mind body mama: Tell Someone You Trust

Recently in my personal fitness training practice a client disclosed that she is an abuse survivor. She told me this matter-of-factly, without many details, without crossing any professional boundaries, but with a tear sliding out of the corner of her eye. She needed me to know that the work of learning exercises was, for her, complicated by the fear and grief she carries in her body.

Once again I found myself saying words that, twenty years into feminist anti-violence practice, seem to run in my blood:

“I am so sorry that happened to you. “

It was a paradox moment. It called upon me to acknowledge the specificity of her experience: the way her history runs in her body and influences the movement of her muscles and bones. But I also had to reflect to her the commonness of this experience. “I am not surprised,” I told her. It is incredibly familiar to me to hear that a woman’s athleticism is challenged by a violent history.

It’s not unusual for women to come to martial arts or self defense practice with some awareness of this challenge. Many realize that a practice that asks them to become fully present in their bodies, while moving with strength and power, will stir things up. Add to this the fact that we talk about violence and boundaries and healing and it’s no small wonder we keep a box of tissues on the window sill.

But my personal training clients are more often surprised by the strength of emotion that accompanies our work together. “I don’t know why this is so hard,” one might say, frustrated by the way emotional obstacles are limiting her fitness progress. I am inclined to reply, “It’s hard because you brought your body with you!” The body in which resides all your hurts, going back however many years. With that one resilient, wounded, healed, strong, emotional body you are trying to learn new movements and unlearn old patterns. It’s no surprise to me that feelings sometimes overwhelm, that the present is shadowed by history.

I had another awareness as I spoke with this brave, sad client. I understood that I was not injured by holding the space within which she made her disclosure. I enjoy this client and I am not shocked by the intersection of her movement practice and her healing work. So it was just a different texture within our pleasant training session. I meant what I said when I told her, “I wish that had not happened to you,” but I did not wish that she wasn’t telling me. I am a safe person to tell. We were both safe in that moment.

It reminded me of the conversation I had with the amazing Katy Mattingly at the NWMAF Self Defense Instructors’ Conference. When the planners assembled an emotional support team for the conference I was proud to extend this care to our attendees. I never imagined that a session would push my buttons, would collapse my emotional world in that telescoping experience we call a trigger. I knew that I was sitting in the meeting room listening to Katy’s brilliant presentation, but in my feeling body I travelled over years and miles and found myself in a single instant trapped in a terrible and painful memory as if it were happening all over again.

So I found a time to sit with Katy a while later on the wide lawn of Swarthmore College and tell her my story. It was a paradox moment. Katy gave me what I most needed: she witnessed the specifics of my hurt. “You did the very best you could,” she said, and with those words reminded me that it was not my fault. And also she reflected, with wry humor and and an unruffled demeanor, the commonness of my experience. “I am not surprised,” she said more than once, shattering my illusion that the Gothic horror of my memory was uniquely terrible.

Katy also let me know that she was not hurt or diminished by witnessing me. “It didn’t happen to me,” she said. “I am just spending a nice half hour talking with you.”

It was the oddest sensation, having all of these words spoken to me in a moment of need. I thought, this must be what it’s like for a skilled body worker to receive an outstanding massage. I know to how to do this. And also, she is doing this really, really well. It is not something I can do for myself. I need this gift she is giving me.

I live in a rarified world in which we do this for one another. One moment I am witnessed and supported by a friend or colleague; the next, I offer the same words and presence to another woman. We have some skills to hold another’s hurt. We are not diminished by sharing space with sorrow and survival.

I imagine a world free of violence. I imagine a world free of abuse of women and children. And on our way to that world I commit to the moment of witness, to looking each other in the eye and saying,

“I am so sorry that happened to you.”

“You did not deserve that.”

“It was not your fault.”

“You did the very best you could.”

I think it’s how we get from here to there. I think it’s how we come to know that each hurt, though privately and uniquely held, happens to all of us. It’s how we come to see the invisible tide of violence that runs silently through our communities, our nation, our world. It’s how we access the compassion and resistance and rage and determination we will need to see this movement through.

Pass it on.

Self defense finger #5: Tell someone you trust.