Processing Trauma Out Loud

You are listening to processing trauma out loud, conversations about trauma and healing from 2 women who are doing the work.

Hey, everyone. This is Kandace and Sher with processing trauma out loud. Cher, you and I have been in a series of story work themes, and we don't know when that is going to end. It may never end, but it probably will. But today, we are going to look at a specific theme in your story that you have just you've come back to several times.

It is the theme of violence. And so I'm gonna really just kinda interview you today about what it's been like for you to name in the way that you've been able to the violence in your stories. And so I I think I'm just gonna dive in and and say, can you eat can you just share a little bit with, like, why why violence? Why the word violence? What felt true for you about that?

Yeah. I think the first I can remember back I can't remember the first time that someone used the word violence, but I remember the impact of coming into this recognition of being able to think, really? Did I have violence? Like, violence just sounded so big. Right?

It feels like a word that felt far away from me. And when it began to be used in naming some aspects of the things that I experienced as a child because I did experience physical violence, emotional violence, sexual violence, verbal violence. There was a lot of violence. And yet when that term was used for me in the beginning, I was surprised and I gave push back. Well, like, I wouldn't really say it was violence.

And then I remember the question coming, well, what would you call it? Yeah. And I tried to kind of soften it, give a way out for my parents, particularly. And it was it was hard to be able to name that. My parents intentionally exerted strong force against my body, soul and spirit in ways that was just very, very painful and difficult for me.

Well, I've heard a lot of your stories now. And it is I can definitely say I see it in ways that I wouldn't have been able to see before either even in my own story. But but particularly, if it's okay, I just the the first time I heard one of your stories where the violence against your body, like, I had no question that you were a victim of violence, and you actually weren't quite there yet. No. I I saw the look on your face of wanting to resist and push back.

How how long ago was that?

That would have been almost 4 years ago.

Almost 4 years ago. So let's go back 4 years, And can you share a little bit of what that's been like for you as you just kept showing up and letting people see that little girl in so many different stories?

Yeah. I think the first experience that I had in story group was so profoundly impacting for me. I mean, from the minute the engagement began, I was blown away by the things that were being named by the by by the truth that was being named. Right. Like people saying, wow, the violence by the fact that many of you or all of you were enraged and expressed that rage toward toward both of my parents, really.

And I. Yeah, like I was pushing back. I was trying to minimize rather than seeing the truth of what you all could see. I couldn't even see it. Yeah.

And you asked kind of what has that journey been like? And I will say, like, I think that was a beginning. I had talked about some of my stories before in therapy, not in in not in the actual story context where we really get into the particularities, but I had named certain things that had happened. Telling it in that context of story with the particularities and then having people come alongside and begin to name it a right. Begin to put the vocabulary that was appropriate and helped me begin to own the largeness of what was here.

I've had several people say to me, like, the violence in your story is extreme. I feel like I just have, in some ways, even still. I I will say, I think I still kind of struggle with that a little bit. I feel like the violence against everybody in their story is extreme. I think that the violence in my story is, like, blatant.

You can see it so easily in in a lot of my stories. And but I think having the vocabulary to be able to call it violence and to have the affirmation from others who have seen me in the midst of that story and and call it extreme. This has been very important for me that has enabled me to begin to be much more honest with myself about the extent of the wounding. A scratch is different than a laceration, and a laceration is different than a break. When our bodies don't show the blood, it's hard.

I mean, we can we can talk about violence if there's a gunshot wound. Right? Because there's a hole and there's blood. But if there's no blood, it's it's much harder to to see the full scope of the deep, deep damage that is done even to our bodies, even to our especially to our souls.

Yeah. Yeah. That was that was a lot. As I'm thinking of your stories, I'm I'm I'm just holding the truth of your violence being extreme. And I wonder if part of that resistance, right, was that little girl that was just trying to focus on the positive.

Like, there were good times. And and I'm aware that society and certain culture just hasn't given us permission or made it easy to go back and look. And yet, has

it been worth it for you to go back and look? Wow. So worth it. Transformational. My wounds are healing, and I will say even in many cases, feel like they're healed.

Yeah. Is there still a scar? Yeah. Do I still have memory? Yeah.

Are those particular stories still affecting my day to day life? Not as much. And I feel like that's really why I want us to name this topic of violence, because I know that not everybody would say they have violence in their story. And it it doesn't require the presence of overt violence to still have complex PTSD or to to experience severe neglect or or childhood trauma. It's not even that.

And I wanna say this really clearly. Like, it's not even that violence is the worst thing. I will say it's a different thing. And and that even though I know that some of our listeners, violence is not written into their story. I think for many of our listeners, violence is written into their body, written into their soul, and they haven't been able to name it or they haven't been able to talk about it.

And I want to just say, like, here's the vocabulary. Like, use the big words. Like, sometimes we have to use the big words.

And and even just nuancing out just for a second here that, you know, we we had talked about the meaning of violence, and there there's different ways that it's said, but one of them was a blunt force. Okay? So it's this blunt force coming against you. Like, that's violent. So we have that physically.

Right? And you named it, the the laceration, the break, the the scratch. We know that there's a blunt force, and I'm just gonna name this for for a woman. There's usually at some point where there is a blunt force that hits you emotionally about your body. I'm not even talking about overt sexual abuse.

In some way, your body was highlighted in a way that you were cursed about how you feel about your body. I don't know why I'm bringing that up, except that I now meet so many women. Like, oh, yeah. This is sadly normal. Yeah.

I I remember that for me, and I will just say doing this episode is bringing it up in me. That was very violent for me emotionally. It it it shifted the way I saw myself.

Mhmm.

Nobody touched me. Nobody even said anything, but it was violent to my soul.

Mhmm. A particular experience that you had?

Yeah. So so, like, you named the physical. There's the emotional, you know, the psychological, spiritual. And I I just wanna say as you're naming your good desire for our listeners to be able to possibly pause and see if this is part of their story or call someone and say, will you help me see this? Because I can't forget this memory.

It could be in a variety of ways. It's not a child that just got physically beat.

Yeah. Yeah. There is sexual abuse or as as I've been calling it much more recently, sexual assault. Children are sexually assaulted by often their parents or a sibling or a grandparent or a neighbor or a high school babysitter, whatever. Right?

But that is, let's call it, a sexual assault against a child. There are the what you're talking about here, there there are those times when perhaps there's humiliation around our body or around our sexuality, where we are put into a sit where we are in a situation where a where there is some level of focus or exposure put upon us that feels extremely violating. Like you said, it doesn't even have to be a touch or a word. Like but how is that how does that come upon us? We even talked as as we were preparing about, like, even silence can be violent when we need someone to step up and say a word or someone to engage us in conversation.

And there's just silence That can feel extremely violent to our body and soul.

Yes. Because you had mentioned as we were preparing. So there's the act of violence. Right? And then there's either the response or no response after the act Yeah.

For for you to experience some level of violence, whether physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, mentally, if that's done in the context where there's other eyes witnessing it, it is another level of violence to not be defended or advocated for or rescued. And and we know that this is many of our stories that people knew. People knew the act of violence coming against us.

Things that are done in some level of public exposure, and that might be in front of one other person or 10 or a 1000. Like, it doesn't even matter. But but the level of shame that descends upon us, not only that this thing happened and somebody saw it, but that this thing happened and nobody did a damn thing to move to help a powerless, helpless, voiceless child. I mean, this is criminal. I will just say it feels criminal.

Like we

know this

step up.

Yeah. I mean, it is criminal. It's against the law to abuse and violate and be violent towards your children. I I think I wanna just ask another one more question before we close out. I want you to say, you know what?

If if you don't feel like you wanna go here, you know. You get to say that. Yep. You've had a really hard week in a story that you just shared that I saw extravagant care in that you kept just showing back up and letting us know what was going on. What's that been like for you to bring one of the most violent stories to women who you felt safe with?

Yeah. It's been interesting because as I prepared to bring this particular story to our story group, and I've been sitting on this for a few months. I knew I wanted to bring this story and I wasn't even really sure why because it didn't feel like one of my most important stories, really. And yet something in me just kept feeling like I wanted to bring that story. And there's something about when we read a story for people who are ready and waiting to engage.

I mean, I'm not going to say it's not vulnerable because it is. But I read the story and I was really came face to face with some of the layers of the depth of violence and harm and humiliation and absolutely no care in the story. In my story, like it was something that happened in front of other people and nobody moved to help me. And as the group as our group began to engage, I was I mean, I even went much deeper. I began to see things unfold that I hadn't even recognized before.

And then after the after the evening ended, I started to go deeper into my emotions surrounding that particularly just deep into sorrow for who I was as that 12 year old girl and what had happened. And just feeling the sadness and the sorrow and the aloneness and the humiliation and the lack of care and all the things. Like, I was just allowing myself to feel these feelings at a at a level that I had never gone that deep before. I don't think. And I just kept I think every day, almost, I came I just emailed the group and just said, I'm deep in sadness, and I just need to know that you see me, that you care.

And then I would come back the next day and like, I'm still here. And after about 5 or 6 days, like it began and I and I and I approached it differently. Like I was allowing these feelings to come. I was allowing them to stay and I was allowing them and welcoming them to move through my body. I think that was one thing that was really different, is that after I shared the story, I really felt my body trembling a lot.

And in it was I think I begin to recognize that there's an embodied trauma response that I'm experiencing right now. And I wanted to allow that to move through Where in the past, I would have shut it down pretty quickly. Okay. 24 hours. Boom.

Let's wrap this up and move on because I I didn't. I don't like to go that much into my emotions, but I was allowing it and welcoming it. And then after several days, I began to feel the rage that many in our group actually expressed in their engagement that that that night I couldn't really join them. I I think I was hearing. I was allowing their voices, but I I wasn't able to really join in the emotion of being enraged.

6 days later or something like that, the rage began to come, and I just felt more rage than I have ever felt before. And again, like, I just allowed it and welcomed it to move through my body. And I literally just felt like I was I was just envisioning rage come in through the top of my head and kind of just flow through my body and go out through my feet because it felt like it needed to go through. And it's been it's been it's been an emotionally exhausting week that way, but it's been good. And I feel like I don't even know I I don't think I'll know the effects of that probably for some time, but I feel like it has been significant for me.

And I will say, I think one of the first times that I really was able to deeply be aware of how trauma was actually embodied and trapped in my body and Yeah. That I could allow it to move through. Yeah. It's been a big week, and I'm I'm on the I'm on the edge of exhaustion, the last couple of days. And then I'm so I'm just feeling like, okay, of course.

Like, I'm going to allow myself some time to rest now and just I'm getting extra I'm trying to get extra sleep, not be as busy, like, have more open space in my schedule because I wanna tend well to my body too as I go through this.

There's so much I wanna say, but I here's here's what I mostly wanna say. Good work, my friend. Such good, worthy work. And thank you for going ahead and sharing that today because I know it's pretty raw. This is kinda who we are.

We just process our trauma out loud as we go. I I do wanna say one thing before we close out. There were 3 images that popped up, and and there could have been more, but the 3 that are coming to my mind as these women just began showing up. There there was the image of what happens when an elephant gets injured or is being attacked and all the other elephants make a circle around. Yeah.

There there was the the image of the lioness when someone's trying to mess with her cub, and there was the image of the mom, the bear. All these images were coming forth and you were being fought for. Yeah. Like you were being fought for. That's what that little girl needed.

That's what she got this last week, and it still counts. Yeah. And it's still happening. And it's still happening, and it will always happen now. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing.

Yeah. And thank you for asking me to go here. It's I think talking about violence is hard. Nobody really wants to have to. I don't honestly talk about it very much or even name it that much, but it feels good to highlight it.

And to even say, like, this is one of the themes of story work. Like, we're looking for, like, where does the theme of violence show up in our stories? And it just is there, I think, even a lot more than we often recognize.

Yep. I think so too. Thank you for sharing. It was good to be with you today. Definitely a hard, harder topic, and yet we can go to the hard places.

Yeah. Thanks for being with me, Candice, and pursuing my heart in all of this.

Yeah. My joy. Love you, friend.

I love you too, Kandace.

Thank you for listening to Processing Trauma Out Loud. Make sure to check out the show notes for links to suggested resources and social media. Like, subscribe, and follow to keep up with our weekly content. And if you don't mind, take a moment to rate and review us. Your feedback is extremely valuable and contributes to the success of this podcast.

One last thing. If you have found this podcast helpful in any way or if you have questions on how to take the next steps on your healing journey, please reach out to us via email at candaceshare@gmail.com. That's k a n dacesher@gmail.com. Our sound engineer is Jeremiah Jones of Auto Story LLC. We welcome you to join us for more conversations soon.

Take care.