge was truth that could stand on its own and little girls weren’t wise enough to question it. It didn’t need to be explained - this is how it is. Curious? Sure. Brave? Absolutely. Loud and stupid? Sometimes. Correct? Never. Questions have no place in a world of certainty. I was certain I didn’t understand and I was certain that was okay. God was a mystery to me, a mystery I loved, and I wanted to know all the answers. Maybe man’s answers provide certainty for man. Maybe God isn’t as certain as we make him out to be. Maybe it was me that needed to be understood, not God.

One evening years ago, in teen bible class, the teacher was educating us youngsters on the concept of bravery, I assume, in relation to faith. He posited a scenario of someone coming into the church to arrest us for our beliefs (which was not all that uncommon, we often huddled closer at the thought of our faith being taken away or someone entering our church building to do us harm. It’s a universal threat to religion, someone wanting to burn it down, the fear of which helps us cling harder. The world is scary, so we stay inside.) So, he described being confronted with an invasion to take us away for being a Christian. What would I do? I said that I would be brave enough to go to jail for what I believed in. We studied Paul the apostle, who was jailed multiple times. His eyes narrowed. I was quickly shot down with stern words and very serious eyes. “You can’t know that,” he said, and went on that it’s a heavy thing to say and that my faith would have to be so strong. Well, it was. That’s why I said it. But after that, I wasn’t so sure. Besides, what was he expecting us to say, that we would reject our faith and not go to jail? I decided maybe he was right because after all, he gave himself the title “elder” and we all agreed that makes him always right.

Correctness wasn’t what I was always aiming for. The natural curiosity and bravery were looking to be honed through my occasional loudness and stupidity. So, at the time I thought I had said a loud and stupid thing. Little did my teacher know, he actually succeeded in honing my bravery because years later I did go to jail for something I believed in. (While singing hymns, of all things... “disturbing the peace” and all that.) He came to mind that night as I sat in my cell, completely trapped and alone, punished for showing up, standing up, and refusing to shut up - just like he wanted me to. I wondered if he would be proud of me, or perhaps disappointed because I was not imprisoned for Christ. But rather, in my mind, for the earth he walked on and the people he spoke to. Not Jesus Christ, but Me. I went to jail for my future and I had to walk out of that church to get there. Thankfully, we were never arrested from our church pews and I pray no Christian ever is.

So, “us” versus “them” started so young for me, this language of teams, which I suppose isn’t a terrible language to have. But “us” seemed so view, and “them” seemed like everything else – they seemed like the whole world. We needed to convert sinners and win souls for God. So, it became clear who “wasn’t us” because they didn’t follow our rules. They didn’t have our certainty, our understanding with God. Although I didn’t think it was possible to “save souls” all on my own (we would literally say “save souls” as a parting message before we’d split up on door knocking campaigns), I thought I at least ought to learn. To my dismay, eventually I believed I could. The future I was so proud of was not on this world, was definitely not of this world, and involved more imagination than I could possibly imagine.

Even though souls weren’t games, it seemed points could be earned through baptisms. Also, by personal virtues; so, I spent many years spouting my own virtues followed by many years denying them. I learned from both practices. Winning became an interesting concept to me, my American culture bled deeply into my Christian culture – and where I was raised, they were one in the same. But I was also raised just outside a (big to me) city, Kansas City, where diversity and culture also played a bigger influence in my later teens and twenties when I started to value voices outside my echo chamber of faith. Travel and education help.

Turns out, faith is always blind. That’s what makes it faith. And you don’t need to believe in God to have it. Believing in something, no matter what it is, means having hope for the future – and that’s brave. Not slouching into a cave of masked emotions and hiding from the light. Not feigning confusion when my teacher points out what’s wrong with me. I knew something happened: I was silenced. But no more. This selflessness was a lie – it was never selfless when I was doing it for eternal heaven. It wasn’t faith when I believed in something invisible. I never needed to materialize my emotions because they simply didn’t matter. They told me true joy could be found by caring about, in this order:

J – Jesus

O – Others

Y – Yourself

I later had a Wise Woman mentor tell me to care the other way around: to care about myself first, then others, then Jesus. For a few years I’ve pondered this now, and decided my faith indeed can only come after I’m aware of the needs of myself and community. It’s the How of the What. Putting others first only goes so far, and true JOY cannot be attained without first having my own needs met. It's as simple as that. Jesus is a powerful being, but I am walking in this body. Only I have the power to change the meaning of my life, and I'm deciding to live it for me. I'll make my own meaning.

My biggest lesson so far is to get busy living or get busy dying. Because sitting on the fence isn't fun anymore. And to not be so afraid (or in denial) about being broken – including believing I'm broken at all – it’s how I grow that makes me beautiful.

A couple weeks into my one on one studies with Paul Linden. Aikido of Columbos, Ohio, 2019