​“ ‘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. 

SPITTIN’ ANGRY WOMEN
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am very familiar with angry women.  My mother was angry.  Spittin’ angry, in fact.  For the uninformed, spittin’ angry ranks high up there on the woman’s rage scale…next step involves the commission of a crime.  Say walloping some annoying shopper across the face in a grocery store parking lot.  That’s where my mother’s anger drove her.  And worse.  Dumb luck and the fact that she just looked like a sweet, little old lady was all that stood between her and jail time.  I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  Last week I unexpectedly encountered another spittin’ angry woman courting criminal misdeeds.  Bodily harm to be exact.  Spittin’ Angry Woman wielded a shovel and threatened to beat me up with it.  Whattttt?????
 
All of us are well acquainted with anger of the messy variety.  But when stripped down to its purity and directed toward improvements and solutions, anger is a powerful motivating force capable of provoking necessary change and propelling light into darkened corners where evil hides.  Starved of emotional reaction to fuel its combustion, freed from accompanying turbulence, anger is a laser beam of potent energy that can drill down to the truth with focused precision.  Used intelligently and efficiently, anger is a magnificent tool. 
 
Unrestrained and chaotic, however, anger is nothing more than a temper tantrum any two year old could throw.  Only the consequences for a toddler are minor.  A few minutes of settling down time.  And the drone of a sensible grownup trying to explain the advantages of being nice.  But with adults, uncontrolled anger can ruin relationships and destroy families.  Angry adults crush their own heart’s desires.  My mother called it biting off your nose to spite your face.  Angry people litter society with seeds of anger that trail in their wakes.  And those seeds take root.  And then you have a spittin’ angry woman and her temper wrecking a beautiful spring day.
 
And that’s what it was, a gorgeous spring morning…
 
Out for a brisk walk, plugged into my own rock and roll world, suddenly I collided with the exact combination of energetic circumstances necessary for a spittin’ angry woman to indulge her rage.  Rage that was primed to explode long before—days, weeks, months, years—I rounded the corner and stumbled into her world.  Her trigger is unimportant.  It could have been anything at all.  I was simply the convenient match that ignited her internal inferno already waiting and looking for a reason to blow. 
 
She was a nondescript, grandmotherly woman laying down mulch, grooming her flower beds.  But in an instant while surrounded by the soft glow of a spring morning, she switched from gardener to mad woman and turned the shovel she was holding into a weapon.  And at that moment in time, for reasons rooted far deeper than she would probably ever acknowledge, Spittin’ Angry Woman set in motion a chain of events that easily could have ended in bloodshed and handcuffs.
 
Anger poisoned my mother’s life—her artistry, her relationships, her feelings about herself.  Supremely creative with an innate sense of color and balance, my mother was so often consumed by inner rage and hatred that it crippled her from blossoming into the remarkable woman she was meant to be.  With age, her anger only intensified, hardening further her heart to love and kindness, keeping her prisoner inside its lies.  My mother’s anger forbid love.
 
A connection exists between elder women and rage that leads directly to underground wellsprings of throbbing anguish and pulsating trauma, and clawing monsters that continue to roam their pasts.  Monsters powerful enough to burst into the present dragging with them chaos and violence.  My mom was a victim of violence and terror.  Trauma and panic controlled her life, protected the small, hurting child huddling in the bleak corners of her past.  Spittin’ angry women lug around unnamed demons ready at a moment’s notice to attack.  Maybe mistaking anger for courage in the way that my mother did.  Spittin’ angry women—hurting child-women—don’t understand that courage constructs, it does not destroy. 
 
Authentic power rises from truth.  True courage lies in generating the energy to go on the difficult quest for the haunting, unspoken truths buried beneath the urge to explode.  Anger is a symptom of pain that intensifies with age as our perceived power to control our lives decreases.  Anger and the trauma driving it are resolvable at any age.  And with the resolution of trauma, anger wilts and a brand new life blooms.  A life where creativity flourishes.  Where love thrives.  And relationships can heal.  Where a gorgeous spring day is pure celebration.  And a lawn is sweetened under the balm of tender attention and the appreciation of a stranger passing by.
 
Dementia finally blunted by mother’s anger and along with it, her capacity to experience joy.  I know where Spittin’ Angry Woman and her shovel are headed.  Remember that shopper in the parking lot?  I’ll be keeping to the opposite side of the road.
 
Namaste
​

WHAT IS HEALING?
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
Healing from the pain of emotional trauma is an ongoing, ever expanding lifetime process.  It is not a gift or a destination.  Or a static, contented state of being.  Healing is a path…of growth…an ebb and flow of difficult challenges, tough decisions, and confusing emotions that rise up to be brought into the light of resolution.  Healing requires a constant renewal of patience while self confidence slowly develops.
 
However much we want it to, healing does not automatically happen, not even with time.  It won’t happen in a regimented program with strictures and time frames where “success” is celebrated by a group hug.  Nor with a slap on the forehead by a sweaty man clutching a damp handkerchief and a makeshift crucifix shouting, “You’re Healed!”  Healing certainly doesn’t occur because of a celebrity bellowing about an “aha teaching moment” no matter how convincing she sounds.  Even a big-hair psychic waving crystals and telling you that your father loves you does not possess the power of instant healing.  (Oh wait…I am the big-hair psychic waving crystals.  And your father does love you!)  Anyhow…while instant healing may be an illusion, a shift in personal energy is possible as a result of any experience.  And that shift will provide an opportunity, an opening to receive life-giving insight, not unlike a tightly bound rosebud unfurling to receive the waiting sunlight.
 
Startling, intense incidents can serve as catalysts to motivate you to pay attention to your yearning for relief and to finally act on your own behalf and commit to your emotional wellbeing.  Strange coincidences and unsettling events that occur seemingly out of nowhere—like a message from that big-hair psychic—are always connected to information about you and your life.  Should you listen for the underlying meaning, you will recognize that you are being offered powerful validation and encouragement at the precise moment needed to foster your growth.  And that includes opportunities to progress along the road of healing.
 
When you truly understand that healing is not a superficial, fixed state of happiness but rather an unfolding pathway to ever increasing emotional freedom, you liberate yourself from the artificial cultural rules that demand of us the humanly unachievable goal of bliss.  Every time you support yourself with compassion rather than condemning yourself for perceived failure, you are building inner strength.  That strength will continue to grow and continually propel you to progress and develop in a way that is natural, healthy and sustainable.
 
Healing, though, is not magic.  It does not erase traumatic experiences from memory or remove visceral reactions to imbedded pain.  Profound soul healing does not…does not…involve exoneration for those responsible for despicable acts.  Presuming that a militant abuser must play a role in your healing process is a dangerous misconception.  Every frozen smile, every automatic birthday greeting, every perfunctory invitation to a family celebration you extend to a militant abuser under the burden of duty is battery acid injected directly into your tender, healing heart.  Healing is not la-la land: it does not imply a happy place where all is well and everyone is wonderful.  Healing is breath and light--breathing and seeing.  An expansion of understanding, of learning to acknowledge and manage reality as it is, not as we wish it was, or as others insist it is.
 
Healing is our luminous, intelligent energy—our forever self—blossoming, gaining power, developing deep inner peace.  Healing is not a place.  It is not a finish line with a trophy.  Healing is a path.  A road full of potholes, twists and turns, and slippery slopes.  Healing is an ebb and flow of rising inner strength.  A constant tiptoe toward brighter and brighter horizons.  
 
Healing is not passive.  It is not a miracle.  It will not fall upon you like fairy dust.  Healing is personal action.  Healing is doing.  It is your deliberate act of attunement with the resonant forces of harmony that surround you and live beneath the darkness of entrenched trauma.  Healing teaches power while gaining power.  Through the on-going process of healing, you learn how to shift your precious energy from feeding emotional pain and focusing on all that cripples your life, to listening to the quiet whispers of your longing heart. 
 
Healing is opening your mind to all that is possible, allowing the mystical to guide you along the radiant path to clarity where you will find your untapped potential.  Healing is available to anyone who makes the personal, courageous decision to commit to themselves and to seeing. 
 
What is healing?  Healing, of course, is you.
 
Namaste
​