week of Feb 21

The structure of the book:

Collection of essays on orphaning

Self-orphaning: education, Whiteness, being a good daughter, marriage

Orphaning others: policy, denial, being outside of relationship

Reciprocity, becoming, the action verbs of living in community

Cutting oneself off from others as reducing harm

Re-engaging with community, finding/forging a family

_The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma_

Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD

Poverty and Trauma

Me to Everyone (1:29 PM)

Brene Brown

The Body Keeps the Score

Telling stories of vulnerability is also telling stories of

Tragedy happening, Joan Didion still writing.  The book she is writing is her cure

Such a deep identity as writer

Journaling

Me to Everyone (1:31 PM)

“I hate myself” don’t want to record/ amplify how shitty I feel in writing.

Don’t want to show it.  Don’t want to know it.

Oh you should—shall

instead

An invitation to allow yourself to explore any of the things you are feeling or thinking

Whatever comes to you, go ahead and write it

Wanting to be found.  Wanting other people to find it for me

Connects to Karen’s sending Kelly music to figure out for me

Outsourcing the most essential work of our lives

Calling your angels to help you to do some of your work

It was a panic response to ask Kelly for help. (because you're related to this problem, you have a responsibility to me). Is it a panic response or a human response when you're going through something unfamiliar.

We're all in different degrees of panic/triggering

And also,

We can figure it out together.  “She’s gonna learn this one part, and I’ll learn this other.” To “we’re both going to learn it all”

asking for help buys time, and also is a call to create something together

...

So yeah, I didn't report the sexual assault.

I didn't see a way forward that looked like a positive outcome.

Other than to reframe what happened into something that didn't happen.  Therefore I would not have to do the thing. [MadMen Peggy "you'll be surprised how many things never happened" in one of the first episodes--setting the tone of how denial works in the ad agency/life]

And also, I had no time.  I was exhausted.  I could not have given the energy to that thing.  I had to compartmentalize, to put it aside.  I needed to get through this thing.  My body kept the score though.  I started having pains, just dull aches.  Chronic.  My DO recommended I work with an Eastern medicine practitioner.  She identified that I had some sexual shame I was hiding.  I was.  

I was also burning out my endocrine system one gland at a time.  Stress.  "You've gotta change your diet and your lifestyle."

So I became vegan.  Eliminated dairy, which was exacerbating thyroid challenges.  Notice what is causing inflammation. If dairy causes inflammation, try eating less of it. Maybe a single scoop of ice cream as a rare treat.  Lifestyle change meant exercise--yep, I can control that.  Started running 10 miles per week.  5Ks. "Managing stress" meant yoga class four days a week and smoking pot to fall asleep.  Ran myself ragged.

The sexual assault also meant I never wanted to be alone with a male colleague in social settings.  I didn't attend any out of state conferences with my doctoral advisor, opportunities where I could have networked in my field.  It may have changed the trajectory of my career.

I'm also thoughtful of the men (like Mike Pence) who avoid being alone with women, who may opt to not mentor a younger female colleague, for example, to avoid any impropriety.  This also impacts a career trajectory.  Sexual assault risk on the one hand, gendered avoidance on the other.

Exactly a decade later, to the day, Feb 7th, I realized I should call it an assault. That I had protected a perpetrator by not saying something.  That he may have had a relationship with a student.  That it was much much easier to pretend nothing happened rather than say something, do something.

"Many of us had much more than one [sexual assault]--so I had to clarify which one you're talking about"

A friend who listened to the podcast called me this week, saying there were things she learned that she hadn't known at the time.  I feel like I keep telling the story in layers.  The dissertation was one high-level, intellectualized layer.  The podcast got more into my personal academic history.  And also, it opened up me going one layer deeper to acknowledge how my experience of sexual assault and denial/coverup/complicity was a coping mechanism for me to get through that trauma.

 I read something this week about how while you are experiencing trauma, you can't heal from it.  It's only later, when you are safe, when you have space to reflect, to recognize.  But in the moment, it's too much.  You just have to survive and deal with the things coming at you that day.

"Can't the wounds just be gone?  Healed enough with a scar so you can just move on"

We create a scar tissue so we don't feel.  And yet, today calls for us to become listeners, feelers, recognize ourselves and each other.  Establish/re-establish connections, to be in relation with people who do see us, do recognize our boundaries.  And perhaps staunch bleeding of relationships that do not not honor us--keep kin at a distance if it causes harm.

What responsibility do I have to stop a perpetrator?  What responsibility do others have? Does the perp?

Reframing a person "taking advantage of me" as assault is a loving act.  To say out loud, to complain, that being taken advantage of is violence, is seen as violence by those who identify with those who have taken advantage of others.  It is gendered--there are expectations that males grab the bull by the horns, take what's theirs, dominate the conversation, compete with others for scarce resources.  Women are to be taken from, to give freely, to smile while they do it. Women are fertility, where the seed is planted, and from whom the fruit is seized (oh man, also had conversations this week about US healthcare system and women's health/ pregnancy--the legal liability focus on the delivery of the child while leaving women (especially women of color) to bleed to death internally, to walk out of the hospital without support for her needs immediately after birth and in the weeks and months which follow).

To name taking advantage as violence, to name indifference as violence, points a finger at those who don't want a finger pointed at them.  It implies responsibility.  It demands accountability. An explanation. A justification.  It takes work to defend a position.  It's much easier to just silent the complainer.  Make her disappear.

(Taking advantage of as violence--there are crimes which recognize the perpetrator and crimes which do not.  That wealthy famous people can evade responsibility, can commit crimes in broad daylight without consequence--when this phenomena exists and we cannot call it out, cannot bring it to justice, it means there are some who may commit violence without it being seen as violence.  Whether it is murder or harassment or discrimination or dereliction or plagiarism/idea theft, taking credit when not earned, if a person isn't held accountable for it, it is as if it never happened.  There are some people who will always be recognizable as suspicious--can't take their word for it if they accuse one of these impunists.  Impunity: getting away without punishment. Accuser: suspicious party.)

And speaking of disappearing: Another layer beyond the sexual assault layer is the disappearing of women  in the San Luis Valley.  Women's bones found in a burn barrel.  The young woman who brought her toddler into her Mom's house went back out to the car and was never seen again.  The cult(s) in Crestone who leave people to die in the desert night.  The night I spent in my pickup near Crestone, hearing a truck rattle down the dirt road in the middle of the night, an hour later driving back--my imagination saying there was something wrong about that.  I noted the strange truck without lights in a secured area between 3:30 am and 5 am in this blog entry.

Also, this tweet: https://twitter.com/HC_Richardson/status/1365290952131248130

Heather Cox Richardson: "One of the ways authoritarians maintain loyalty is by raising up mediocrities who know they are only in power because of the leader, and would fall back to unimportance without his favor." She was writing in response to people who crave recognition but are unable to achieve it through merit who gain power by allegiance to an authoritarian.

And so, now I'm thinking about all the other organizations which taut "meritocracy" but actually are authoritarian structures who reward obedience with budgetary discretion, decision-making authority, (tenure haha), higher salaries. Thinking about how people who ask tough questions, who display creative genius, who name the structures of power and their reproduction, are a THREAT to the authoritarian control of the organization ("without us there'd be chaos!" defining orderly bureaucracy as a higher good than say serving the mission of the organization)