Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Dream

Transcript

Dream · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: Welcome to the System Speak a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:02
  I had another dream and my therapist tended it for me. We talked about it, I'm going to share part of that. But first, let me tell you about my dream. I dreamed I was a foster child and had been cut off the streets and sent to a foster home. It is true that I was a foster child, but this foster home was not any of my real foster homes.
• 1:35
  It wasn't a memory, just a dream. I kept getting in trouble for doing things wrong or the wrong way because I didn't know how, which was also true in my experience, but nothing directly the same as a memory from the past. There was a foster dad, but he was just in the background. Also, kids there, but faded in the background in the same way, not really part of the dream other than being a part of it and acknowledged. It was dinner time, and I was glad to finally sit down and eat.
• 2:14
  The foster mom was there, but I couldn't look at her. When I was finished, I went to shower. I made the water hot until it burned me and just stood there in the hot water being burned, wanting the hot water to burn off my skin. But I didn't actually hurt myself and my skin wasn't harmed. And I did get out.
• 2:37
  I got out and I got dressed and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. At this moment, I was aware for the first time of being an adolescent, like almost adult. I don't know if I noticed my age before this in the dream. I was aware I was expected to go to sleep for the night, but instead of going to my room, I went to the front door. I was aware I had to pass where the dad was sitting.
• 3:05
  I don't know where the mom was. But I didn't stop to ask permission. Just nonchalantly, I opened the front door and ran away. I walked normally down the street because I didn't want anyone to notice me, but then I started to run. At this point, I realized I was running away.
• 3:26
  I felt scared, and that made me run harder, faster. Except at the same moment I realized I was afraid, I realized that the foster mom was running behind me. Except this is the weird part. I was aware that I wasn't in trouble. And she just said to me, we can run together.
• 3:50
  At the same time she said that, I felt the rhythm of our footsteps in sync. I still wouldn't look back at her to see her face. But without stopping myself, I said back to her, Sometimes I run when I'm angry. It helps me feel better. And I started to cry.
• 4:11
  But I kept running, except now I was just out for a jog with my foster mom, not running away. And for the first time, I was okay with being contained. I didn't push back or fight her. I just let her run with me, be with me. When we came over a hill, we crossed a bridge over the ocean.
• 4:34
  I know, I know, but this was just a dream. I slowed down and ran my hand along the fence on the side of the bridge. I was in awe because I had never seen the ocean. Again, this is just a dream. I have seen the ocean, I know, but in my dream, it was the first time I was seeing it.
• 4:55
  The foster mom behind me walked up next to me and said that line from Clarissa Pinkola Estes in the wolf's book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, tears are a river that make you somewhere. And then I realized her voice was the voice of my new therapist, the one I'd been seeing this year. Just then a whale leaped into the air over the bridge and spat out a seal onto the bridge, then splashed back down in the water. I was shocked, but the seal smiled at us, then waddled over to the water and jumped back in. I kept walking along the fence with my fingers on the fence and realized I was inside the fence, and my therapist was now outside the fence.
• 5:42
  But I was okay because she was still there. Except now I knew I was actually very little, like very young, like a little girl, which is what startled me so much that I woke up. So that was all to my dream. It was such a strange dream, and I was embarrassed that I had dreamed about my therapist at all. But because my therapist is a union, she's really good at tending to dreams, and so I wanted to tell her about it and see what there was to learn, if anything.
• 6:15
  Plus, I couldn't really shake it off. It stayed with me, the feelings from the dream, and it felt like a shift somehow, and I needed to acknowledge it. She's really good about talking about our transference and we process that as we go, tending to our relationship after everything that's already happened to us with other therapists in the past. So it seemed important that this piece was something that we talked about. I didn't want to have to tell her about my dream because that seemed too hard.
• 6:48
  And so I just sent it to her in the portal where I can message her securely. I don't abuse that, but I did use it to send her this dream. So when we had our session, and when we had our session, the first thing that she asked me was how does being in therapy, new therapy with her right now specifically, how does that feel like foster care? This was a sucker punch. It felt like out of the blue.
• 7:19
  I don't know why I didn't see it coming, but I was shocked. It almost knocked the breath out of me. I really had to focus on my breathing just to answer her question. But also at the same time, it seems kind of obvious. It's so hard to try again after it hurt so much before.
• 7:41
  It's hard to be there even, to stay in therapy, to show up, to talk to her at all. And it feels like the cost is so high, the risk is so high, if we get it wrong because of what we've been through in the past. A really good therapist is worth everything, and I do want to get better. But also, when therapy goes wrong, it's so devastating, and it's really hard to come back from that. And I feel like we've had to do that over and over again.
• 8:29
  She said that being back in therapy is bringing up feelings that we had as a foster kid, like an emotional flashback, kind of. We're having to learn to trust again. We are wanting a safe place, but don't know if it will be. And we are needing a container that is strong enough to hold us. That was a lot to think about, a lot to process.
• 8:55
  It does feel hard to trust again. We've worked very hard not to be all switchy in therapy, to keep things under control, to keep a lid on things, to keep things very tight. I don't know what other metaphor to use to explain it. Because we have not been safe, and because the only time we did feel safe, we were also wounded. And while we have learned that all relationships have ruptures, realizing that those particular ruptures could not be repaired was a whole different grief that triggered even more layers of grief.
• 9:41
  And I don't know how we ever got through 2019 or 2020. They were really hard years for us. And now, it's been two years. It's 2021. The middle of the summer, and our feet are barely under us again.
• 10:02
  We do want a safe place. It's true. She's right about that. We want to be a safe place. We want to provide a safe place.
• 10:13
  But we also want a safe place for us where we can finally land and put our pieces down, but not fall apart. We won't ever again give away pieces of ourselves. I don't know how sharing looks differently than that because we've not learned it yet, but it feels like progress to be open to letting walls down but not falling apart, not losing myself, not losing pieces of me, not betraying myself by fawning, by trying so hard to do it someone else's way that I stop existing. So she's right too. She's also right about needing a container that's safe enough because there is so much.
• 11:14
  She's also right about needing a container that is strong enough because there is so much. It overwhelms me. It has always overwhelmed me. I think that's the whole point, dissociation and all. So how can another human be strong enough to help me hold it together if I don't want to fall apart?
• 11:46
  That's a big question, and I don't have the answers. She also said that throughout the dream, we were aware of being different ages. And that's true. In the dream, part of it, we knew we were a child, and then we knew we were an adolescent, even almost an adult, and then we were a really young child. All of those are different ages, she said, to be there and to be aware, and all of those ages being aware of those same feelings.
• 12:21
  We were exactly right, she said, when we said it takes a lot and that the price is high. And she says we have paid the price because we've had therapists that have not been safe places or not stayed, or not been strong enough. We also talked about the feeling from our dream, a feeling like we were doing it wrong because we didn't know how to do it. She reminded us that there is literally no right or wrong way to do therapy. We just do it together.
• 13:00
  She said that us having a relationship first and foremost where we feel safe and comfortable and respected is the number one thing, but that our innate wisdom, which she believes in even if we don't yet, our innate wisdom will come through and lead us along. She said that it's her job to recognize it and to follow it, to follow us, that we do know what we're doing even when it doesn't feel like it. And it's okay to trust ourselves. So she said, It's really important to know that you can't do counseling wrong. You can't do therapy wrong.
• 13:46
  That's still hard for me to take in, but I'm considering it. I think what helps me even grasp it at all is understanding what I've learned over the last year or two about how all of those red flags and all of those struggles we noticed before the pandemic ever happened have shown us we're all completely right all along. That parts of me that were protectors, that I thought were trying to sabotage or trying to warn us away or trying to scare us off from talking about hard things, were right when they said, Not here, not now, not in this place. So maybe it's okay to trust them. Maybe it's okay to listen to them.
• 14:40
  Maybe they really were keeping us safe all along. She talked also about our foster dad and other kids in the dream and how they were faded in the background and not really playing a big part. So she talked about archetypes and the feminine divine and the masculine divine and about how that's not playing a big part for us right now, which on the surface makes sense while the husband is away. But also in dreams and in union therapy, right, we play all the parts, she said. And I know this from the Wolf's book.
• 15:21
  So I looked up what that means, and it gave different symbols like God or King or Warriors, lover or Priest or Sage. And some of these are things I struggle with because of negative experiences and a patriarchy kind of way, because of religious abuse, because of traumas, but in my own self these symbols reference logic, reason, action, firmness, survival, loyalty, adventurousness, strength, rationality. So it's about being fierce and having courage, feeling protected and protecting others, finding balance in things, having integrity, but also still being vulnerable. In union, they call this the animus, the unconscious, the masculine side of woman, an incarnation of meaning, a messenger. It is myself delivering a message to myself in the form of a dream and then backing away to let me deal with it safely and try to process.
• 16:35
  So my dream opens up by telling myself what is going on. The dream itself is a message from myself to myself about therapy. She also talked about the divine father and the divine mother and how these are symbols in the world, And that when we are healing from trauma or especially complex trauma or developmental trauma, when hard things happened when we were little, all of us have to learn how to re parent ourselves with all of these traits and learn how to show up in our own lives as a good father and a good mother. And none of us had examples of this, so it can be really hard to learn. She used the husband as an example, that he's a good man, he is loving and safe, he is strong and gentle, he is tender and protective, and so we can keep that together as one piece internally to love and care for ourselves in ways that he does for us as he models it.
• 17:43
  She said that's actually a big part of what we do in therapy itself, like brushing up on our fathering skills in that by starting to show up for ourselves and keeping ourselves safe and protecting ourselves. There are patterns we can look at and look for archetypes for where we can say, that's a good dad, or that's what a good father looks like and how to give that to ourselves, not just only mothering, but that we also need fathering. We need to be able to provide for protect ourselves, to lead ourselves to safety, and break all stereotypes of both fathering and mothering, the good versions and the hard versions, and provide what we need for ourselves, that we have capacity to do this, that we are empowering ourselves to do this, that we are inviting ourselves to do this. Then she talked about the part of the dream where it was dinner time and we were really glad to sit down and eat. So she asked what eating means symbolically, and that we've talked about it because eating is hard for us sometimes.
• 19:01
  But what does eating represent? What is this symbol? What is it that we are doing when we're eating food? I knew that answer, that we are nourishing ourselves. She said that this part of our dream means that in our counseling relationship, that we are starting to feel comfortable enough to actually sit down and to get nourishment from the relationship.
• 19:28
  It makes her the foster mom cooking for us and nourishing us as we participate in therapy. But really, it makes us the mother nourishing ourselves and the father making sure we show up for the meal, that this is what we are doing in parenting ourselves and caring well for ourselves. But then she pointed out that I wouldn't look at the foster mom in the dream. She asked me why. I told her that I didn't know.
• 19:59
  It was just too intense. I couldn't. Just like in therapy, it's just too intimate and vulnerable and intense. I can't look at her in therapy. I couldn't look at the mother in my dream.
• 20:15
  She asked if I could look at the mother in myself. That was a hard thing to hear, a hard truth to see. I said that it was a silly thing to say because I know that it's an inner critic that I just tried to brush it off as a joke using humor as my coping skill again, a defense to protect myself from feeling what she was poking at. I said that it was silly because I know she's not hurting me and I know nothing bad is happening and I know how to practice caring for myself even when I am feeling hurt. But she pointed out that some of that hurt is hurt from all the people that we've allowed ourselves to be close with in the past who should have been safe, and then they weren't, and how scary relationships are because of that.
• 21:13
  She said it's a risk to open up our heart and be vulnerable in spaces with another person, that we take risks and it doesn't always go well. We took risks with therapists in the past and it didn't work, or put us into danger or caused us more harm and more trauma and years and years of isolation and how painful that has been, how devastating that has been. But she also pointed out it doesn't always go badly, that we took a risk with the husband and he's turned out to be safe. The next part of the dream was about the shower and she asked me what I thought that might mean. And I said that I didn't know.
• 22:01
  I don't have any plans on hurting myself or harming myself, but that I know that feeling of being burned is associated with some of my deepest pain and has become symbolic of it. And I definitely understand and can relate to the feeling of wishing I were clean, wishing that this pain was not mine, wishing that my past was not mine, wishing that there was a way to be free from all of it, to be free from me sometimes. She pushed some and asked if I was willing to talk about this piece more, and I said, I didn't know. I was just proud of myself for remembering it and telling her about it. I didn't know what to say about it.
• 22:50
  I thought it would be good and easy because I was participating and use up my time, but it got difficult. She asked what made it difficult. It's because it was vulnerable, of course. So like the hot water in the dream, I feel like therapy pulls my skin off sometimes, leaving me raw and vulnerable and exposed. She pointed out that that's how close relationships can feel.
• 23:20
  And I pointed out that that's why I don't have close relationships. Why I back away, why I keep the amount of distance, why I want so badly what I cannot do, and try so hard to do what I cannot have. She pointed out the direct correlation overwhelmingly intimate that I couldn't look at the one nourishing me and having to go take a hot shower to burn off the intensity of that intimacy. There's a correlation there, she said. That it's an outer manifestation of the pain from the inside, and that that makes sense that there would be some need to express it.
• 24:11
  I felt already that she had seen me in ways I had never been seen before, and it was hard to keep talking about my dream. There were layers she was already noting that I had planned on her not observing or finding out about, but that were laid open and bare in front of her with the dream. We talked about how vulnerability feels so scary, And I moved on by talking about getting out of the shower and getting dressed and pulling my hair back in a ponytail. She pointed out that I didn't go to sleep like one would in the evening, but that I ran away, that I didn't ask permission, I just ran. So we talked about having a runner in the system and what that means.
• 25:02
  She asked how many times I thought I had wanted to run away from therapy. I said every day. She said there's an instinct to just not ask for permission, to just hit the door and take off right away. When it's too intense, when it's like burning my skin off, when it feels raw and vulnerable. And I said yes, and I was at this point literally holding on to the table trying to stay in the video, trying to stay in my session, because it was so hard and it was so intense and it was so raw.
• 25:42
  I had to take a break and go get my tappers and hold on to them just to finish the session because there were parts of me that she could see and parts of me that I could feel that I had not known and did not want to know but now was knowing. I don't mean like parts getting squished together, but somehow an awareness of my own self, of myself, of me in a way that I have not experienced before. As if I could know what was and what is, even when it's not me. She asked me if I wanted a break, and I told her it was fantastic, and that I was fine, and I didn't need a break at all. We should just keep going, Because if therapy is the hot water, then let's just burn it off anyway, right?
• 26:38
  So we start to run and we are feeling scared, but at the same time realize that the foster mom is running with us and that we are not in trouble and that we can run together. She, of course, wanted to know how that felt, someone running with us, someone in sync with us, someone attuned with us even in our steps, that it's okay to run. We just don't have to be alone when we do. She asked what that was like. I didn't know how to answer what that was like.
• 27:14
  It was the opposite of foster care, I guess. There was relief, though, I noticed. Maybe even comfort, but not the kind that touches me or was getting too close, not an intrusive kind of comfort. She asked if there were moments where we had felt like that in therapy, where there had been relief or comfort that wasn't too intrusive. I said that there must have been if I was still trying therapy again.
• 27:50
  She said that maybe that's part of what the dream was telling me, that there have been moments when we were really afraid and wanted to run and felt like we were going to be in trouble, and that the process of vulnerability had been overwhelming, like having our skin ripped off or burned off, leaving us raw and in pain. But that the process of therapy met us where we were, and we had been able to do it together, and that that was okay, honoring where we are and just being okay with it, a new kind of acceptance. She asked about the part in our dream where we said we run when we're angry, that it helped me feel better, and that we started to cry. She wanted to know why we started to cry. I told her it was because I hadn't done my anger homework yet.
• 28:45
  She didn't fall for that and wasn't distracted by it. She was curious about the direct relationship with the word anger, because when I'm angry, I run, and hopefully I feel better. But I kept running and I'm just out for a jog. I'm not running away. I'm just out jogging with my foster mom.
• 29:10
  It's a whole different feeling. For the first time, I'm not alone. So she says, I'm learning to feel scared and to tolerate it. I'm learning to feel anger and to tolerate it. And I'm learning to move through my own process without being stopped by it or escaping it.
• 29:31
  She said that in the past I have had things that I needed to run away from, danger I needed to get away from, but that I am learning to discern the difference between danger and difficult. I don't have to run away and be alone anymore. I can run if I need to and think that that's helpful, but I don't have to run alone. I can run with others. I can invite others to run with me.
• 30:04
  I was not trapped anymore by the house. I was free from the house. And there are layers of that that we talked about for a really long time. It's still too raw to share. We talked about what it was like being free and running by the river, and I shared with her the story of when I used to live in the city and run by the river every day with my puppy before there were children, when I was strong and healthy and my body had shape that wanted touching.
• 30:39
  Those early days of my own adult life that slipped away so quickly into the heaviness of what it is now. There is no freedom to run away now when you stay for children on the outside. And we talked about what that meant to be grounded and staked in place by others that you're trying to care for in a way that no one ever cared for you. She also wanted to talk about how there were ways in relationships that felt confining in the past. I wrote that down, but it was too soon to process.
• 31:26
  I will have to come back to that piece. I know where the answer leads, and it still hurts too much to go there. But I said there were expectations in some relationships, expectations to be whole and well, expectations to be happy instead of struggling, expectations to dissociate, which I cannot do and where I could not fit because I am learning to be present in everything, even when it's hard, and how that incongruence led me into danger or grief and how those were painful choices that never should have been. She said that she hopes that we know with everything that we are that there are no expectations in therapy. There's no wrong way and no right way.
• 32:22
  That we are just in a relationship with our own innate wisdom that flows, that we don't have to be controlled, that who we are is enough. She talked about how in the dream we were for the first time okay being contained, not pushing back or fighting, just letting her run with me, letting her run with us, and how it felt good to not be alone. She said that where we're at in our healing process and everything we have been through recently has been overflowing and spilling out because our container was taken away. But now in therapy again, finally, ten months in, We feel contained, but not confined. We feel held together, but not pushed down.
• 33:18
  We feel held close, but still who we are. She said that's positive and good that we have come over a hill literally and crossed a bridge over the ocean. And what is a bridge? She wanted to know. That seems obvious.
• 33:37
  A bridge connects two places. It gets you across. It used to be where I ran with my little dog. I ran from my apartment to the bridge. It was the way I got one way and then another and could rest before I went back again.
• 33:54
  Good memories, a good symbol, feeling connected, maybe a connection between those of us who have been banished and those of us who have been out flipping worlds and changing hosts and reclaiming our lives again. Maybe bridges are okay. Maybe it's good that we have bridges. She said the symbols connect one thing to another, just like we had said, and connecting this place with another place. And that's where we're going, that we are finding ways to connect in therapy from the work we have already done in therapy, but connecting from where we had been trying to get to and then couldn't, to this new bridge where we're going.
• 34:46
  But how are we going over the ocean? What bridge is big enough to cross an ocean? What does the ocean symbolize? And I said, well, a bridge is that there is safe ground under me no matter what the water is like, and it's getting across. I wasn't drowning anymore.
• 35:08
  She reminded us of paintings we have made in the past of women drowning in the water. Water, she said, is our unconscious, that it is our wounds and our fears and our pains and all the scary things in our lives, but there's also a lot of good things down there that we could lose. It's not all bad, but it can feel like we're drowning, that our emotions can feel like they're overwhelming us, that the deep parts of our souls can be scary to wade into. And I thought then again about that quote about how tears are a river that take you somewhere, and a river that takes you somewhere needs a bridge from one place to another. She said this was a big piece, and we'll be talking about it more, how our deep things and our unconscious are the deep waters of our emotional self.
• 36:09
  But the whale comes up from the deep waters. It doesn't destroy the bridge, and it doesn't do anything scary at all. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful whale. It breaches the water.
• 36:21
  It jumps up into the air over the bridge. It doesn't destroy anything. It's not dangerous at all. My emotions are not dangerous at all. What my unconscious is bringing to the surface is not dangerous at all.
• 36:40
  The whale spits out a little seal on the bridge, and to a whale, a seal is food. I laughed because I'd been telling her for weeks and weeks in therapy that therapy made me feel like I needed to throw up, and finally I had the whale spit up the seal. She asked what seals might mean, and I just knew that they're an animal from the water. But then also I remembered from the Clarissa book, the wolf's book, the story of the sealskin, soul skin, of the woman seal who leaves the water to live on land and have her child, but begins to dry out because she's been gone from the water for too long, and she has to find her seal skin and return to the water to nourish her soul. That was something to think about in the context of the depths of the pain that we have endured the last two years, the difficulty of the pandemic since then, and trying to be in quarantine with our children and our work, but not at all languishing here.
• 37:57
  I have my skin back. That's what I realized, and that's what I told her. I had found my own way to the water and back again. I had crossed to the other side and back again. And when I came back, I came back with my skin on.
• 38:16
  It made me cry like in a dream. And I realized that in the crying, maybe I had been angry in more ways than I realized and that I had done my anger homework after all. She pointed out that the seal had not been eaten. The seal had been spit out alive. It was like a present that a cat brings and drops on the step.
• 38:45
  Here it is. Here's what I've brought you. She said, I am listening to myself like that, that I was able to go into the depths of my feelings and retrieve something that I needed from myself, and that the big, scary, deep emotions did not completely devour me. She said, It is a very positive sign that we've not been eaten alive, that we may have feelings of fear or feel as if we're going to drown in grief, but we haven't. We have been spit out on the shore with our skin back on because we did the work to go there.
• 39:28
  We did the work to swim so deep and back again. And we were able to bring ourselves back to the surface. She said that crying is a way to bring awareness. It allows sadness and anger to cross the bridge to the place of healing, that there's a lot of mourning ahead for us, a lot of grieving ahead for us. But I've told myself that I'm ready, that I can do it, that I will survive.
• 40:04
  She reminded me of something that I had said to her that the husband had told the children about how being brave isn't not being afraid. Being brave is being afraid and doing it anyway. That I could be brave enough to get into the ocean to see those depths of what I needed to see, but also I was not drowning anymore. I had told myself the truth and survived it. At the end of the dream, there's the piece where we're walking along the fence, and my therapist is on one side and I am on the other.
• 40:43
  The fence is not a wooden fence where we are closed off or I cannot see her. It's a chain link fence, like a chicken fence with chicken wire, where I could reach through and touch her if I wanted or I could see her as I walked. It's not a concrete barrier where I can't find her or I've been left alone. She is with me in my prison. She is with that child self who was locked away.
• 41:13
  I was not being forced to climb it or being forced to escape. She was just being there, present with me, not bringing me to any place I wasn't ready to go, not leaving me any place I didn't want to be. She was just present with me. It was okay, she said, to be together and to do it together, to be where we are and to feel what we feel and to see what we see, to know how it is. In that kind of awareness, the child's selves get to come up.
• 41:55
  The child's selves also get to feel safe and notice and involved, to peek through the fence that she's there, that we're safe, that she has found us and will walk with us, and that we are willing to walk with her. It was more about trust, finding ourselves and her a lot stronger and more capable than we wanted to believe, and aware that it is hard work. But with our soul skin back on, we are still there. Having seen the truth, we were not devoured. We could swim around, even in such big or deep emotional stuff, inside the whale's mouth even, and still be spit out again, still be brought back to the surface again.
• 42:51
  Our protectors helped us breathe again. It's not a wall between us and our therapist. It's good boundaries. We are contained but can access her. She is present but not intrusive.
• 43:10
  She said that maybe eventually the fence will go away. Maybe the fence is between parts and will start to disappear, but it doesn't mean anyone is merging us with each other or us with her. It means that first we get to grow our own skin and contain ourselves. And while we learn how to do that, we get to stay together, even though it might be a little scary sometimes. There may be barriers still to remind us that we are not the same person, that we are still in our own space, that we are here together, but have our own experiences with our own voices that demand the right to be heard.
• 44:00
  No one is trying to keep us away. We're not trying to keep her away. We have access to each other, but also safety around us. And I also know that that fence represents certain selves, a certain person inside, a certain other that's not participated before. So it's fascinating to me that they have showed up now, that they feel safe now.
• 44:29
  There's no pressure, though, she said, no expectations. When someone wants space, it's here, and they can be included when it feels right and appropriate, but it's really big and important, this dream. And the end feels even better than the beginning. So the dream has clues where pain is contained and what we have done with it so far and where we're going with it. The dream is big, and it means, she said, that we knew where we did not belong and ran away from those places and have found our own world.
• 45:10
  We did the hard work of swimming deep, and we succeeded in bringing ourselves the truth. We even made it back to the surface again with our own skin that no one can take away ever again. That's a dream that means something. It means we're here. We have grieved.
• 45:35
  We are grieving, but we see what is there to see, and we know the truth that we hold, and we trust each other and what we have to say. And maybe we trust our new therapist too. It's time to do a new kind of work. It's time for a new beginning. What we learn from the dream then is that we were thrown into a world by circumstance, but recognized ourselves with parts working together that we did not belong there, and we ran away from there because it was danger to us, and that this was good and right.
• 46:28
  But this time, we are not alone when we run. There are others who care for us, friends, a new therapist, support groups. We are not alone in our pain. We are not alone in our struggle. We are not alone on this healing journey where we are running from the past, but also jumping into the depths of all the feelings there are to feel about it.
• 47:00
  And we did. We dived deep, and it was painful and terrifying. It was dark, and we weren't sure that we would survive. But part of us brought us to the surface again. And when we surfaced, we had our skin back.
• 47:21
  We knew the truth. We could see clearly. We know what there is to see and what there is to remember and what there is to talk about. We know that it's time. And we know we are not alone.
• 47:39
  With a new therapist who can contain us. With a new therapist, who can contain herself, while we contain ourselves, and walk alongside together. With friends, our other siblings on this journey who know what it is like to be from where we have come, and support groups that help us breathe between sessions, who help us to remember, Don't dry out. Take care of yourself. Go swim there where you need to heal.
• 48:25
  We know you'll come back again. Trust yourself. Surface with your skin. Hold the truth. Dare to say it, have the tenacity to breathe again.
• 48:45
  You have saved yourself. Thank you so much for listening to us, and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us, as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together.
• 49:15
  The link for the community is in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too.
• 49:43
  That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.