Notes on The Divide

by Mikele Rauch, LMFT

light to dark
dark to light
sight to blind
space 
age 
illness

quiet
chaos
control
stuck
not knowing
not understanding
not coping

relief
grief
sorrow
despair
closing the door
opening a window

the world
reckoning with change 
reckoning with no change
possibilities—
Love in the time of all of this...

Moving through the pain of this life, you inevitably confront your past. Either you repeat strategies for survival even when they do not work—or take a risk and try something else. 

Change is hard. You contract. You expand. This is repeated again and again in history, in families, and in ourselves. 

Dissociation—losing track of time or yourself—is nature's most basic numbing response to pain.  

Rage, compulsive attachment to abusive patterns and relationships, addictions—are embedded in the nervous system as strategies for survival. 

"Laziness" or compulsive overwork have both become learned cultural responses to inherited trauma. 

Shame forged from abuse or profound neglect is often the result of the damage to a sense of self by a perpetrator or abusive system. They temporarily mask the fear and self loathing, which are remnants of abuse.

But what if these habits of survival could be transformed? What if the mind, the brain, the soul itself could expand beyond the contours of trauma? 

What if you consider another possibility? 

You cross the chasm to the unknown, questioning everything you ever held to, everything you believe about yourself, wondering about your purpose and your course. You may have to sift through the pages of your pain with more kindness than you usually exhibit for yourself. 

This is the journey of recovery—dark and light, grief and relief in the process.

Nobody changes in a vacuum. You may need to test the waters with new input, new resources, new community. You might have to reckon with where you are loyal to the patterns and programs that continue to keep you stuck.

That said, maybe you depended on someone else for advice or rules or dogmas. You might have learned not to trust your own heart—your own wisdom. Those old strategies might have crowded out the sense of loneliness and memories of isolation. You gritted your teeth and turned up the volume on the words or the music, mucking through the mud on your own.  

But what if you were devoid of your gadgets, podcasts, soundtracks and distractions and all the endless activity?

What if you actually move to a deeper listening?  

Silence. This the opposite of isolation. 

You might resist the challenge and discomfort of remembering how hard it has been to be alone without your props, to actually feel the grief and the endless inner voices of shame and self loathing—that loop again and again.  

But listen. There is a truth that is always inside of you, long before you were conditioned not to trust yourself or your own wisdom. 

Each time you open the window of change, in community and in solitude, it will take courage to outgrow the snakeskin of the past and expose yourself to new skin. 

You and I must be tender and fierce.

You persist.

Life is a series of these explorations. You cannot wait until you are no longer afraid to grieve what you lost, but to dig deeper into the ground.

You are afraid, tender and fierce—and you persist. 

If you have taken this rubble for my past
raking though it for fragments you could sell
know that I long ago moved on
deeper into the heart of the matter.

—Adrienne Rich, Delta

The Way Back

by Mikele Rauch, LMFT

Why should I trust you?

What do YOU get out of this?

Are you a loser like me?

Or are you a "rescuer?”

Why would you want to deal with me? 

I do not trust you if you care. 

I don't trust myself...

Moral Injury...the betrayal of what is right by someone who holds legitimate authority in a high stakes situation over another.¹ It is the enduring impact of doing harm, failing to protect, or bearing witness to an act of violence, depravity or evil upon another that goes against one's own deeply held beliefs and values.

Jonathan Shay was a gifted psychiatrist who worked with Veteran survivors of war. He coined the term moral injury: those who suffered PTSD, and had done harm inadvertently or consciously because of the confusing, traumatizing hell of combat. The post-traumatic stress disorder, Dr. Shay explained, is the primary injury, the uncomplicated injury. Moral injury is the infection.² 

It is often the story of many a survivor who has been groomed, tricked, or trafficked by someone they depended on to do harm to another because of religion, family loyalty, "love," or sadistic cruelty.

This is a moral injury of the heart, body and mind, hemorrhaging the soul of its essence. If it is a part of your story, it may be difficult at first to calculate how deeply you have been affected, not just the confusing memory of what you did or had to do, but how it impacts your relationships and the sense of who you are now.    

If you witnessed another's abuse but were shamed to secrecy to survive or protect, you may take the blame that you did not intervene. The vicarious complicity of shielding the perpetrator because of ignorance, loyalty, or fear can transfer the weight of the abuse from the perpetrator to you, because you could not or did not stop it.

Blame is a significant part of moral injury. Someone must be blamed for the loss that you or others suffered because of your participation or presence. He’s to blame, they’re to blame, it’s to blame. But certainly, I'm to blame. You may have believed this for so long that you are unable to assign the true blame to the one who put you up to it. The hardest piece of this is a toxic unrelenting shame, the belief that you are forever flawed, unworthy of love or forgiveness. It is also why many survivors reenact their own abuse by repeating the conditions of the harm done to them upon themselves again and again.

Perhaps you deny yourself what would bring you joy or repair. You may even forego opportunities for respite or safety that could offer a possibility to heal. You may have no sense of how to be intimate without fear of harming another, even your own children.

But if you cannot find your creativity or hope, or you expect to be humiliated or exploited—if you simply resort to isolation, could it also be the result of the perpetrator's own sick self-contempt thrust upon you?  

Can you remember who you were before this betrayal? Can you garner some understanding for yourself in the face of all you have been through?  

You may roll your eyes if I recommend that you have compassion for yourself. But you might start by at least having some respect for the struggle of the younger you that you see behind your eyes when you look in the mirror. Remember all you went through then to survive when you had far fewer tools than you have today?

You might consider finding a trusted friend who takes you as you are, perhaps a sweet pet who loves you unconditionally, and good therapy that can move you forward. There is a way to trust again safely and honestly and find a way to break free.

It will also go a long way to have a community of survivors who really see you in your full self and don't patronize you. You need people that let you grieve for the harm done without offering platitudes, because they have been there themselves. Kindness like this is what you so readily give to others. Community can help you tenderly touch the part that struggles to forgive yourself, as you restore your heart.

There is a way back. The brain and the soul have a remarkable ability to heal and recover a connection to your heart. And besides, that tender heart of yours is still very much intact, or you would not be reading this...taking back yourself.

¹Achilles in Vietnam, Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Jonathan Shay, 1995.

²Ibid.

Listening to Silence

by Mikele Rauch, LMFT

But there comes a time—perhaps this is one of them—
when we must take ourselves more seriously or die,
when we must pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow ourselves to silence...

⎯Adrienne Rich

Moving through the pain of this life, you inevitably confront your past. 

Either you repeat strategies for survival you have always used—even when they do not work—or you take a risk and try something else. You see it repeated again and again in history, in families, and in yourself. You contract. You open. You snap back to small. Change is particularly hard in response to pain. 

Survival responses.  

Dissociation—losing track of time or self—is nature's most basic numbing response to pain. Rage, compulsive attachment to abusive patterns and relationships, drugs, sex, and addiction have been embedded in the nervous system as strategies for survival. "Laziness" or compulsive overwork have become learned cultural responses to inherited trauma. Shame is often forged from exploitation, profound neglect, and the damage instilled by a perpetrator or a system. All of these responses temporarily mask the fear and self loathing that are remnants of abuse.

Beyond your old response cycles.

Consider another possibility beyond the endless cycles you repeat. Can you cross the chasm to the unknown and step into air?

Can you ask hard questions about everything you have ever learned or believed about yourself?

Can you wonder about your purpose and your course?

You may have to turn back the pages of your pain with more kindness than you usually exhibit inside to see yourself anew.

Maybe you’ve always depended on someone else for advice or rules or dogmas. You learned not to trust your own heart—your own wisdom. You test the waters with new input, new resources, new community.   

Perhaps music or words crowd out the sense of loneliness and memories. So you grit your teeth, turn up the volume, and ruck through the mud with your gadgets, podcasts, soundtracks, and distractions.

But what if you disenthrall yourself to a deeper listening? What if you simply stop and listen?

Silence.

You stare into space. The mind is racing. Lists, ideas, grievances, regrets. You grapple. You run the same scenario over and over. You sit blank. You may resist this sitting. You reach for your phone and scroll. It is a habit you find hard to break. It is difficult remembering how hard it has been to be alone, to feel the grief, the isolation, and the endless inner voices of shame and self loathing that loop again and again.  

But listen again. 

There is a truth that has always lived inside, long before you were conditioned not to trust yourself or your own wisdom, your own creative soul. Quiet in the noise. 

When you open the window of change, in community and in solitude, it will take courage to outgrow the snakeskin of the past and expose yourself to new skin. You must be tender and fierce in the process.

Life is a series of these explorations. You cannot wait until you are no longer afraid to grieve what has been lost. You might just dig deeper into the ground, not knowing just yet what's growing under the earth.

Listen.  

Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

⎯Andrea Gibson

2024

We are all of us, together standing in the dark, waiting

to hear the heartbeat of a new beginning, waiting to

find our voice and become the people who our

ancestors promised we would become. ¹

                Patty Krawec 

Anishinaabe Reserve

Today, the earth makes a slight turn in time. The dawn is ripe with promise and resolve. This day I greet you with a heart full of fierce optimism, despite the conditions we face on the planet.  

The world is struggling. At this moment, many may dance with their eyes shut, hearts closed to its pain. But imagine if we did not look away. This is not easy, especially for survivors who have been abused or neglected.  

Today, I’d like to share with you an especially poignant story about Dawn Prince-Hughes, a trauma survivor and anthropologist who identifies as autistic. She had struggled all through her life to communicate and connect with people where she was ostracized and isolated. She had become involved with the daily life of gorillas, who in many ways mirrored the way she related to humans. During a very difficult time in her life, Dawn came to witness again and again that even in captivity, the gorillas had the capacity to empathize, even with the species that put them behind bars. 

Congo was a captured silverback gorilla who had been abused as a baby and taken from his murdered mother. Yet from the bars of his pen, he could see that Dawn was falling apart, unable to articulate her suffering with anyone. 

In her writings, Dawn describes her extraordinary experience with Congo.

"He rushed over and searched my face intently. My vision blurred, and tears spilled out of my eyes and dropped onto my clothes and the barrier between us. We looked at each other. He saw in me what I could never see in others. He moved toward me, put his massive shoulder against the window and motioned with his hand for me to lay my head there. Why should this animal, living in a prison of human making, care about my pain? It was the foundation of his inner dignity to care..."²

Having the inner dignity to care is the essence of compassion...

Imagine if you will, a possibility to create a space inside for fear, fury, and loss—holding compassion for the other, no matter which side one sits.

Imagine honoring the struggle and dignity of your own life and those you love, including those you do not understand or agree with. For a survivor, it may be a challenge to break out of the prison of one's familiar sense of safety to envision such a concept. This does not mean engaging in unsafe or toxic situations, but reckoning with a deeper understanding how and why humans do what they do.

Imagine not repeating what has been done to you, or to your ancestors. This is the power of standing your ground without retribution, activating the courageous work of change and possibility instead. Our own journey of recovery can lay the seeds that nourish the earth with new life for what lies ahead.  

Yes.  Imagine that.

Happy New Year 2024.

Mikele

1. Becoming Kin, An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. Patti Krawec

2. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism. Dawn Prince-Hughes, Ph.D