We have two primary parts of us that makes up who we are:
Our desires and our ethics.
Our actions must be aligned with our ethics.
Our Voice is the tool used to communicate desires and ethics. Our Name defines us for ourselves and adds identity to who and what we are. It enforces and validates our identity.
Needs are the things each individual requires to live a healthy life. Needs are unanimous non-negotiables. We need food, warmth, and shelter.
Our desires are the things each individual requires to live a healthy life. Desires are unique and vary from individual to individual. Some people need dance. Some people need music. Some people need to write. These are desires and, without these desires, our mental health will suffer.
The Voice is the first tool we have to communicate our feelings, views, opinions, desires, and ethics. When our Voice is taken away from us, we suffer from discomfort. In all abuse and trauma, the Voice is the first victim. The first to die. The first thing taken away from the victim.
***
The journey through my Mind Maze was vigorous work. Each therapy session consisted of my therapist teaching me grounding tools for PTSD. Stay here. Look into my eyes. You are here now. You are safe.
She taught me how to use my five senses to ground myself into the present.
I am here.
I am now.
My five senses were the physical anchor that grounded me into the Now.
We would clear out a room. The trigger would send me back to the trauma event.
“Look in my eyes. You are here.”
I’d find her eyes in the dark and it was dark. The black would close in and I would be back in a war room, back in a rape room, back in a nightmare. I’d find her eyes and follow her back to the present.
Pause. Breathe. Observe.
Urgency and speed triggered me.
Stress triggered me.
Anxiety and emotions. Love. Relationships.
I couldn’t move without a trigger bombarding me. This is why I was a shut-in. Because it simply hurt too much to move. To live. To exist.
Therapy began peeling back the layers.
Every session toggled between PTSD and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Shadow Work, kicking down more doors.
***
Early on, I realized a very real problem. I had more anger than I knew what to do with. I was overflowing in anger. Rage consumed me. I would leave a session and let the anger come.
It was one day about 6 weeks into my therapy. I was shaking. I couldn’t say anything through the entire ride home. I just sat miserable, shaking. We had 18 raspberry bushes at home waiting to be planted. I wasted no time.
I got out of the car, went to the back of the garden and took up a shovel. In 2015, I started digging. I struck the earth over and over, pouring all my hate and rage into the earth. And the Earth, took it. Everything I gave her, everything I did, I dumped all of it. I screamed, I ranted, I cried. I put it all in. And when I was done, when I was all out of tears to shed, I took up the raspberry plant and dropped it into the earth.
With love, I filled the hole with water and earth. I was calm. I sat back and looked at the simple plant. The next session, I did it again. And again. I planted lilacs and roses, peaches, and bulbs. I planted everything. Over the course of five years, from 2015 to 2020, I planted everything for every drop of pain I had.
And when I was done, I had nine gardens. Strawberries, lupin, butterfly gardens, bird gardens, milkweed, and hummingbirds. Bee gardens and herb gardens. My witch’s garden. My roses. Fifty rose bushes in all. This was my first Healing Garden. In 2017, I started doing Tai Chi and Yoga and Meditation in that garden.
In that garden, true healing had started.
I meditated on the studies. I learned the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is just the Western terminology for Meditation. I studied yoga and learned how to merge the benefits of meditation with yoga. I took Krav Maga. Self-Defense and Karate. I earned up to my yellow belt. The violence was triggering my PTSD, so I changed to Tai Chi.
I kept my bag work though. I slowed down, observed, watched my emotions. Came to know all the parts of me.
It was in 2018, I had done nothing but meditation, yoga, Tai Chi for two weeks. I reached zen. Nothing could move me. Nothing could push me or sway me.
I was peace embodied. I was more complete. More whole.
And still completely clueless about the trauma I was currently living in.