...one morning
we will wake up
and let our empty hands hang empty at our sides.
Perhaps they will rise, as empty things sometimes do
when blown
by the wind.
perhaps they simply
will not remember
how to grasp, how to rage...
Wahtola Trommer. One Morning
The Dilemma of Joy
It never seems to leave us--that demon of shame or fear that surfaces with a certain play of light in the afternoon; a smell; a phrase or offhanded remark; an inadvertent touch. Even a friendly encounter can set us off. For a survivor, there were many components of the abuse that engender these responses, including neglect, a most potent form of abuse.
The power of the trauma--the old messages or memories--can persist as the stench of the perpetrator surfaces with these reminders.
We contract or dissociate. We regress. We rage. Perhaps we turn the music louder, dive into work, or succumb to whatever addiction that feels like the only way to numb the pain.
No matter how much processing we have done, trauma can hold us hostage, embedded in our very cells.. It is why years of talk therapy, self-help and cognitive narratives often fail us.
The brain swivels. We believe the lies, silence and coldness that were delivered with or without words. All of this created a hypnotic trance that surfaces again when we are overly tired, triggered, or occasionally even confused by our success.
It is why we need to dehypnotize ourselves from the evil that was done to us.
We watch the mind spin and ride the waves of fear and self-doubt that were programmed to believe.
In theatre training, one is encouraged to embody the rage, where the sorrow lives, until it shakes down to grief. Then the power of true feeling comes through the rage and fear, shame or self contempt, If we allow ourselves to experience the culprits in this way, with grief instead of fear or the shame, we dilute the power of the old ghosts.
But sometimes, there may be a moment, an occasional sunburst of joy that can pierce through the darkness. This experience is deeper than pleasure, unaided by drugs or distraction. It is young, curious and free. This joy can create a dilemma however. How is it that we can feel something so pure, so unself-conscious, open and true when there has been so much pain and suffering? We briefly touch into that first moment of existence, when we were everything. It is as if the crust of trauma is briefly cleared as we remember who we really are.
Long ago I met Howard Thurman, a mentor to Martin Luther King and cofounder to one of the nation’s first interracial, interfaith, intercultural congregations of the time. To him, the inward and the outward journeys of a human being were inseparable. He shared a story that that has stayed with me in my own journey.
Dr. Thurman grew up poor and isolated with his mother and grandma, a former slave,near the edge of one of its many swamps. a former slave. He told a story about himself as a little boy in the extremely segregated Daytona Beach of the last century. One day, Howard ventured off into the swamp singing to himself, fingering the goop and the slip of leaves and moss, immersed in the sounds of the birds and crickets. He lost track of time or markers—losing track altogether—until it was suddenly dark.
He looked around in the gloaming mist to discover he was lost. A cloud cover had thickened over the stars, and it started to rain. What began as a trickle soon became a downpour. This being the south, the monsoon of a summer storm can be quite relentless. So there he was in the stormy night, a small boy groping in the dark to make his way back home. The lightning opened the sky—then a pause before the thunder. Although it was quite frightful, Howard realized something: if he paid attention to the split-second flash of light, he could take a step or two in the dark, tracing from memory what he had just seen, until the next lightning burst gave him his clue to where he was and where to go. It went on like this—Howard waiting for the lightning, finding his way by that little flash of memory. He trekked between the trees and the swamp, barely missing the bolts of lightning. It took him all night, but he found his way back to his grandma’s house. Seventy-odd years later, he recollected how he had remembered the flash in that dark night and followed it home.
“We travel in the dark,” he said. “Now and again, there are flashes of light. They pass. We cannot cling to them and we still have to go on in the dark. But we remember what we have seen with that flash, until we find the way home.”
So we grapple with that occasional dilemma of joy in the midst of darkness. We imagine how it is to be safe enough to be unafraid, or at least, honest enough not to worry if we are. We imagine how it might be if we could create some distance between ourselves and everything else. We could live without the worry about what we say or how we appear even to ourselves. We would remember that shame, the toxicity of addiction, despair or rage. are the old demons that no longer protect or save us. We might get some small blink of joyful radiance ,like Thurman’s lightening, that can take us through: a soothing word, a bar of music or some surprising flower's perfume, maybe a moment of peace filled silence that goes deeper than memory.
Perhaps with that, we can risk the joy-- even allow for love.