My Body Has Never Really Been My Own… Until Now
Well, here we are. Post 2. You came back. So did I.
Now what? All the trainings and experts say…. who cares what they say. I was thinking this morning, trying to figure out where to start. Chronologically? Maybe it should be super safe, getting-to-know-you content? The part of me who is often described as “too much” combined with the part of me that is my God-within-me part won’t even allow me to entertain this safe-plan idea. Let me sit with that discomfort for a minute and breathe through it.
Ok, I’m back. I am still working on the other components of my new website, so these posts aren’t going up live to live one-by-one on the internet. Apparently, I am going to release a whole season like a cable channel. That tracks- I am not basic enough to fit in with network tv. The delay-probably wise. I’ll be less likely to get scared in the middle and quit.
Here is what came to me this morning at the Chick-fil-a drive thru followed by the writing that came to me Saturday morning on the way to work. I guess I am just going to get (figuratively speaking) naked today. Be scared and do it anyways, right?
I always try to put myself in the shoes of my client to perceive how they are experiencing me and what I am asking of them. I can’t even imagine 2019-me (the breakdown point/time I had to begin to address unhealed, stored-away trauma) coming into therapy to work with 2025-therapist me, for so many reasons. I was so broken and distant in my mind, while being completely dissociated and disconnected from my body. The cumulative effects of lifelong trauma and chronic pain (due to cortisol fountains streaming, incessant tightening of muscles & the other physiological effects on a body enduring a constant cycle of the fight-flight-freeze-fawn stress response) were debilitating. Life and all of it’s demands-also debilitating.
In the 10 days between being pulled out of work for a mental breakdown (how does this happen/this can’t be my life was all I could think about) and my first appointment with my new therapist, I deep dove head first and made it my new full-time job to figure out what was wrong with me. The learning that had the most impact for me during that time was reading the book The Body Keeps the Score. It was in this book I first learned that the body holds the stress and trauma we experience, and it doesn’t just stay separated in our brain. During this time frame was also when I learned about the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and how our ACE Score correlates to some very negative health consequences (I will do a separate post about this later to explain… look at me all staying on track, focused).
So I walked into my therapist, first time in counseling since that brief stint at age 9 during my parents’ horrible divorce, and pretty early in the appointment I gave her a rundown of what I had been learning about with trauma and how I think this is connected to what is happening to me now. I brought up ACE scores. She had no idea what that was. My super-competent, I-can-do-it-myself (because I always have to/you can’t count on people) part said loudly in my head, “Damn it. You are already smarter than your therapist, too. Well, this will be a waste of time.” That sounds a little ick, and I don’t mean it in a rude way, I am just saying I had been learning about this for less than 2 weeks and she had a masters degree in social work. Come on.
We will pause that story and context there to jump into my writing from Saturday. It has been a 6 year journey, thus far, in regard to healing trauma. I’ll post more later about where I am at with this and how it has progressed. What I wrote below is written from a raw place of acknowledgment, illumination, loss and grief.
Gratitude, grace, and growth will come.
This is written from the perspective of a different part of me I don’t interact with often and wouldn’t want to share with you. This week one of my 58 goals I am focused on is that I am learning to be better at sitting in my feelings without rushing to change or fix them, without trying to reframe the negative or add on a positive spin. Not just being cognitively aware of what is happening but feeling them in my body. Letting sadness rise up, and instead of pushing her away, inviting her in and witnessing the pain. Giving sadness (or whatever other emotion comes up) a voice. Letting, not pushing/rushing, the body react somatically and through movement to release the negative sensations that accompany the emotion. Slowing down and not using my tricks (even though they are good choices/not negative) to move past this too quickly. I should be sad, and it’s okay.
So, this writing is hard for me to share for many reasons but related to what I just said I don’t try to put a bow on it and make it pretty. Well, not exactly true. I did that, then erased it. Most of my inner-parts are incredibly positive and encouraging and struggled with that. I had to just let them know they can write a part 2 later, this isn’t the end of the story but a moment in time. A part of the story.
If you are a therapy client reading this, I get how hard it is for some of you when I ask you to “notice your body.” I understand when that feels scary, not safe, and pretty impossible. Thank you for trusting me to help you move through that.
My Body Has Never Really Been My Own
“Put this on it’ll be cute,” as if there was ever a choice for really little me.
Crying because coats suffocated me in a way I thought I seriously could die and jeans felt like a knife cutting into my skin, but little me was told to knock it off or “I’ll get something to cry about.”
My feelings don’t matter. Shut them off.
My body craved movement and play but school told me to shut up and sit down. “You’re doing too much.” So, day after day that part of me died a little more. “What is wrong with me? I don’t want to sit in the desk all day and hear these things I already know or understood the first time you said it and now the seventh time is making me angry, which makes me want to move, which reminds me something is wrong with me.”
“Be a good girl,” they said.
Good girls don’t ask questions, they, without hesitation, follow commands. We are taught to trust authority, but not our own bodies.
It’s little girls put in unsafe situations, with grown men putting hands on lil babes never meant to be touched in that way. Then the shame and confusion that follows.
This is a secret. I can never tell. I’ll never be safe.
It’s a lifetime of ridicule, starting before puberty, from a parent who made it their part-time job to humiliate me, most often centered around my body and the disgust they had with it. Seventh grade me 5’4.5” 125 pounds, constantly being told I was obese. Jokes made about me to anyone who would listen. The confusion when people I love and care about listened and laughed or sat silent. Either way they did nothing to stop it or protect me.
No one is safe. You can’t trust anyone.
It’s 16-year-old me being touched at work in a sexual way, more than once. I told, and he was just asked to not do that again. He started stalking and intimidating me instead. Was I supposed to be grateful?
No one will protect you.
It’s high school varsity cheerleader me, athletic. She also did gymnastics and competed in weightlifting while working 2 jobs and keeping a near 4.0 GPA.
Sitting down with her teammates so the coach could talk to them about how they are getting fat and “we have a certain image to uphold.” They are “disappointed” in us and talk about ways that we can cut weight to look better in our uniforms. Me & Jessica move forward making jokes and laughing about the insanity of this, but she probably is safer doing that being at least 30lbs lighter than me.
You’re too much.
It’s college me and “you have talent, but not the right look for the team” you didn’t make.
You will never be enough.
It’s assumptions, micro-aggressions, and bias from strangers, family members medical providers- everyone thinks they have a right to comment.
It’s your mom sending a text message last year right before Thanksgiving asking “Would you take the gummies Kelly Clarkson has used to lose 50 lbs in 3 months? I will order you a bottle if you will actually try them.” What in the actual F?
It’s the church who made purity the prize. My body wasn’t mine, but rather it belonged to God and/or some special man I’d call my husband and could submit to one day.
Uh oh… messed that one up.
Church doesn’t just take ownership of your sexuality, but comes in with frequent reminders, in Bible verse, lest we forget, being a believer is about complete sacrifice of yourself. WWJD. He laid down his life. You want salvation? What are you willing to give for it? I mean we tell you it’s not about works, true, but we also need to see your fruit. Give. Serve…. All beautiful things, but to a point of depletion?
Still, you will never be enough.
It’s unhealed trauma and figuring out how to navigate that in an adult body that should be able to do the things and make their partner happy, while unknowingly being in hypervigilance with your brain screaming “it’s not safe.”
It’s the inability to be present in the body and fully receive kindness or experience the pleasure that is possible because that’s scary. Accepting criticism, comfortably the norm. Compliments or kindness, what do you do with that?
It’s carrying babies in your body and the terrifying changes and lack of control you really have. Both lives at risk, being told at 24 “this can kill you” when I didn’t need to hear a threat. but rather just needed a moment of compassion as I tried to quickly process preeclampsia and my whole life changing in a minute.
It’s the way that first bundle of joy sat on my left side and didn’t move and how my body will never be symmetrical again without surgery. No matter the number of hours a day I wear a bra, my breasts will always show evidence they nourished 3 babies. The stretch marks. I sacrificed my body to make theirs. There was no going back. Forever changed.
Speaking of breasts, how confusing could that be? On a single day I would have to remember what role they were supposed to play, as if they were a detached part of my body and another dependent to care for. Let’s see 7 pm… oh, you are supposed to feed the 9 month-old. Switching over at 9 pm, your job is to now arouse your husband. This morning, cover them up and pretend they don’t exist. Boobs, yuck, you are a kindergarten teacher.
And as moms, we keep sacrificing. We are the safe place our kids land in the middle of the night when they are sick or scared. Heads tucked just below my chin and fitting against us like we were never separated, even that babe that wasn’t born from my body.
Their elbows hurt and they push you half off the bed, as you try to let go of the worry about the important thing you have tomorrow after not sleeping well.
My needs don’t matter. Put everyone else first.
Your body and wellness come in last place compared to any need they have. There aren’t enough hours in the day. There aren’t enough dollars for the month. You do for them and take the scraps, if there are any.
I can hear the critics already, “You are so blessed.”
Me: “1000%. Correct.”
‘Good moms’ aren’t allowed to tell you about the hard parts. We look ungrateful. We get told about the people who can’t have children or the parents who wish these were the problems they have because remember their kids are dead. We never forget.
Your voice doesn’t matter. “If you don’t have something nice to say don’t say anything at all.”
The only thing I wanted in life was to be a mom. I will take all of the hardships for these incredible people, they are worth it, but I’m so tired of being silenced or shamed for being honest about the challenges.
It’s the messaging from media that permeates how everyone views beauty. Wearing this make up or putting on these clothes equates to being more professional or polished. These variables determine whether or not I’m taking my job seriously? It’s shoes too tight and hair too long that help you better to tolerate me?
Told you already, you will never be enough.
Disregard your comfort or preference to make other people happy or follow the rules.
It’s therapists saying these are negative cognitions and irrational thoughts. Things I say like “I am not safe” or “people can’t be trusted.”
“Are you @$%#+! listening to me?” is what I want to scream. Yet another person in charge invalidating my experience and not hearing me.
Just be quiet. Your voice doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.
It’s my own voice, whether it’s my inner critic or the younger part of me that just wants to be invisible.
This world is too hard, and it hurts too much.
2019 me- Wait a minute, you are telling me that this body that hasn’t really been mine, that I checked out of years ago, has been storing every bit of this garbage? The Body Keeps the Score… oh crap. It’s a game I didn’t know I was playing.
We are told to self-care. That’s like asking me to start speaking Mandarin on cue. What does this mean?
People are so quick to say “you have to do the work” but nobody tells you what that means. I understand there isn’t just one path, but it shouldn’t take having to get a 2nd Masters degree and becoming my own therapist to get the help I needed.
It’s overwhelming. Where do you start? What is the priority? How long will it take? When will it end?
When was someone going to share with me the consequences of being the only one in your circle doing healing work? As if life wasn’t already hard enough. Thanks.
It’s outgrowing folks, not because you are better than them, but rather you have changed and don’t have the ability to take even a half step back. It’s confusing for them, because on the outside you may look like the same you, but on the inside, you are completely different.
I have been consistently trying. Progress has felt so slow. Interventions cost money. Why does it have to be so difficult?
(Added 6.24.25)
You have gone back to these old wounds. You brought all of these girls and all of these stories (and the ones left unsaid here) into the room. One by one, you listened. With compassion, you shared love with each part. You asked her what she needs now. Sometimes, your presence and witness was enough. You encouraged and gave compliments and loved these girls who made you into the incredible woman you are today. You worked day by day to continue to heal these negative cognitions (in bold) that were the foundation other people set for you. You have fought for yourself for 6 years, the last 4 intentionally focusing on reconnecting to and healing your body. Apparently, God saw it fit to align the spiritual awakening with a physical awakening and healing has progressed rapidly over the last 3 months. You are doing good work. Don’t give up.
I think I said I didn’t try to make this positive and wrap it up with a bow. Should I just erase that part because I don’t think it’s true now?
A part of me tries to justify that these are 2 separate writings. Leave it alone and get to bed.
