Nimue Brown's Blog, page 108

Different kinds of trauma

Most research into trauma is based on male experiences – especially the experiences of male soldiers. It focuses on the idea that you have experienced a single, or a small number of traumatic things and that healing comes from contextualising it and de-normalising it. The expectation of flashbacks to specific events as a PTSD response comes with this sort of trauma.

Of course not all trauma takes this shape. If you grew up neglected, or in an emotionally abusive family, there may not be any big events you can point at. Racial abuse can often take the form of relentless microaggressions – any one alone doesn’t look like much, but added together they become traumatic. Gaslighting depends on attrition, not big events. Economic abuse tends to be a long term project. Workplace bullying can be insidious and long term. People emerge from these situations traumatised and also not fitting the traditional model we have for dealing with event based trauma.

Then there’s the intersections – to be traumatised by living as a neurodiverse person while also having to deal with racism and economic abuse. To suffer medical trauma because of your sexual identity and also having to deal with workplace bullying and one instance of being beaten up… People can have multiple trauma sources and those interact with each other and impact on how, and if you might be going to heal.

I’ve experienced event-based trauma and the kinds of invasive thoughts and flashbacks that go with it. I’ve also experienced the kind of trauma that is built of smaller things over longer timeframes. Being triggered around that is qualitatively really different and much harder to spot. If you’re back in the trenches with the shellfire, then afterwards you have a pretty good idea what just happened. If you’re back in the hideous miasma of an awful childhood, or a toxic workplace or an abusive relationship, that mist can settle over you without it being obvious what’s happened.

With that kind of triggering, you can end up thinking, feeling and reacting as though you were back in hell. It can make the current situation look like the previous one. All the coping mechanisms come out – but they won’t be relevant or helpful if you aren’t in the same situation. They may even harm you. Everything is incredibly confusing and disorientating and you may feel as though you have gone entirely mad.

Getting help for complex trauma is much more complicated. Finding an expert who understands the layers of things you may be dealing with isn’t easy. Even recognising that you’ve got complex trauma impacting on you can be hard because when it isn’t event based, it plays out so much more subtly.

The trouble with being a person

One of my early memories is of going to playgroup for the first time, looking at the other children there and having no idea what to make of what I was seeing. Throughout my childhood, people and social situations were scary and incomprehensible. 

Over the years I’ve put in a lot of work trying to make sense of people – as individuals, and as groups. Being a person has never come naturally to me and I mostly feel that I just don’t qualify as one. I’m currently trying to imagine a more cheering approach to this, hence the picture. I’d probably cope better with all aspects of life if I had enormous, creatury ears. 

This was based on a photo of me. Something about the lighting and my head angle combined to make me look more like my mother and great grandmother than I usually do.

Making people invisible

The history we are taught, and the history we see in pop culture representations has tended to be the history of straight cis white men. It’s not accurate. Everyone else has always existed and done stuff. However, this selective storytelling has consequences. 

A lot of people – white English speaking people especially – never get further than what little history they are obliged to encounter at school plus the problematic film and cultural content that works much the same way. This means that many people struggle with the idea that anything could have happened in the past that wasn’t centred on straight cis white men. Show them any content that even acknowledges other people exist and they can be surprisingly upset.

This means that accurate content showing queer people, People of Colour, and even active women can be dismissed as ‘woke’ and inaccurate. Some people seem to be stuck in the film worlds from the first half of the twentieth century, which is grim. They are unable to imagine or accept the existence and agency of people who are not straight cis white men. You find them on social media, criticising accurate historical content and arguing with evidence because it doesn’t fit their fantasy. They also can’t handle having this kind of thing in fantasy stories, firm in the belief that even fantasy Europe can only be straight white men.

The other consequence of this is the belief that diversity is a modern invention and that diverse people aren’t really real, or don’t matter. Again, you’ll find them on social media denying the historic existence of neurodiverse people, denying the existence of trans and non-binary folk in history, denying historical female agency, and making that a basis for saying this ‘new stuff’ is pretend and does not merit taking seriously.

History is not a neutral subject. The way it is taught and represented isn’t neutral and has ongoing consequences. Many things that are intrinsically human have been left out of how we tell our history stories and that distorts cultures and societies.

All the beautiful eggshells

A part of me is always surprised when people express the idea that they can’t be walking on eggshells around someone. Granted, there are people who demand that as a power move, and that’s vile to deal with, but I’ve found them to be rare. 

Substantial relationships require effort. For me, that’s never seemed like a problem or a burden. To care about someone means wanting to understand their needs and issues. It feels like an honour to be trusted with the knowledge of where a person is vulnerable. I’m glad to have opportunities to step up, to help, to hold the right space and to do the right things. Tell me about the eggshells, and I will dance carefully around them to the very best of my ability.

Most things in this life depend a lot on how you invest in them. Some things are more rewarding than others, but without the willingness to invest wholeheartedly, most things can only ever be dull. You can spend your whole life running around in search of excitement, adventure, love, success or anything else you fancy and mostly not finding it. The person who invests themselves in being excited, or loving or living a successful life on their own terms will find those things all the time in their life.

Waiting for the prize to magically come to you is seldom a good strategy. In most things, what we get out depends heavily on what we put in. The treasures of intimacy aren’t available if you don’t want to be exposed and vulnerable, and aren’t willing to invest profound care and attention in another being. 

Tell me about the eggshells. I want to be careful with the people around me. I am tired with my whole soul of the relentless individualism that defines such things as impositions or inconveniences. No one is imposing on me if they ask for the specific care and consideration that they need. I am glad to be asked.

What has it got in its pockets?

String, obviously.

And a magical ring, with an unlikely back history. Shiny. We all know how this goes. It is important to have something shiny in your pocket.

A really cool rock that you found while wandering about. Maybe also some twigs or an empty snail shell. Do not put the dead beetle in your pocket – yes, it is wondrously shiny but it isn’t going to be friends with the cool rock. Yes, you really should have added a beetle pocket last time this happened.

Old tissue. A bit gross but usable in the kind of emergency that tissues help with. Like bad decisions around putting your face in a flower, or unexpected peeing.

At least three gloves. Never an even number of gloves. No. That would be weird.

The item of mystery. Did you mean to eat it? Were you intending to identify it later? Did it climb in all by itself? No one knows. It is important to make room for the mystery, and pockets are good in this capacity.

A broken thing. Because you were sad about it and thought that it might be lonely. Because you hoped to fix it, or use it in some way. Maybe you will. For now, it is a pocket denizen and you stroke it fondly and try to imagine what it’s new life should be.

Bird seed. You had a bag at some point. Maybe you were feeding birds. Maybe you were spreading sunflower plants again. Enough seeds to play with, and maybe someone will come to your hand for a few grains.

The mortal remains of a bag, whose previous and heroic purpose has been forgotten. It may still prove useful.

Your hands – of course – are in your pockets some of the time, in skin conversations with everything else. Touching. Feeling. Remembering. Wondering if the little hard dry things are from last time you tried to take a dead beetle home with you.

(With thanks to Potia for the goblin prompt that led to this.)

Crafting a Fine Death

Some years ago, I ended up writing a hundred fictional obituaries for living people, as part of a kickstarter. It made me think a great deal about what a good death is, and how that relates to our lives.

I decided as a teen that I would rather regret my actions than my inaction. I’ve lived much of my life with an awareness of what I might regret if I was to be suddenly on my deathbed, and it means that most of the time I could leave easily. I don’t have much unfinished business – and where I do, I’ve already reconciled myself to it. I have chased my dreams and followed my heart enough not to be dissatisfied with this life. I have not put off the things that mattered to me. 

I tell the people I love that I love them. When I mess up, I do my best to deal with it quickly. The things I have not dealt with were things that did not turn out to matter all that much.

Ideally, I’d like to die doing something heroic. In practice, this body just isn’t capable of much heroism, and my best shot would be to put myself between another living being and a terrible threat. I’ve reconciled myself to that. I would prefer to die with some dignity, but given this body, that may be an optimistic thought and I may have to accept it not being like that.

I’m not afraid of dying. At this point I’m not especially afraid of suffering. I don’t want to spend years being useless, but I’m pretty good at finding ways to adapt to limitations so I shall imagine that I’ll keep going with something that contributes to the world. My ultimate vision of a perfect death is to have my body eaten by wildlife. I would like air burial. I would like my bones to be turned into musical instruments.

A good death is certainly a thing to aspire to. Many of us won’t get any kind of vote on the circumstances of our passing. However, a life lived well is a meaningful way to frame your death. A life lived well means that people can celebrate you when you leave, rather than feeling awful about you. I aspire to living a life that means, even if I die tomorrow, people who knew me can feel good about what I did while I was here.

(With thanks to Karen for the excellent prompt.)

Taken by the tide

The prompt for this blog was ‘Openness to the winds of how and what next’. I’m starting with a little detour around how important it’s always been to me to use the language and metaphors that resonate. Wind is not what happens to me around change. I’m a water person on this issue, and for me it has to be the language of tides, flows, currents and waves. Metaphors like this are part of our soul language, so I think it’s really important to use the words that open you up to those deeper layers of meaning and possibility. 

The tides are something I primarily feel in my gut. Sometimes there’s not much to feel, which is fine. Not everything in life is a big drama or a huge shift. Sometimes I feel when change is coming, or possible, or is happening in a way that I need to be alert to. It’s never really occurred to me not to be open to this sort of thing. Change is inevitable, and fighting it can be exhausting and pointless. Learning when and how to go with the flow and when to swim fiercely against it is a thing.

Dead things go with the flow, and life often swims the other way. Then there’s the salmon, swimming upstream to spawn. Sometimes flowing with the tide isn’t the answer, but often it is. When you aren’t going with the flow it can take a lot of effort just to stay still. 

The metaphor that has become most important to me comes from surfing. This is curious because I’ve never tried to surf and never will. About as close as I’ve got has been floating towards the shore on my stomach. It’s all about catching the waves, letting the approaching swell of it lift you and knowing how to travel with it. When that happens as a life/magic issue, I feel it keenly. I get a strong sense of the rising wave and the possibility of riding something out to good effect. And like actual waves, there’s usually an element of danger in working with this energy, trusting to it, surrendering to it and seeing what happens.

It’s not always a passive choice. Often to ride this kind of wave I have to be highly alert to what I need to do and willing to trust my intuition and time my moves based on that alone. Of course there’s often no rational, external way of monitoring any of this, and I don’t talk about it when I’m doing it – except to Tom. 

Being open to change often means being open to being changed, not just having the situation alter. It means being willing to become an agent of change, an active participant in a rising tide, part of the flow, part of the wave. Sometimes it means deciding to be the water rather than being something in the water. No one gets to be static, whether they like it or not. The question is how we choose to participate in change, how we make change, and how we let change happen to us.

(With thanks to Karen for the prompt)

Bards and Bardolatry

Karen gave me this title as a prompt, and it’s been interesting to think about. Idolatry is defined as the worship of idols and tends to imply ‘false gods’. What kind of falseness or misplaced faith might trip a bard up? What might a would-be bard do that couldn’t work or that would dishonour them?

Not caring about your audience – be that human or other. Bardic work is about engagement and exchange, if you’re only doing it for the applause and you haven’t even thought about what your audience might need from you, that’s going to fail in all the ways. Getting grumpy because your audience did not respond as you’d assumed is messing up as a bard.

Punching down. Satire should always be about discomforting the overly comfortable. Joking about the suffering of others is seldom actually funny, and never good. Picking on an audience member also isn’t good.

Appropriation. Particularly if you’re misrepresenting and writing over something you barely understood. If you take material because you think it’s cool, but don’t work with it, or its origins well enough, that’s not respectful. Also anyone in the audience who knows the material better than you do will think you’re an arse. If you haven’t delved deeply, the odds are the material is not as unknown as you were assuming, thus increasing your scope for looking preposterous.

Not putting your heart into it. As an experienced audience member I can usually tell if I’m seeing a newbie giving it their all, or someone who didn’t really try. Passion matters. A wholehearted, everything you’ve got performance is always going to be powerful even when you are young in your craft. Even when nerves trip you up. Nervous and struggling looks very different from complacent. Complacence is disrespectful of your material, your tradition and your audience.

Not being a good audience member. It’s not enough to rock up, do your bit, accept the applause and leave. Community is important. Listening to other people and connecting with what they do is important. If you feel like you’re too important to hang around listening, you urgently need to spend more time as an audience member. This is different from needing to prepare for your bit, or needing to recover afterwards.

Feeling entitled.

Sharing things you haven’t really thought about. Especially popular mainstream things. It’s not enough to have a catchy chorus if the messages in a piece are sexist, racist, ableist, or all about consumerism.

There are probably more, but these struck me as being particularly important.

Questing for foxes

Charlotte asked for foxes. I haven’t had a close encounter with a fox in a while – I’ve not been out at dusk enough. So I thought I’d try my hand at drawing a fox, which turned out to be really educational.

At my first fox attempt, I put down a few outlines, as I usually do. It looked wrong. I made corrections. Fox ears are much bigger in proportion to fox heads than I registered at first glance. It’s all too easy to have the fox look like a cat, or a dog, or a bear, or a racoon. Probably other creatures too, but these were the ones I accidentally invoked as I was trying to get the nose and mouth right on the first attempt.

Even when I got the shape right, what I’d drawn did not convey ‘fox’. 

I stared harder at my reference photos. It dawned on me that foxes are not expressed well by firm lines. Foxes are floofy. Foxes in the distance can look sleek, but not close to. So I started again, drawing guide lines, but being more alert to the fluffiness. I took more of a layered approach. 

It struck me that if you try and state what a fox is, you already don’t have a fox. Foxes, it turns out, can only be implied.

Every Pagan Is An Activist

If we are to have any kind of relationship with any aspect of the natural world, we have to be activists. I firmly believe that it is not possible at this point to be a Pagan without being an activist. The person who feels entitled to simply take from nature – be that magically or practically, has a destructive relationship with this planet and everything on it.

There are, however, many ways to be an activist. If you are working from a place of care to try and protect, nurture, and support life, you are already doing this work. You might want to consider dialling it up, making it more explicit and more visible. There is always more that can be done, but if everyone did something we’d be in a much better state.

All compassionate work is a form of activism – up to a point this also includes self care. Promoting rest and health means pushing back against the idea that we should work and consume endlessly. When self care is sold as a product, it becomes part of the problem. When self care is the excuse we use for not bothering, then it stops being activism.

We have to be careful to avoid things that are primarily undertaken to put ourselves centre stage. Activism that is mostly ego doesn’t get much done. 

Pagans are especially well placed to talk about power. Anyone on a magical path has a considered relationship with power. There’s a lot of philosophy in Paganism around power-with rather than power-over, and this is key around activism. Mainstream culture teaches people to feel powerless and ineffective. Paganism teaches people to stand in their own power and use it well. If we can model how to do that for people who are not Pagans, we can help people overcome the feelings of futility and powerlessness that stop many from acting.

Everything can be changed if there’s enough willpower to make a difference. We have the resources. We have the knowledge. Anything can be changed, but only if people believe they can change things. What we know about will, belief, and intent could make a great deal of difference. 

And so I write this to remind you that you are powerful. The things you do make a difference. Your words are spells. Your actions have an impact. Your will affects the world. 

(With thanks to Helen Woodsford-Dean for the prompt to write this.)