So close to home…yet feeling so far away…                                                    
 
COPS AND TRAUMA
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
Experience, I suppose, was the sergeant’s crystal ball.  Either that or he was just being sadistic when he told the class of rookies that most of them would end up divorced.  Or as alcoholics.  Or entangled in some kind of vice from which there would be no return and no reprieve.  The price of the job, he warned.  Ominous predictions for a bunch of idealistic, fresh-faced young warriors out to save the world, or at least the city of Trenton.  That was a lot of years ago.  Phil was barely twenty-five.
 
In order to achieve its goals and protect and keep its members functioning successfully in a profession that by its nature involves conflict, aggression, and violence, law enforcement maintains a closed society, a tight culture that governs itself with the unwritten codes of silence and image.  It is an issue of mission and survival.  Chaos may or may not erupt between long stretches of mind-numbing boredom and endless, mundane report writing.  When chaos does erupt, the law must be imposed.  The chaos controlled.  Order restored, by force if necessary.  There are protocols and procedures.  Sometimes they fail.  Bodies on both sides get injured.  Catastrophes occur.  The goal then becomes survival.
 
Nothing could have emotionally prepared me for the morning Phil walked through the front door after a midnight shift, his uniform dirty and torn saying, “I’m okay now.”  But he wasn’t.  Not after staring down the barrel of his own service revolver pointed at his head by an enraged suspect during a domestic dispute.  An old timer, probably only in his thirties at the time, used to say to Phil, “Any day I don’t get shot at is a good day.”  That’s a pretty low standard for a workday.  In the end, the suspect didn’t pull the trigger.  I suppose that then qualified as a good day.  I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, but I’m eternally grateful that I dodged widowhood that morning and that our young daughters were spared a dead father. 
 
However, you don’t have a gun pointed at your head and get spared trauma.  No one is immune from trauma, not even cops.  Cops might not think about trauma, but trauma always messes with cops.  No one on the front lines of law enforcement escapes its shadow.  Trauma comes with the territory.  Phil and I didn’t understand this.  We do now. 
 
Trauma does not discriminate between witness or victim, instigator or mediator.  A basic principle of living is that sustained contact with violence and aggression damages and weakens our life force—our vital energy—at its deepest level.  When normal reactions to highly-charged, distressing events must be suppressed and are consistently refused a truthful voice, the possibility of gaining strength through resolution and healing is overpowered and trauma quietly begins laying its groundwork.  So when young officers relinquish parts of their tender hearts to the misguided, unspoken oath of strength through silence, they are truly surrendering parts of their souls.  Phil and I didn’t understand this either.  We do now. 
 
So it is that when the idealism of serving a noble cause fades under the weight of incorrigible realities, it yields to the path of least resistance.  During the course of any workday shift, where a hastily made decision can severely and irrevocability alter the course of a life, a culture of cohesiveness is the muscle that offers protection and support.  And once the external environment of conflict that pits good against evil splits and turns inward, it solidifies into a stoic, emotional posture of “us vs. them”—a survival mode that resists emotional growth and evolution. 
 
In the void created by the growing separation between the authentic, innermost, compassionate self and the projected outward image of power tasked with dominating aggression with aggression, distance from home--from your true self—continues to expand.  And any notion that there exists a possibility of inner peace and the necessity of consistent, nourishing self-care, remains a constant basis for ridicule in such a closed, authoritarian environment.  Without the ability to stay connected to your deep-down self, suppressed trauma becomes your authority. 
 
It’s not as if retirement can dissolve the layers of embedded trauma.  Once the uniform is packed away for good, the energy of aggression and conflict—so integral to policing— remains.  Only now that energy has no focused place to be.  So it goes everywhere.  Black and white, militaristic thinking tries to control the lax civilian world, which only invites anger and frustration.  And the predictions made by the fortune-telling sergeant come true.
 
Transformation from the constraints of duty-aggression and the trauma it conceals is doable.  A life can expand beyond its controlled boundaries and indoctrinations, and the blocks created by the stranglehold of entrenched, difficult emotions can be dissolved.  An inner world will unlock and self-compassion and self-honor will begin to heal the secret wounds hidden behind the blue wall.  And through that experience of deep reconnection with the tender heart of the young warrior within, trauma dissipates and a new, profound power rises.  It is called strength.  And it is real. 
 
Namaste
 
(To schedule a confidential healing session, email: PK@anunobstructedpath.net

TATTOOS & FRENCH LAVENDER
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
“What’s a guy like you doing selling soap?”  The words drifted out of my mouth before the finicky Miss Manners who camps inside my brain had a chance to rouse herself and bink me on the side of the head.  To be fair, he looked like he’d be more at home in a prison—on either side of the bars—or heaving meat carcasses across his shoulders in the back of a butcher shop, not surrounded by a sensory display of handmade soaps.  Surely there was a big, old Harley waiting somewhere…
 
But there he was, bearded and ponytailed.  All bulk and muscles poured into a tank top.   Every inch of skin exposed below his neck tattooed with thick, gray-blue arcs.  Extolling the virtures of herbs and lather, and essential oils.  The best scent for a closet? I asked.  French Lavender, he answered without hesitation, using the romance language so familiar to those in the business of creating products to soothe the soul.  Great.  I’ll take one.  All that soul-soothing…a steal at five dollars a pop.
 
And then as energy does—beckons and connects seemingly over the trivial to reveal the significant—the story of his eldest son unfolded.  A heartbreak in a family of go-getters, this young man is a hardcore heroin addict turned criminal, living who-knows-where in a drugged stupor, supporting his addiction one burglary at a time.  All attempts at counseling and rehab failed.  Five hundred dollar an hour therapists, he complained, and nothing.
 
The story was very familiar.  It sounded like the plot of a B-movie I could have written myself, down to the pricey counselors and the drug-addled, criminal exploits.  My brother died of a heroin overdose, I said.  I’m so sorry you’re going through this.  He shrugged.  That’s all I’m waiting for now, the phone call telling me my kid’s dead.
 
Standing there in the middle of sweetly scented soap, yet separated by years and seriously contrasting appearances—me bedecked in enough bling to blind an innocent bystander; he sporting tattoos wild enough to frighten little children and small animals—the story of a shared tragedy converged.  And despite the disparity between crystals and ink, youth and age, I am reminded once again, of the unity of experiences.  Of the shared threads of pain and growth.  Of ugliness and beauty.  Of failure.  And escape.  Of contraction into darkness.  Of expansion into light.  Of brokenness.  Of healing.  Of drudgery.  Of creation. 
 
For a few moments, the debris and chaos obstructing the sight of the energetic connection to “the strange and different other,” falls away and what remains is the unassailable truth—that everyone I encounter is the same, all are struggling with something profoundly significant in their lives.  And I am reminded once again that beauty can prevail alongside of pain.  That crystals and ink and bars of handmade soap can converge at anytime, even at a raggedy flea market on the way to nowhere, and offer up an unexpected link of understanding and inspiration.  This day it took the form of one tattooed biker dude involved in his personal process of healing, of creating beauty, and presenting it into the world—one French Lavender bar of soap at a time. 
 
I am grateful.
 
Namaste      

​“ ‘PLODE ”
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
There is nothing funny about unresolved trauma.  But occasionally humor slides in by way of the gallows and pierces its grim heart with a clarity reserved only for such perverse jest.  Husband Phil and I were discussing how victims of unresolved trauma either implode or explode.  Sometimes both.  But never neither.  It’s the inevitable road that unresolved trauma pushes its captives down.  A road of no choice and no escape.  Our conversation was becoming very dark and creepy.  But trauma is dark and creepy.  But so is the unavoidable fate of imploding and exploding. 
 
Yeah, one way or another, you’re gonna ‘plode!  That was Phil.  And it was funny.  Bizarrely funny.  Yet shockingly on target.  Like hitting the bull’s-eye using a warped bow and a crooked arrow.  And it was also true.  Unresolved trauma chases its captives in one direction only: into a ‘plode.
 
We’re not talking about having a bad day where you’re exhausted from lack of sleep and have had enough nonsense and lip from those near and dear, and there you go exploding into a hissy fit which involves stomping on a couple of cream donuts that just happen to be on the floor where you threw them a few seconds ago in lieu of inflicting physical harm on a certain, defiant bane of your existence.  Or a nagging sense of depression and hopelessness when you step on the scale and see that you did not get away with eating half that box of donuts and now payday is here.  These are garden variety incidents.  It’s fatigue talking.  Disappointment shading your mood.  The ups and downs of daily life that can be remedied with attention and consideration.  An apology.  An extra hour or two of exercise to burn off the unwanted pounds.  A desire and commitment to go forward making healthy decisions; choices that will create and build a life that nourishes and rewards.  It takes work, you know that.  But it’s doable. 
 
It doesn’t work that way with unresolved trauma.  It’s in charge and stays in charge.  And its power expands, growing fatter as it gorges on the calories of time.  Unlike the excess calories from donuts, there’s no exercising away the ballooning weight of trauma.    
 
It is devastating to me that I had no notion--nada, none, zero—that unresolved trauma exerted such powerful control over my life.  How can you live over fifty years and not have one iota, not one single, brief whiff of this truth?  Or even a vague perception of its realness?  Or the slightest concept of what being traumatized is, let alone its profound, lingering effects?  And that I--that I—was suffering from it? 
 
The answer is that the truth was not available to me.  And without that one, specific, imperative truth—that deeply hidden trauma was the cause of my consistent emotional torment—there was no possibility--nada, none, zero—for me to achieve wholeness, no matter what I did. 
 
You don’t know what you don’t know.  I needed sensible, comprehensive knowledge.  I needed to be taught truth and guided with accuracy and clarity.  Without that, there was no possibility for me to recognize that the dark void in the center of my chest was living, breathing trauma.  That it was unresolved trauma criticizing every decision I made.  Listening to and judging every word I uttered.  Watching and condemning every action I took, even while baking chocolate chip cookies. 
 
It was not, as I was indoctrinated to believe, a revered deity taunting me for my own good, simply urging me toward superior perfection.  All along the darkness at the center of my life was unresolved trauma.  Emotional implosions?  They were just a part of my daily life.  I didn’t know there was any other way to live.  But of course, there is.
 
Trauma is energy that defies visible shape and conventional reason.  The traditional, constricted perception of logic does not apply to trauma.  But unseeable energy is quite logical.  Energy connects all things.  It follows consistent pathways.  It ebbs and flows.  It becomes blocked.  Trauma is emotional pain.  Its counterpart is physical pain.  Trauma pain is as logical as physical pain.  All pain—both physical and emotional—can be logically managed, understood and remedied in one way or another. 
 
Unresolved trauma is blocked energy.  A clogged artery blocks the flow of blood to the heart.  Unresolved trauma blocks the flow of love to the heart.  Unlike an artery clogged with the energetic particles of plaque that can be seen and measured and therefore, remedied, trauma energy is ghostly.  It manifests as symptoms easily dismissed or immediately assigned to another cause.  That forty-something woman guzzling down a tumbler of wine at a festival last weekend didn’t just like the taste of Chardonnay.  It wasn’t physical thirst she was desperate to eliminate.  
 
Lack of knowledge about trauma and its daily, continuous effects locks its victim into a life narrowed down to emotional survival.  Enormous amounts of frantic energy are required to preserve just a semblance of emotional order.  Unfortunately, sooner or later desperate measures fail.   
 
There is nothing funny about unresolved trauma, but yeah, one way or another, you’re gonna ‘plode!  Sometimes it takes twisted humor to illuminate a straight truth.
 
Namaste
 
We are so focused on our search for truth,
we fail to consider how few actually want to find it. 
But it is always there.  
Whether we see it or not…
 Quoted from Chernobyl, the mini-series.    

​ANONYMOUS STRANGER
 
by Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
Many years ago, so many that it’s now considered the Stone Ages, Woman’s Day magazine ran a special deal too enticing to ignore.  For a nominal fee and a few words scribbled on plain white paper, a renowned expert would analyze readers’ handwriting and provide a comprehensive report on many aspects of their life.  Financial, personal, professional, character traits, love—all the usual subjects, that as part of the human race, we’re forever curious about. 
 
Maybe, just maybe this anonymous stranger with his honed, interpretative skill would erase all my emotional pain with his analysis and insight, and along with it predict my future, which of course was going to be sunny and wonderful because that is the answer I was looking for.  Back then I believed in miracles, the kind where all it took to heal inner darkness was fervent praying of the rosary and a strike or two of benevolent lightning.  So much for fantasy.  Maybe a handwriting guy was the answer. 
 
Turns out, Handwriting Guy was my answer…but not in the way I thought.  Handwriting Guy gave me the answer: of where to look, of where to begin.  Right there on the printout in front of me sat a conspicuous sign pointing directly to the path that would lead me to healing.  It was a flashing light.  A neon road sign.  It may as well have been jumping up and down and calling, “Over here!  Over here!”  But I didn’t hear.  I didn’t see.  Decades passed.  Still I didn’t hear.  Still I didn’t see.
 
Amid the generalities in my report, two words stood out—actually screamed out: tyrannical upbringing.  My reaction was visceral: What the hell was this crazy guy talking about?  There was no tyrant in my young life.  Handwriting Guy was wrong.  Very wrong.  Absolutely wrong.  I wasted my money. 
 
Had I not been blocked by something I did not understand, I could have seen that my rigid emotional response—my noble denial—to Handwriting Guy’s conclusion was in truth a sign, a very, very big signal that something important was hiding in plain sight.  What I was so viscerally, yet so casually dismissing was the exact issue I needed to explore.  But it was the Stone Age and I just wanted to be dazzled and permanently healed.  My heart pain had nothing to do with any tyrant.  Just give me the light already… 
 
Handwriting Guy was correct.  There most certainly was a tyrant in my upbringing.  It took writing Woman In Hiding for me to see.  That tyrant—my stepfather—with his tyrannical, abusive behavior toward me and my brothers shaped and set the course for my entire life.  The echoes of his treatment still to this day test my sense of balance and wholeness.   
 
My tyrannical upbringing was the beginning of a force field of fear and chaos, where terror and pain fused into a type of survival that calls for a little girl to tiptoe about and squeeze into hidden corners.  Praying for invisibility.  But never finding it.  If I was ever to experience any kind of true wholeness, true resolution of emotional pain, then I needed to begin with understanding my tyrannical upbringing.  Handwriting Guy, an anonymous stranger in an article in an insignificant magazine that touted the wonders of meatloaf and drugstore face creams, saw this and reported it back to me. 
 
It is not that Handwriting Guy was some kind of weird mystic gifted with magical powers.  The energy of abuse and pain surrounded me.  Anyone familiar with how energy works would be able to intuit and read this.  Handwriting Guy was a healer, offering his practiced skill so that others might see.  And all those years later, I did see.  Seeing led to understanding.  Understanding led to knowledge, which led to emotional freedom.
 
Those two words--tyrannical upbringing—were a light, a place to begin.  A place to start clearing.  I was so quick to dismiss what now is so obvious.  Handwriting Guy’s message was that benevolent strike of lightning I was searching for.  Only it didn’t offer the instant healing, as I hoped it would.  But it led me to my path.  And when I was ready, the guiding words of that anonymous stranger were still there. 
 
That’s the way of healing energy.  When you’re ready, healers show up.  Or…you finally notice them.  A healer could be an anonymous stranger with the exact words you need to hear, or maybe the exact touch you need to feel, or the exact surroundings you need to begin the “journey of your life.”  That’s the beauty of energy healing.  It comes from anywhere. 
 
Namaste.