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Trauma’s Infinite Stranglehold

4/7/2022

 
Trauma’s Infinite Stranglehold
 
k.h. Foley
  
In the waning weeks of my mother’s physical life, I was sitting next to her on the sofa in her tiny, neat-as-a-pin apartment, talking softly, tenderly to her. She was frail and calm. A departure from the mother I knew who always carried a match in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other. On this day, there was no hint of feral anger. No blast of antagonism to repulse me away. Dementia had stolen all of her protection. Had left her features velvety smooth. Her heart defenseless.
 
My mother had been sexually brutalized many, many times during her life. No human— no child—can withstand such harm. It is not possible. When anyone forces their energy into another, whether it is physical, psychological, emotional, religious, verbal, it is an assault. Assault causes injury. Injury creates pain. Pain unresolved expands into trauma. The powerful, powerful force that is trauma becomes lodged in our body, in our emotions. And does not let go.
 
It was always a bad-luck day when, as a child, I found myself trapped alone in the family sedan with my stepfather. He was an angry man. And his children were his target. As soon as the key hit the ignition, he would start: excoriating, humiliating and generally berating me for faults real or imagined. Leaving no flaw of mine unexposed. Firing contempt straight into my young heart. I didn’t know that he was force-feeding me hatred and lies. I thought it was truth.
 
My mother with her sublime bakery skills, her intuitive understanding of color and balance in her sewing craft work, and her sensitivity to creative energy, had “the touch” for transcendent artistry. But over the years, she became isolated in the pain that had solidified into the living, breathing entity of trauma. And that trauma turned insurmountable as she aged. Creativity became more and more of an emotional challenge as trauma and its vicious lies robbed her of any joy.
​
Sitting so close to her on that sofa that day, her eyes clinging to mine, I longed to return to her the beauty she had offered this world, despite the crippling anguish of her personal despair—trauma, that highly skilled enemy combatant, had never, not once, left her side.
 
As I was waxing poetic over her impressive artistry and her creative accomplishments, describing her as a true artist, and lamenting the fact that she never had the opportunity to flourish, she bowed her head and whispered, I never had the opportunity. I never did. She was in that moment defenseless against kindness. And broke down into heaving, convulsing sobs. Guttural, feral cries breaking through the wall of imposed silence. Gurgling up from a bottomless pit of bleeding wounds. Wounds she’d kept buried for a lifetime, now exposed.
 
In those moments, witnessing my elderly mother in such intense agony, I was terrified that I was actually killing her with kindness. And that is the legacy of trauma—its ultimate, infinite stranglehold on a haunted heart. Where love is refused entry. Where love becomes the deepest cut of all.

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    About the Author

    In the provocative spirit of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Gloria Anzaldua, and Mary Daly, Kathleen Hoy Foley expands and deepens the voice of female experience.

    Raw. Uncompromising. Compassionate. Deliberately antagonistic. Kathleen writes to awaken the courage within the reader.


    TO THE SURVIVOR
    If you are a person who was victimized as a child or as an adult, I am so very sorry you ever had to suffer at the hands of a predator. 

    I am sorry you were abused, sorry no one protected you, sorry you have felt so alone, sorry you have been so afraid then and in the now. I am so sorry for the loss of your innocence. 

    You were and are entitled to you life. And you had a right to inherit your own body. And no matter what you did or what you think you failed to do you are not to blame. Sexual abuse is never a victim's choice. Sexual abuse is something that was done to your body not something you wanted. 

    This is an excerpt from: 

    http://web.archive.org/web/20130101063123/http://true-perspective.org 

    Kathleen and I encourage you to visit this site for perspective on your ordeal. Live happy and whole. Claim you power! 

    You are your own authority.

    Question Everything.  Including social, religious & political authorities

    Learn to listen and respond to your intuition.  It is never wrong.

    Learn to be impolite.  It must be part of your defense system.

    Nothing is unspeakable.

    Stare truth in the eye and speak it.

    You name abuse.  Listen to your body.  It will tell you.  It is never wrong. 

    Stare abuse in the eye and speak it.

    Stare abusers in the eye and name them.

    Use your voice.  Use your words. 

    BE LOUD.  Violence against girls, boys, women and men hides in the silent shadows.

    Know that you are powerful.

    KNOW THAT YOUR VOICE IS POWERFUL.   USE IT.



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