Wild Geese and Wonderment

The summer that I was 9 I spent a glorious week staying with my maternal grandparents. My Nanna had a special way of being able to evoke magic in the most ordinary moments.  One of those magical moments from that summer was with Mary Oliver. She wasn't actually there, of course, but the impact her words had on my grandmother have stayed with me ever since.

"Every flower has a meaning, it's like poetry." I had been dutifully following my Nanna around as she harvested the lavender in her garden.
"Well, I don't like poetry. It's boring." I may have rolled my eyes. Nanna took off her gardening gloves and knelt down next to me in the dirt. For just a moment we looked at each other in silence. Her mouth remained a tight line, and I couldn't read the rest of her expression from underneath her glasses and the wide-brimmed hat. Her laughter broke the silence. "Oh but darling, what a deprived child you are!" She stood up and motioned for me to follow with the empty bucket.

I'd always marvelled at the stark contrasts between each of my grandmother's personalities. My dad's mother was loud. Boisterous and a little rough around the edges. I'd learned quite an extensive list of swear words from her. On the other hand, Nanna was very old fashioned and rather prim and proper. She always wore floral dresses, went to church every Sunday and spent the rest of the week playing housewife, singing soprano and imparting gems of wisdom. She paid great attention to the finer details, and she held my hand tighter than anyone else.

On this particular occasion in her garden, she lost me for a minute. Her words cascaded around me, but I was taking in her softness and the intricate details of the embroidered lace on her flowing blue periwinkle dress. When I tuned back in, she looked brighter ... happier than I had ever seen her. I felt an unfamiliar lightness as I watched her prance around the garden reciting Mary Oliver's poetry: "We belong to the moon and when the ponds open, when the burning begins the most thoughtful among us dreams of hurrying down into the black petals, into the fire, into the night where time lies shattered ..."

It's a moment that has stayed with me my entire life, so it is with deep gratitude and wonderment that I reflect on what Mary did with her one wild and precious life. I have just finished the painting below after hearing of her passing. 

Wild geese everywhere are flying for her today.

Christmas Art

These things I carry with me...

I can't remember ever loving my dad. My earliest memory of him is from when I was around 4 or 5, and I was standing in his backyard while he was beating a rabbit to death with a shovel. I'm not sure he was even angry, that was just the kind of thing he would make us watch him do. Sometimes it was a threat or a "punishment". Sometimes it was just because he could. When we were a bit older, sometimes he would make my brothers join in. They would have a "choice" to hit me or the dog with a stick. I remember one of my brothers had tears rolling down his face while he flung a stick around. It's disturbing to think back to that time and it's difficult to talk about. It was terrifying then and it terrifies me now.

As Christmas approaches, I find myself re-experiencing some of the terror I felt throughout my childhood. I'm having nightmares every night and I'm waking up disorientated and distraught, remembering the weight of his body crushing me down.  I've never been able to forget the Christmas Day when I was almost 9 years old. I was unwell so he put me in his bedroom with a movie. He came back in while other family members were eating lunch. That's when he raped me for the first time. 

I know that I am not alone in struggling around the holidays but it can still feel really isolating and overwhelming. It's a time of year when there are so many more social events, but I feel withdrawn and 'not myself'. Most of the people in my life can't even begin to imagine the depravity of my childhood and so I end up feeling a sense of separateness. There's a time and a place for a rape story and it's not at a Christmas party, you know? 

So I try to 'take back' this time of year in small ways... I try to stay in the moment with my children, and it is actually nice to be around their excitement and joy. I feel like I am in a better place than I could be and I am grateful for many things. There's a little analogy that I sometimes share with my students about disruption and the potential for posttraumatic growth, and it's about the process of seedling development and how there's no seed that breaks through the soil without disrupting the soil. So you start with disruption, but you end up with growth and perspective. I think this year, thinking about those kinds of things helps to step out of the helplessness a little.

I've been wondering how I get myself out from under the weight ... the literal weight that I feel when I remember that first rape, and the sheer terror of all those years.  I've been working on a few different art pieces, but I don't know how to depict the darkness and the heaviness without falling completely into it. Instead I have tried to focus on where I would go in that moment if I could get out from under the heaviness. 

Stuck Points

Trigger warning: This post has graphic details of one of the nights I was raped when I was 17. I tried to go back to see it from the perspective I had back then, to give full voice to my experience and to try to understand my reactions a little better.

I’m sprawled across someone’s bed, fully clothed. My shoes are on. The room is spinning and it takes me a moment to figure out where I am. Scott’s room. I can see a pile of CDs on the bedside table, a mess strewn across his floor. I can’t really move. There’s rap music vibrating through the ceiling from upstairs. I’m not even sure how I got here, but I am really drunk. It feels kind of like I’m floating. I wonder if anyone’s looking for me.

When I wake up again everything is much quieter. The light is still on but there’s no music, no laughter. I am inside the sheets and I seem to only be wearing my bra. I’m not alone. I try to sit up and Scott reaches across me and holds me by the arm, “Nah, it’s okay. You can stay.” He tilts his head and smiles at me. It’s more like a smirk. He seems so sure of himself and I’m not sure at all. Did I lead him on? Did we already have sex? I don't speak at all. Inside my head I am screaming at myself, "What are you doing, get him off you!" I can’t seem to move my legs. He keeps a firm grip on my wrist and it’s hurting. I’m kind of dizzy. Really drunk. He puts his fingers inside me. I don’t try to stop him. I don’t do anything. He’s really calm and I think, "I must have agreed to this." Then he manoeuvres my body, turns me over onto my stomach. He’s penetrating me from behind. I can barely keep my eyes open but I notice the black satin sheets and the chunks of vomit in my hair. I don't think I feel anything but numb.

I’m not sure how I get home. Later I’ll call Katie and tell her we had sex and that I’m so confused because I don’t even like him "like that". I’m so ashamed of it. We’ll never mention it again.

This memory has been one of my sticking points ... It's something that I could never really bring myself to talk about because it felt like it was evidence against me. It was proof that this was 'my pattern' and that I was stupid or reckless or naïve. The self-critical part of myself wonders why, after this happened, I still considered Scott to be a friend or at the very least wasn't more suspicious of him. 

He was the essence of casualness, both during his assault and afterwards. His self-assuredness made me question myself. It gave me the impression that what happened wasn't so bad, I must have been overreacting. If I hinted around at it and other people couldn't figure it out, it must not be all that important. It felt as though it were in a 'grey area' because I'd been drinking. I think my NOT labelling it was my way of protecting myself from the ugly truth. If I didn't say the words I didn't have to face their impact. We'd been close friends since we were 12, and I thought that if I made everything normal then it would be. That's how he remained in my friendship group. Silence, denial and that same 'everything is just fine' smirk of his. I see all of the insidious ways it affected me even when it was buried.

***

A month or two after this happened, we were both at a mutual friend's 18th birthday party. My family had gone away on vacation, but I had chosen to stay behind because I had exams coming up that whole next week. The plan had been that a couple of my friends would be staying at my house too, so that I wasn't alone because I had a restraining order out on my ex-boyfriend. Things didn't end up going to plan. The self-recrimination comes in because Scott was really insistent about giving me a drink. I didn't drink the whole thing because I realised he was being weird about it... but then, I still left with him. I wanted to leave the party earlier than the friends who were supposed to be staying with me because I wasn't feeling well. Scott offered to share a cab, with the intention that we were going to drop me off first and then the cab would take him to his house.

I passed out in the cab, and I remember my head on his shoulder and I don't really remember much else. I don't know if it was a blank or if I literally woke up at his place. I remember standing out the front saying really adamantly, "No, I'm gonna call the cab back. I need to go home. I can't be here." Then there was a back and forth where he said, "I just need to make a quick phone call and then I'll walk you home. That's fine, you can go home."

So I remember waiting outside and I was feeling confused and panicked. I'm pretty sure that's when I first had the thought that perhaps my drink had been drugged, and that maybe it wasn't the first time... and even though I had that realisation, I was still there waiting for him to come back to walk me home. I don't know how to forgive myself for that. I didn't feel safe with him, I'd chosen to leave a party with him, and suddenly I was in a "fooled me twice, shame on me" kind of situation. I can't know for certain, but I'm fairly sure he was calling the others to tell them of a change of plans. Someone who I had once trusted and considered to be a friend, set me up to be gang-raped and I didn't see it coming.

I know that what I’m dealing with is an illusion of control and I want to work on the self-blame and the internalised responsibility that I have used as a coping strategy. I remembered a response that I had written to someone else years ago when I was in my early 20s, so I searched for it to see what advice I'd have to say to someone struggling with similar feelings. This is what I wrote back then:

I'd like to gently challenge this idea you've expressed that your experiences of sexual assault fall into a grey area. The sentiment that there is such a thing as 'grey area' consent doesn't make any logical sense to me. Either someone has consented, actively and willingly without coercion, or they have not. It is not possible to give half-consent or to be half-raped and therefore there is no grey area, regardless of the relationship or what led to that moment. All this to say that from my outside perspective I can clearly see that what you endured really wasn't your fault, you did not do anything in the lead up to deserve his horrific actions. You certainly do "deserve" to be here and to be supported as you navigate your way through this. It's always much harder to apply this same compassion or logic to ourselves though, isn't it?

Sometimes I find myself thinking about self-betrayal, self-blame and fear as us potentially being afraid of our own power. What happens when we feel empowered? Typically positive things, but it can be difficult to empower ourselves in the aftermath of trauma. On the flip side, it can be really easy to slip into a belief that we had more power than we really did. 

In so many ways the feeling or belief of self-betrayal could also be framed as a way of trying to maintain a sense of control. "If only I'd…" In reality we were in a situation/s that we had no real control over. We were at the mercy of a merciless other or others. Feeling powerless and helpless is a terrifying feeling that we understandably all want to avoid. Who ever wants to be vulnerable? But perhaps it is walking into the heart of that frightening, dark place that we begin to truly heal. Easier said than done in many respects, is my experience... but I think that is exactly what you are doing here in a forum of survivors who can relate and understand and hopefully challenge the notion that you are in any way to blame.  

For me, accepting that it wasn't my fault always leads back into not having control... at those times, in those circumstances.. When I self-blame I don’t have to deal with the true reality of my childhood or the multiple rapes I have survived since. If I am to blame, then I can somehow “rape-proof” my life with reassurances that it won’t happen to me again because I won’t let it, right?

It's interesting to me that I seem to have circled back to a similar stuck point, it seems it has always been easier for me to intellectualise an idea rather than truly take it on board as something I can feel wholeheartedly. I do feel like I am a step closer than I was back then, my past no longer has the same kind of power over me that it once did. I post this today with the knowledge that there's nothing so dark that we can't even speak of it. 

November

As a bit of darkness comes back to my edges it feels very real. If I allow myself to sink into it, will I find all of the unexpressed, unwanted and unknown thoughts and feelings from a moment in time that I’d rather stay well away from? Every November I find myself circling back to it in the deep stillness of the night. I play it over and over, the vivid and the murky memories, never really sure what I’m searching for. What is it that I’m unwilling to claim? What is it that I’m unable to let go of? Today may not be the day where answers will come, but it feels good to write about it.

I've been trying to find my place in it all, coming back to wonder whether certain things I did or didn't do in the lead up to the gang rape somehow contributed to how it all played out. Actually, what I would really like is to find a way to forgive myself. I thought that I had, but this year's 'theme' seems to be all about self-recrimination.

I worked on a mixed-media painting this week, with the intention of stepping toward the part of myself that I feel resistant about. When I thought about what I don't like or don't want, the feelings that come up are vulnerability and shame. I don't like that I couldn't find a way out of that situation. I don't like that I wasn't in control. I don't like that I was overpowered, outnumbered, exposed.

I wondered about what the barrier looked like and it wasn't a wall. It looked like water. I am terrified of water. Water feels like not being able to breathe, it feels like being held under. It feels like being water boarded with beer. It's the plan they had to dump my body in the lake.

When I painted I thought that I would find self-compassion, but instead there is a lot of displaced anger.

Broken Places

“In the broken places the light shines through.” - Leonard Cohen

This is a quote that's been on my mind lately ... In the broken places the light shines through. I really like this concept of having to allow yourself to break if you really want to get to the light. I think it speaks of finding hope in darkness, or that there's always light even if you can't see it.

I'm not a stranger to the dark, but still I resist it. I've been wrestling so much with anxiety lately; it's a deep sinking feeling in my stomach, habitual shallow breathing, a desire to escape. It feels like any time that I am not intentionally practicing mindfulness I catch myself racing away from difficult emotions. Then, of course, the more I avoid things the greater the fear and anxiety and dread grows. Avoidance seems to have become a driving factor and it's not a great place to be. My heart knows this would be an easier process if I could accept that this is where I need to be right now, but my head is angry and frustrated that I am not where I would like to be. I am really working on trying to create space to just be however I need to be. So I've been asking myself what it would be like if I could let go of some of the aversion and self-judgement. Can I be with this feeling? What can I learn from it and how can I grow?

I experiment with a lot of different guided meditations and Tara Brach often talks about how we all have strategies of trying to control things and how we often live in a trance or a virtual reality made up of our own self-centred, self-conscious narrative. She talks about a phrase 'real but not true' ... it's a real story in our minds and it feels real in our bodies, so it's real ... but it's not the only way to view reality. The thoughts are happening, the feelings are happening, but it's not the truth of existence. So the invitation is to just notice how it's an idea in our mind and a feeling in our body and to just be present with that and then to bring compassion to that.

"So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise. When gripped by fear or anxiety, the reflex is to hold on, speed up, or remove oneself. Yet when we feel the reflex to hold on, that is usually the moment we need to let go. When we feel the urgency to speed up, that is typically the instant we need to slow down. Often when we feel the impulse to flee, it is the opportunity to face ourselves. Taking a deep meditative breath, precisely at this moment, can often break the momentum of anxiety and put our psyche in neutral. From here, we just might be able to step in another direction." - Mark Nepo

When I deepen my attention to where I'm getting stuck I find I seem to be triggered by the experience of feeling more visible in my professional life (perhaps imposter syndrome issues), but at the same time I am seeking to be heard or seen in my private life (this blog, reflections on past traumas).

I think sometimes the normalcy of now can sometimes trigger off a feeling of separateness or a feeling that I can't yet describe. It's not that I don't feel grateful for the life I have or that I'm not connected to those I am close to, but the stark contrast between then and now can sometimes feel difficult to reconcile. It's like there are two tracks playing at once ... In one track I feel so present and alive and lucky; I live a privileged life and it's filled with laughter and hope and messiness and love. The other track is all the stuff I thought I'd left behind; it's kind of like the movie you don't want to watch alone again, but it comes back as nightmares or intrusive thoughts and visual images ... and the storyline you tell yourself is that there aren't many people in your life who could begin to imagine what that was like. It creates that sense of separateness and it's really hard to not buy into that narrative because it's kind of true ... in the sense that it feels true to me. 

So that's what I'm practicing ... It's a work in progress. There have been moments where I really have been able to just sit with those feelings and allow them to be there.  What I notice is that all of my feelings are right under the surface, ready to spill over, ready to just be felt. It starts to feel less reactive (anxious) and more about the core feeling or the underlying issue itself (lived experience of past fear).

What feels right here are the memories. 

It's the feeling I had when my dad towered over me or dragged me across the floor, it's the sudden gap where everything is just dark ... the familiar thick buzzing in my head, the sound of terror before everything goes black. 

It's the feeling of being a little girl in a store room at the stables, playing with the kittens while a fat, repulsive man looms in the doorway preparing to rape you. The smell of hay. It's knowing that no-one outside of that room is going to help. Trapped and nowhere to turn.

It's the feeling of being ambushed. Of being outnumbered, of being held down. The knife. The hands everywhere. The slobbering in my mouth. The taste of beer and blood. The flash of the camera. The laughter. The music. The viciousness. Not being able to breathe. The blackouts; the moments where I don't know what happened to my own body. The flicker in his eyes when he had me in the room alone. The tone in his voice when he told me what he'd done to the girl in my class. The terror. The guilt.

All different moments in time. All in the past.

What also feels right here is the reality. I have already survived this. At times I have thrived. I can tell it again and I can tell it with strength. I don't want to just paint over it again ... I want it to mean something and I want it to be heard. There are things in my present life that are bringing these feelings or memories to surface, but I am safe to feel this. How would it be different if I accepted that this is difficult for valid reasons?

This time will pass no matter how I approach it, so at the very least it would mean that I could get through this particular season with less resistance ... but I may also emerge from this with possibilities that I can't even begin to imagine yet.

A lot of love ...

Last night I was cuddling my girl when she told me, "I saw you smell Max's hair and I felt jealous. You're my mumma and I love you more than he does ... but actually you do smell my hair a lot too!  I guess you have a lot of love for both of us." Oh my heart. Aside from the fact that I'm some kind of weirdo that smells my kids' hair all the time (It's good shampoo!), I love her little insights and that she feels able to share vulnerable feelings. 

Sibling rivalry has levelled up in our household lately.  A couple of weeks ago I heard Amelia tell her two year old brother to get out of her room in accordance with article 16 of the rights of the child act (the right to privacy apparently). They were on their own sorting it out while I tried to compose myself, and by the time they had any parent support to help solve the problem it had escalated into a much more primitive fight. 

Then I discovered that someone had made some modifications to our Willow Tree figures. I couldn't stop laughing, and what interested me the most is how the fine motor skills don't match up. Amelia's actually really incredible with her ability to paint or draw (even on 3D objects) and this was certainly not on her level. Max's drawing skills aren't too shabby for a 2 year old, but there's no way he'd be able to do this. Obviously it was the 5 year old!

When I finally stopped laughing, I asked her about it. She was so committed to her lie, "Well, I actually saw Max with that purple texta ... He's drawing on everything lately!"
"Oh, well that's interesting. I'm not sure he's clever enough to draw faces like that yet."
"Well, they don't look like the kind of faces I draw. He's drawing on everything lately!"
"I wonder why he would draw faces ..."
"Maybe he wanted them to have faces?"
"Did you want them to have faces?"
"Yes." 
😆 On the bright side, they're all happy!