Knit Together

Trauma is experienced and held in the body. Feel it. Let it permeate the cells of your body. You don’t have to deny it, or find the good in it. Your experience makes you, you. All the people and places. Smells and sounds and tastes. All is experienced by your nervous system. It orders and prioritizes everything into memories and stories.

Excerpt: Flying Lessons, Angela Kari Gutwein
The force ignites anew, folding my gut into knots. The trigger dissolves in stubborn and complicated brain chemistry, lost for the moment. Intricate and needy neurons, in an infinite chain reaction, explode as a fourth of July finale.
My eyes forget to translate the lights and shadows into recognizable shapes. Fingers rub, uncontrolled, against each other. The energy travels, not out the fingertips, but up the arm. Jumping to my feet, I fly to the bedroom. Contrasting brain signals ignite a storm in confused muscles. I need, but what? What do I need? My arm shakes and bounces to expel the whirlwind. Words form a phrase. This time I choose.
“I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I can’t stop. I can’t stop.”
Pausing, I crunch my face and shake my head. “I can’t stop.” The phrase, like a salve, pops out without permission. Slower. “I can’t stop.” The hand jumps to cover lips. Softer in a whisper, through finger barricades. “I can’t stop.” …

Trauma can distort and confuse. Do you question your ability to see the truth? Don’t lose hope. You can bring it into the light.

As an aerospace engineer, I was especially fascinated by the solar eclipse that cut a swath across North America last year. I understand the exact geometry and orbital dynamics required to eclipse a big, bright, ball of fire by an object 400 times smaller, and how the sky completely darkens. From our perspective in the midst of a total solar eclipse, the light no longer exists.

But how do those orbital dynamics translate to God’s love? How do I know of God’s love when blinded by fear and pain?

Long before my brain could form explicit memories, Grami first said “Jesus loves you more.” More than words, more than a memory. It is life. My life. But it is also an impossible truth eclipsed by pain.

… Blinded by fear and pain, the one that “loves you more” disappears. Darkness swells over, I muddle around, blind and deaf, unable to trust my senses. Paralyzed, frozen in flames, I try to close it down once more. Lock out the pain. Don’t feel. …

I will say it again. Trauma is experienced and held in the body. The body reacts. It runs. It fights. It hides. It is screaming for help.

Listen.

Go into your body. Where is the resistance? Pain? Start big and progressively move to more subtle nuances. Make sure you are supported.

Flight without support is not freedom. It is escape.

You are at the whim of every force within and around you. You have no direction. You are blind and without purpose.

You don’t need to look far to find the support. It is in your own breath. Gravity supports from above as the ground below. It is in the deep, brown eyes of your canine companion or a soft, silky flower petal.

As you move to the subtle body, support is found in the silence between breaths and in the space between heaven and earth. Look for that still, small voice you buried long ago.

God knit us together in our mother’s womb and continues to throughout our entire lives. He created all of this and gave it to us for our good. The earth and sky and heavens and everything on it and in it. Our bodies and our minds.

And each other. Are you blessed with someone standing beside you? Someone who will walk through the darkness with you?

Our neurons are constantly forming and reforming based on new and old input.

… Zephy sits behind me, watching, waiting. Together we step into the deep.
… [playing] the same old story. Oppression. Fear. The goop binds heavy to my shoes, pulling me into the cold, damp darkness. It climbs up my legs, seeping through my skin, gunking up my veins and arteries, filling my heart and then my soul.
… I am not the same person. My arm was buried in a sling, strapped to my chest. My story is changing. Right now, it’s changing.
My eye finds the bright, yellow center of my purple pansy. Deep purple (almost black) lines begin in the yellow, piercing out through the delicate ripples. I gently slide a single flower petal between my index finger and thumb. A silky gift to soothe.
We walk through fear together, banishing it one step at a time. Grami was right. My patient, persistent Papa loves me. He loves my questions and my doubts and even my anger. Even as I’m blinded by the eclipse’s cyclical return.
Kneeling in the dirt, I turn and see it in the silky ripples of a delicate flower petal and in Zephy’s deep brown eyes. Like when the moon’s inky disk travels across the sky, revealing Baily’s beads, bright rosary-like beads of sunlight. Light always finds a way, streaming through deep valleys along the moon’s rugged edge.
My fear begins to die in the dark, damp Texas soil
Excerpt: Flying Lessons, Angela Kari Gutwein

Surround yourself with those who will shine the light, those who will walk alongside. Their nervous system will help regulate your own.

Take small steps, continually returning to the safety of the nest.

Until you can trust yourself.

It may be awkward and clumsy and dirty at first, but that’s okay.

Trust your inner voice. Your words may come out wrong, but if you speak from the heart, the words will not matter. Be vulnerable and be present.

The Flying Lessons

Find choice souls to hold it. Dogs work.

Trust yourself.

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