Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / Reclaiming Power: Storytelling, Movement & Healing with Donna Lyon of Left Write Hook

Transcript

Reclaiming Power: Storytelling, Movement & Healing with Donna Lyon of Left Write Hook · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation, and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage, these are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce, or reorganising life afterwards.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Warrentry people of the Coolin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to this bonus episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to kick off, a trigger warning.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Donna Lyon is a producer, associate professor at the University of Melbourne, and a survivor advocate dedicated to reclaiming narratives and reshaping the conversation around trauma recovery.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: As the founder of Left Right Book, and that's right with a W, a charity that combines writing and boxing to support victim survivors of child sexual abuse and gendered violence, Donna's work is deeply rooted in a lived experience of creative expression and community empowerment.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: With a PhD in creative practice and a background in filmmaking, Donna has used her storytelling as a tool for social change.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Her award-winning documentary, Left Right Book, premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2024 and was an award winner, by the way, for amplifying survivor voices and igniting a national conversation about healing, agency, and resilience.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Through writing filmmaking, research and advocacy, Donna continues to champion trauma-informed approaches to recovery, believing that art, movement, and community have the power to transform lives.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is a really powerful conversation, and we go deep fast.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, it touches on child sexual abuse and gendered violence, but there is a lot in it about recovery and moving through hard shit.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I would really encourage you to listen to it regardless of your lived experience.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: And also know that there is upcoming February 27th a screening, an exclusive screening that I'm co-hosting of the documentary, of Donna's documentary left right hook.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there are links in the show notes to book your ticket.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: This will sell out.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're interested, grab your ticket now before it does.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also a link for anybody who feels called to support this program and this is a not-for-profit.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a link in the show notes to donate.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually the same link.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now here's my conversation with Donna Lyon of Left Right Hook.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Hi Donna, welcome to the podcast.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Sally Ann.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here with you.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you so much for agreeing to come on and talk about life, the universe, left, right, hook, and everything.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Let's dive straight in.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go in hard and fast.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Can you share with me, the listeners, what is the most formative life experience you've navigated and how has that impacted the way you show up in relationships?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Such a um great question.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um yes, we will be going in hard and fast.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I guess when I reflect on my relationships, I realize that all of them have been scarred by my experiences of being sexually abused as a child.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that formative experience, although I blanked it out in my life and I dissociated from it, and I didn't remember that abuse until my mid-20s, but it seriously and severely disrupted my sense of identity, and of course, therefore, um impacted my relationship history or histories, and so all of my relationships have been um complex, fragmented, confused, messy.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I feel sometimes I well, I have felt for a long time, uh, because my story isn't linear, neat, conservative, um, I've felt a lot of shame and embarrassment around um my relationship history.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in the past, like I think I've thought of relationships as these places and spaces to heal and to feel secure.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think my relationship history has been that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh found refuge or sought refuge in relationship with others to save me, to try and rescue me, to rescue others.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think after my most recent breakup, I kind of have realized after hitting a real emotional rock bottom, and this was only in the kind of last eight months, and believe me, I've hit a few rock bottoms in my life, um, is that uh I think what was missing is that a relationship with myself was what was needed.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could go on.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you happy for me to go on?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can go on, yes.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, mindful that in a sense your podcast really about divorce and and breakups and marriages and all the rest, and relationships, of course.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think for me, like I um I never thought that I'd get married.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I married a man in my mid-30s.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And before that, though, I was in a lesbian relationship.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um that was probably a time when like gay marriage wasn't legal, and so I'd never thought of I was gonna get married.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was a patriarchal concept, and um, but I essentially sabotaged that same-sex relationship um uh to pursue drinking and ran into the arms of a man who um I could drink and essentially take drugs with and who would support that behavior.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I later got married to him, but we turned our life around together.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we got sober, essentially.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a lot older than me.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I um I really needed, I think.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking for a father figure, and I was looking for someone, as I said, to kind of really rescue me and provide me with security because I just felt so utterly smashed and alone.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, um, it was compounded by, you know, really significant memories of the abuse coming up, and I would dissociate a lot in those early stages of my recovery.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so essentially, like I would regress to like a child part where the memories were held, and it was a lot of fear, a lot of trauma, a lot of regression.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I genuinely thought that no one um would love me.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a man that was accepting of that as best he could, because he had no understanding of any of this stuff.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was really, frankly, very weird and um, you know, coming out almost as a child at times to him, um, as an incredibly traumatized child or ch or children in a sense.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he kind of loved them and held them.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I thought no one else would ever, ever accept this.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I married him, but it was probably the wrong decision.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that marriage then didn't last.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we ended as as amicably as we could, as as gracefully as I could, given the complexity of the situation.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because by that stage I'd fallen in love with a woman.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went back uh to um a woman.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or forward.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or forward, perhaps, yeah.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And well, I think at the time it didn't, you know, I I had rebuilt my life with him.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd hit a rock bottom in my early 30s, I rebuilt my life, I got married in my mid-30s to this man, living with very complex mental health problems, working, by the way, at a university.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I really want the listeners to understand that just because I was experiencing incredibly complex mental health problems, I was still functioning.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was still getting up, going to work, having meetings, you know, kind of putting on this brave face and then coming home and kind of like regressing and um, you know, and falling into a heap.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and but I I fell in love with a woman and I I'd also um found faith during my time um of being sober and and with this man.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, oh my God, I'm a Christian, I'm a heterosexual, um, I'm um I am I'm cured, like I'm normal, uh, this normal, straight person.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't any of those things.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I think um I guess leaving that marriage left me also in a sense of wilderness of self.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because although I felt more connected to a sense of an identity of being, you know, in love with a woman, I also felt very confused.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because uh I again I'd flip so much in who I loved and what I wanted and what I needed and all of this, and and and that again, you know, really relates to this confusion of identity that had been fragmented for me because of my uh sexual abuse.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which kind of leads um quite nicely into the next question I wanted to ask you.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that is what is the biggest or best lesson you've learned from either your divorce, it doesn't have to be a divorce, divorce or a breakup.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think the divorce is a is a good one because you know, before that, even though I've been a six-year relationship with a woman, but I you know, I sabotage that, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, lesson is hit a rock bottom and you know get sober, which I am now 14 years, but because I married someone that probably I I don't regret doing that, but because it was never violent or abusive or anything like that, and I feel very grateful for that.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very lucky because many women who have been sexually abused will often find themselves repeating that trauma or in a repetition of that trauma in other relationships.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I that is not my journey, and I'm very, very grateful for that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I still needed a rescuer.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the answer to your question is really I the biggest lesson has been to that I can take responsibility, I can be responsible and look after myself.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need somebody to save me, just as I don't need to save anybody, and I think it's taken me a really long time to learn that lesson um because um, yeah, I was really hurt and I was playing out that hurt in relationships, trying to find answers and meaning that I founded in 2022, and we run writing and trauma-informed boxing programs for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and gendered violence.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how did I arrive at that?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, when I was married, um, I had a lot of, you know, I had the complex mental health problems coming up.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting sober, sober.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had about five years of sobriety under my belt at that time, or a bit longer actually.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to feel really angry.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that that was related to my sexual abuse.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I need to channel this anger.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really wanted to punch something.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And not just that, I actually want I wanted to be punched and I wanted to hit someone.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, okay, best way to do that is boxing.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, I'd done a little bit of boxing in the past, so of course I kind of had brought that to memory.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And off I went to my little my local boxing gym.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and within a few months, I found myself in the ring fighting.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, of course, I'm in the arts, so you know, it's probably makes sense that I threw myself into this um uh, you know, story of, you know, trying to be this rocky uh Balboa.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was far too early for me to be doing that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I um I lost the fights.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was due, they're all amateur.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized very quickly that boxing wasn't about anger, actually, it's about mindfulness.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Boxing is a way to begin to connect that the intellectual, the thinking state with the physical state.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I had struggled to connect with my body because of the abuse.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So anything that was body-based, like yoga or Pilates or I mean, sometimes even like walking or stretching, felt disgusting to me, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't want to be in my body.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um, when I found boxing, it was physical and empowered, and I was punching something and connecting and doing all these things that like was, in a sense, was a kind of meditative body-based practice, but it didn't have that same narrative that I'd associated with those other more gentle uh somatic forms.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but still, as much as I loved the training and I was I was actually, you know, not a bad little um kind of boxer in the ring under the competitive kind of spotlight.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I it really fell apart for me.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I dissociate a lot in the ring, and not a good thing when you're kind of being punched in the face, right?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: You you want to you want to try and be as connected as possible.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And present.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And present.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, look, Muhammad Ali did say that you know, you might go in with a plan, but as soon as you get punched in the face, it all kind of changes.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the greats have said it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not alone, but um what what happened was that the the more that I lost, the more that it began to reinforce that that little voice in my head that that said, You're a piece of shit, Donna.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're a loser.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: See, you can't win, you can't fight back.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so actually, boxing then became really disempowering.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the training wasn't disempowering, the training was really empowering.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was just those contexts of bringing in a win and a lose situation.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the end, I lost a a fight and then I and I had one more little quick, easy, low stakes fight, and I ended up winning.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I hung up my boots.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not meant to be a competitive fighter.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I went, what am I doing this for?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: What am I really boxing for?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I love the training.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I love.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the getting in a ring and being punched in the face.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's not.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just the the practice of it.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I thought, I want to now, I felt ready in my recovery journey.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd done by that stage a good eight plus years, right, of 12-step recovery work, psychotherapeutic work, you know, you name it, like I've kind of done it, right?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and I still do it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I still do uh therapy and and and all the rest.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So um I decided I want to work with other survivors like me.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to meet other women.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, I wasn't this champion fighter.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was a loser, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't say, come fight with Donna Lyon, she's a champion.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, oh God, what can I do that's a bit different?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know if I just want to box, actually.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could bring in my arts practice.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and maybe we could write and then we could share stories.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that way we can connect with each other, and then I can teach them the art of boxing, but I'm not doing it from this kind of winning standpoint.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I did in 2019.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I ran the program a couple of times in my gym in Fern Tree Gully, and it was really, really powerful.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because as soon as you get a bunch of women in a space, women and gender-diverse survivors is who we uh tend to target, um, talking about and naming the fact that they've been sexually abused.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that the energy is palpable because people don't name or talk about this stuff, and people sit with this shame and the silence for years.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: It takes 20, 20 plus years, the research says, for uh people to disclose their sexual abuse, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's 20 plus years of a life, in a sense, not lived.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I know because I am one of those people.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so um in 2020, I thought I'm also a researcher at the University of Melbourne as an academic, and um I thought I better maybe I should do some research about this and you know, test the validity of the program.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so um we brought it into the space, but I thought I don't just want to measure the program in terms of its psychological effects and well-being, as much as I think that's important.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a filmmaker, so in the in the arts, so I wanted to thought, I thought maybe this could be a really interesting documentary film and maybe even a book.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I teamed up with a documentary maker with the intent of making a film.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We got a researcher in a psychologist, we measured an eight-week program, it um demonstrated that there was a reduction in PTSD, a reduction in stress, depression, and then an increase in personal agency, belonging, and resilience.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that that that could that was cool.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then we then we basically made a documentary from 2020.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mind you, cut COVID interrupted that.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole podcast series in itself.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we made a film over two and a bit years with the participants.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a four-year journey all up.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: We premiered the documentary film at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we co-won the Audience Award for Best Film.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It um uh had a cinema release, it's now doing a big social impact campaign.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've got some really exciting news to announce soon.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do it yet about um where it's going to end up.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what's been incredible about that is that this, you know, and and it's a little triggering the language I'm gonna use here, but it's it is really important for me to kind of name it as it is.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But this dirty little secret of shame and sexual abuse that essentially, you know, really compounded our identities, fragmented them, and almost destroyed some of us, and continues to destroy the lives of people.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this light was shone on it.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: This industry recognition was shone on it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, lots of money was shone on it in terms of amplifying it to a wide audience.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were featured on the project and the age and the guardian, et cetera, et cetera.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm really proud of that, Sally Ann.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you should be proud of it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: People, you know, don't want to talk about this stuff.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're I'm really passionate now about like destigmatizing the conversation, and that's why it's really important for me to talk quite candidly with you.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and out of that, just to wrap that up, because I know it's a really big story, but out of that, um, I chopped around, and and you know, with with partners in the film, we chopped around the film to philanthropy.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And philanthropy said, what are you gonna do when the film goes out?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because people are gonna want to do that program.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I'm gonna go and set up a program.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how the charity emerged.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So from this little grassroots project into a little baby research project to a film and a book, because we published a book of writings, emerged this charity, which we now run.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we are running research trials with the University of Melbourne.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're running community programs, um, we're doing little publications and we're training up lived experienced trainers.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I wouldn't say it's it we're still really small, but it's been massive in terms of what we've achieved and what we're doing.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to in a relatively short period of time.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, right?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: In a couple of years.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so um, you know, it's just been a real gift, and I do feel in many ways that um as overwhelming as it can feel, because it it it it does feel that way at times, like, oh my god, I've really kind of bitten off more than I can chew.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I also do feel like actually that I am kind of really called, and it kind of makes me feel a bit emotional, kind of talking about it, but like I do feel like I'm really called into my purpose, and I think that's something that for such a long time, Sally Ann, like I'd really wanted.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: So even though at the depths of my existential misery and and and despair, um, you know, which I would have spent at least at least 20 plus years in, um, I I really knew that deep down I wanted to make a difference.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to help people, and I wanted to be a better person in life.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just couldn't seem to access the woman that was standing way over there, me.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I couldn't seem to connect with her.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel you've connected with her now?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I'm beginning to connect with her.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that kind of circles back to that beginning about that relationship is that I think I'd used relationships with others to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: avoid connecting with myself, right?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that, you know, really actually what I needed was a relationship with myself.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though I am now in a you know in a new partnership, which is amazing, I'm not necessarily, I don't feel um that I'm using that person any more to try and like fix my abandonment issues or fix my low self-esteem issues.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing like how can I take that role and you know kind of uh be with a person in a more relational way that feels equal actually.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: So take radical personal responsibility for what's on your side of the fence and then bring it into connection with another human rather than exactly outsourcing it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to go a bit deeper with the left-right hook uh um program and ask you what's the power that you've seen in the connection between the writing and the boxing?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because they seem really quite different, disparate.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what's the power of connecting the two?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of research to suggest that writing in itself has therapeutic benefits, goes all the way back to the 60s with researchers like James Pennebaker to boxing itself as a form um which has incredible mental health and wellbeing effects as a wonderful program in Toronto Shape Your Life which runs trauma-informed boxing for female gender diverse survivors.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: So incredible research it's it it it is empowering the combination of such um hasn't necessarily been researched and that's the research we are undertaking.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what it is and again you know we've certainly got the data to support as I said that reduction in PTSD and depression and stress.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that cognitive connection that's happening along with the well-being physical connections and then there's the belonging piece.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And also the other the aspect that's really interesting that we're researching is this is the agency that's being developed in the space.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is primarily because we are a peer space and that so survivors it's led by lived living experience and so the survivors don't look to divert to a therapist or anyone in this in the space that you know potentially has more knowledge than them to fix them or save them.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they go, oh God, I've actually really got to kind of like sit with my emotions or oh I've got to kind of try and regulate and put into practice all the shit that I do work on with my therapist in this space because they can't help me.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say that we're not supportive in this environment of course no one's being left on their own but we're not therapists and we're really clear about that.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know what I continue to see is that people move from this very we do the writing first and so people move from quite a very internal heavy almost quite I would say depressive state you know what they're writing is really from the depths of their soul it's not particularly happy I mean you know everyone's coming in knowing they're sexually abused.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Look it's not it's not happy right um I'm okay with that like you just call it um but you can write whatever you want you know you know it's not about trying to trauma dump or anything like that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're imaginal creative prompts but it's beginning to bring language and air to the hidden narratives that exist inside dirty little secret that you and sharing it and then seeing yourself in the context of others.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you sit in a group and you go oh my God well if that person feels like that um but actually I don't think of them like they're a worthless piece of shit.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think they're beautiful.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if but if they feel like that and you know well maybe I and I think they're beautiful maybe I I can think of myself as as worthy or beautiful too right and so the shared identification shared context of a narrative the breaking of silence all of these things are emerging in the space.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we move into the boxing although it's a sort of slight awkward like drop the pens, you're feeling a bit like ugh uh but you know at the end of the day you sort of start to move and then your heart rate just goes up because it does and you get a break a little bit of a sweat and then all of a sudden you you're punching and all of a sudden you're connecting and you're hitting and it it feels empowering because boxing is and it's clunky to begin and the first few weeks it is clunky.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what you're doing and that's okay.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the more you keep doing it the more you feel like oh this I'm getting a bit better a bit sharper with my punches.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's very repetitious movement practice.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so really what happens by the end of each program and not necessarily kind of that week one per se but people do begin to look a bit lighter.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: They end the the workshop each each session um maybe with a bit of a smile on their face.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say Sally Ann that it's roses and glitter you come in depressed and you walk out smiling.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like that you know um and sometimes you feel worse before you get better and and I really do name that but I I think that there is fundamentally a sense where I see people shift in their stance.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I see them begin to um like reclaim their bodies in a way that allows them to say I'm taking up space often for the first time and it's remarkable and it's probably what keeps me in um doing the work because I love seeing that.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a gift did you say I'm saying yeah when we met recently and had our coffee conversation we both talked about that concept of reclamation can you go a bit deeper about that can you speak about the gift that reclamation can of reclamation that left right hook can give participants I like to think of left right hook as this like alternative justice recovery model.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was never able to seek justice right my abuse happened in the context of my home um and I it what it wasn't something that I thought oh I'll go to the the police or I'll go to the courts and get justice you know like it it wasn't this so that was never part of my narrative.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so for many surprises it's not it's not it's not possibility.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: The perpetrators dead or it's too complex because it's in family or you know whatever and you know institutional abuse is often different and things like that.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you know it it's not you you can't always get justice through the legal system.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think seeking justice for self, for reclamation of self is really vital.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that I have reclaimed myself through the arts I began to do that because imagination and drama and creativity and filmmaking is all about kind of ideas and discovery and and all of that.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went on and got my PhD and um and I went through a journey of educational transformation and reclamation of knowledge and being able to critically think because I grew up in an environment where it was very dogmatic and abusive and I wasn't allowed to think my thinking was shut down.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So for me to begin to be able to articulate what I thought and felt and had an opinion without judging it was a was a reclamation and I did that through getting a PhD actually so education is really important for me.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then through the boxing I began to reclaim my body as this site of power and strength fighting aside that but there's still power and strength I don't have I don't regret that journey it was a fascinating exactly fascinating time in my life.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think for survivors who have experienced abuse and you know any sort of disruption of self and even for listeners who may not have experienced abuse but they're having to rebuild themselves after you know being with someone for so many years and you know etc and having to go out on their own, right?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have to make meaning I think making meaning is really important of our experiences.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly is for me I think you know because that's the bit that's like it's not about the the why why did it happen like I don't know I can't tell you that you know but more what can I do about that?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: How can I turn that into something kind of generative and expressive and life giving not just for me but for others and I feel really passionate about that um sense of transformation reclamation without sort of sounding too kind of new agey because transformation can feel a little um I don't icky but you know yeah yeah let's explore a little bit more about making meaning from experiences how I mean you've just shared a little bit about your personal experience but how can others me listeners how can we how do you think we can make meaning from experiences particularly those really let's just say from something like abuse how an abusive experience abusive relationship in whatever form that takes how can we make meaning from a life experience like that as we then you know try and rebuild a life for ourselves I think it's such an individual journey but I do think that make I think the the privilege of being able to go on a healing journey because I think it is a privilege and not everyone gets it um is that you can begin to rediscover and sometimes just discover like you a sense of who you are and I don't think that has to be anything grand by the way I think it's uh like I it's a connection to self it's a connection to others and I think that's something that fundamentally we are all searching for abused or not um because we live in a very disconnected and fragmented world um so I think yeah I think that for me is the best part of healing and I think I I just like I'm I'm hungry for that I'm hungry for that because I spent years disconnected and feeling like I was in a void.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when I can begin to find a connection to myself and and again as I said like for me that was through creative practices body based practices and community so healing with others um I'm like yeah great cool I'm gonna keep keep going for those things and that's what left right hook offers.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's only an eight week program you don't come in and like you know that's it you know but it's a it's something it's part of people's toolkit and the research says Sally Ann that um healing from complex trauma is best done through creativity body-based practices and body-based practices because what that does is that it helps people to regulate their nervous system and when they can regulate their nervous system through creativity and body-based practices then they can go and do the deep introspective work with a licensed professional perfect you need that grounding that groundwork to be able to then step into as you said the deeper the deeper work with an experienced and licensed professional um I want to circle back to abuse and I want to ask you whether it's a personal or professional reflection how does abuse in childhood disrupt our sense of self and what impact does that then have on how we form relationships?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so um Judith Herman who's an amazing um author like kind of maybe like before Bessel van der Kock right like I mean Bessel Van der Koch's the the uh main one that everyone 40 kids to score yeah 40 kids to score but Judith Herman's amazing is a book called trauma um and recovery but she talks about trauma being um rooted in powerlessness and so um I think that just fundamentally disrupts a sense of agency and connection to the world and so um we see you know sexual abuse manifest in um anything and everything from hypervigilance to eating disorders to um drug and alcohol addiction to failed relationships to an in uh instability sent like a sense of self, confusion of identity, stress control, uh panic attacks, avoidance you know, like I could just go on.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know we often treat these symptoms of depression without understanding where the root cause of this is and I would argue that the statistics point to child sexual abuse as being a primary motivator reason for for these symptoms.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know yet kind of doctors aren't even encouraged to screen for that in routine health assessments.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you know there's a lot of work being done through the National Center of Action Against Child Sexual Abuse to help to bring the effects of child sexual abuse into public consciousness and awareness and we're going to see more of that in the next five years.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst left right hook isn't you know primarily focused on that we're focused on an on-the-ground you know intervention or solution to you know build community through writing and boxing um yeah I guess it's just you know time and time again I just see this stuff coming in the room presenting you know from yeah again self-harm suicidal ideation um low just such low self-esteem you know it's just people that are walking around with such low value yeah self-help in the in the being totally and so you know how do you have healthy relationships how if if that's what you're carrying you know you and if that's who bel who you believe you are you believe you are right totally it's just so sad and you know so so yeah it it you know Fs up relationships and you know in some ways like you know I have a a complex history as I've talked about with my relationships but also I go geez I'm lucky I've still done you know still every person I've met you know has taught me something I feel so grateful for them you know I didn't get into abusive relationships might not have been the right relationships for me maybe shouldn't have gone there you know but it's not the point um you know and so um yeah I I I it's very very sad how do you Donna how do you approach and you've touched on this in conversation but I'm still gonna ask it how do you approach relationships differently now with both the relationship with yourself and the relationship with others well when last year I think I shared with this with you over coffee but you know I had the best and the worst year of my life right so the worst the best year of my life was because the film came out you know the charity was going off like we had all this media attention around the project the age blah blah blah um it was it was amazing famous oh yeah yeah famous for being abused um but um I also had both of my parents um pass away who were abusers and my girlfriend left me and I had to you know sell my apartment like it was just a shit show right yeah and so I just hit an emotional rock bottom and I hadn't felt that bad since 12 years before or 13 years before when I got into AA through 12 step recovery.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought oh my God what am I gonna do?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I felt that bad I stepped into the rooms of recovery.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so through really I think you know faith got me uh uh online what like what am I gonna do to fix this pain because like literally I I felt I I just never felt so bad.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I walked into the rooms of a 12-step program um adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families I thought God I can't believe it Monday night back in a community center in a recovery program God I'm 44 or whatever I was you know like here great here's my life you know and I've got this film and this charity yet my internal life is just kind of falling to shit.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know who am I?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know there's meant to be this kind of you know role model leader you know no it was all kind of so the the inner world and the outer world were not aligning right but to answer so sorry to answer your question though what what that that is the gift the gift of recovery and the gift of breakups and pain is that it catapulted my recovery.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually super grateful for you know that relationship breakup um and and the very difficult year because I sat in that misery for about six months um and I went to the rooms and I you know and I've I did the recovery begun the cover recovery work which I'm still doing um but what it it really opened me up to how do I begin to parent reparent myself and that's the work actually that I've needed to do and that's the bit that I was actually deeply avoiding because I didn't want to take responsibility for myself.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I couldn't it was too felt too painful.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want a bit more compassion for myself because I was trying to to do that.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that I wasn't trying to do that.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to judge the the part the parts of me that have been surviving and trying to kind of live right um but I needed to develop that connection with self through inviting a kind of more loving version of me to kind of like reparent to mother you know sometimes I find that language a little uncomfortable because of my abusive uh background but just to someone to someone something an energy a force to say it's it's gonna be okay Donna and it's okay yeah we've got you and it's okay for you to work out what you need and it's okay for you like you I'm not gonna abandon you.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's it's a it's a I'm a work in progress, Sally Ann and it's um aren't we all we all right but like I know that I feel really grateful that I have landed in a particular program or form of recovery that's really helpful for me in terms of um helping to build that connection that was so deeply missing.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know really as we said like that external world wasn't matching the internal and I'm beginning to align that more um in a congruent way that feels authentic.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I again not that I felt I was being inauthentic but I wasn't um yeah I just wasn't connected.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah thank you for sharing that's big I really appreciate it um last question for you looking back what would you say to the version of Donna who was just at the very beginning of this unraveling and reclamation what would you say to her um hang in there it's gonna be okay you're not alone you're not defective this is a really sad thing that happens to so many people you have the ability to recover from this it's not always gonna be easy but life's not always easy for people but also life can be really full of joy find the joy you deserve the joy um and it's gonna you know it will be okay you can turn this around thank you hand on heart thank you emotional um I'm gonna share while we're both emotional I'm gonna share about the upcoming screening of Left Right Hook the documentary that I'm co-hosting in Melbourne um February 27th at the LEDO in Hawthorne I will drop a link to book tickets in the show notes and Donna you're gonna be there with the Q for a QA after the screening yeah yeah I am really looking forward to that yeah um and listeners lovely listeners if you can't be in Melbourne with us or you can't come and join us Donna myself survivors um who will survivor who'll be part of the QA am I right Donna that's from the film yeah um if you can't join us on the night there's a link in the show notes to donate so you can still support this amazing program.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Other than that Donna is there anything else you wanted to share in terms of connecting with left right hook supporting what you need we I just think just to say like I think we're doing really incredible work to help address a really complex social issue but we definitely can't do that alone and so really need that financial donation support.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know we're a small charity trying to you know do really big things which I think we are um but I think um yeah we just really need community help so um you can jump onto leftrighthook.org and it's the W-R-I-T-E, so leftrighthook.org um and of course we'd also love you to to connect with the film which is you can through the charity or leftrighthook.film um you can watch a really powerful trailer and um yeah and just really stay connected with the work um of what we're doing because I think you know even though it's a it is look at this hard stuff it's not easy conversation I get it um but I do think that there is a real uh testament to the resilience and the strength that um that of of what we're doing um and I I do believe that like I'm we're sitting in a space of empowerment and I want to hold hold that at um and the light on that more than the um the difficulty of the subject matter.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah the light let's shine that light on the empowerment I love it which is a beautiful place for us to finish this conversation.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Donna thank you so very much for sharing so openly and so passionately about the Freight Hook.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a fantastic conversation.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's um just so lovely to connect with you.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed felt the passion and took something away from my conversation with Donna Lyon she's incredible the work she's doing is incredible the programme is incredible the documentary is incredible and I would love to see some of you at the screening February in Melbourne NAM so you can experience that in person.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's a link in the show notes to join us for the screening andor to donate.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: As always thank you for being here until later in the week because this is a bonus episode until later in the week bye for now.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell divorce and strategist and you've been listening to Reflect, reclaim and liberate you can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode please share it with them.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, reclaim and liberate.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Until then