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Guest Host: Donna Jenson with Riss Myung and John P - Time to Tell · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the special guest host series of the Trauma
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Thevers podcast, where I'm going to be handing over the
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  Speaker 1: mic to some incredible guest hosts. In each episode, you'll
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  Speaker 1: hear fresh perspectives and unique insights to inform and inspire
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  Speaker 1: you in all the while keeping the heart of this
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  Speaker 1: podcast alive. So sit back and enjoy.
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  Speaker 2: Hello. My name is Donna Jensen, founder of Time to Tell,
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  Speaker 2: coming to you from Western Massachusetts. I'm delighted to be
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  Speaker 2: here as part of the guest host series with me
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  Speaker 2: is Ris Meung and John Prott, both members of the
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  Speaker 2: Time to Tell writing circles for survivors of sexual trauma.
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  Speaker 2: Having led these circles since two thousand and eight, I
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  Speaker 2: firmly believe writing is medicine. Circles meet twice a month
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  Speaker 2: online to write together and give each other positive feedback
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  Speaker 2: about our writing. To start, we each light a candle
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  Speaker 2: to bring a flame into our writing space, then listen
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  Speaker 2: to a singing bowl ring us into silence. We do
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  Speaker 2: a mindful exercise midway to reground ourselves. I read a
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  Speaker 2: poem or prose to ignite the writing, which we do
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  Speaker 2: twice within our two hours together in community We're going
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  Speaker 2: to give you a taste of our process today by
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  Speaker 2: reading something we've each written and show you how we
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  Speaker 2: respond to each other. So, Ris and John, would you
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  Speaker 2: introduce yourselves and tell us why do you write?
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  Speaker 3: John?
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  Speaker 2: Why don't you go first?
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  Speaker 4: Sure? So hello from me as well. I'm Joan. He
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  Speaker 4: him from Boston. I've been with Time to Tell for
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  Speaker 4: maybe two years, maybe a little more, and at Time
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  Speaker 4: to Tell, I discovered that I enjoy writing. I mean
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  Speaker 4: before that I would write for business, but writing gives
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  Speaker 4: me freedom. I read somewhere that writing poetry gives you
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  Speaker 4: freedom from words. So I find the freedom to write
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  Speaker 4: what needs to be told without having to stick to
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  Speaker 4: any any presumptions or any structure. It's just total freedom. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: it's wonderful.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks John and Ris.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome, Thanks Donna, Hey Joon. My name is Ris are
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  Speaker 3: usual her pronouns. I'm based in the Bay Area, California.
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  Speaker 3: I'm a traditional Chinese medicine apprentice on my body coach,
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  Speaker 3: consultant for nonprofits, and I started writing as young as
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  Speaker 3: I can remember. Writing was my sanctuary, it was my
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  Speaker 3: safe face. And it's really beautiful to see my writing
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  Speaker 3: a ball, just a beautiful portal into my own growth,
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  Speaker 3: trajectory and healing.
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  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Chris, and I'll just say a little
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  Speaker 2: bit about I've been writing since the nineteen seventies, which
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  Speaker 2: is a long time ago. I was in my twenties
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  Speaker 2: when I started writing, journaling really and after I was
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  Speaker 2: doing some therapy around my incest. I started writing right
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  Speaker 2: after a session of therapy, and I suddenly realized I
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  Speaker 2: was pouring myself out in a way I never had before.
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  Speaker 2: And I just kept going and found myself weeping over
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  Speaker 2: my words but feeling better for it. So that's how
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  Speaker 2: this whole project got started. And that's a long time ago.
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  Speaker 2: So without further ado, why don't we read a writing
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  Speaker 2: to you and you can get a taste of what
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  Speaker 2: we do in our time to tell circles and risks.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to start first, play Okay.
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  Speaker 3: I've noticed something. I won't let myself take a walk
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  Speaker 3: for fun unless I need to get groceries. I won't
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  Speaker 3: start my Paint by Numbers kit unless I can play
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  Speaker 3: a podcast in the background. I won't let myself rest
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  Speaker 3: unless I've crossed something off my to do list. I
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  Speaker 3: live in rigid structures of fear that can fine me.
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  Speaker 3: My Google calendar controls me. My life has become a
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  Speaker 3: game of Tetris, where I fit events into picture perfect
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  Speaker 3: squares of one hour inteworld blocks, and on the st surf.
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  Speaker 3: I seem organized and reliable, trustworthy. After all, I'm a
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  Speaker 3: type eldest daughter of immigrants who has learned to survive
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  Speaker 3: by treading water in the deep side of the pool.
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  Speaker 3: My identity has been formulated by how useful I can
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  Speaker 3: be to others and how efficiently I can do these things.
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  Speaker 3: I reach the end of the road. I'm tired of
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  Speaker 3: using efficiency to prevent myself from experiencing pleasure. I'm building
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  Speaker 3: myself up to have wants and desires. I'm allowing myself
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  Speaker 3: to be human. It's time I learned to swim in
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  Speaker 3: the shallow end of the pool, where my feet can
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  Speaker 3: touch the ground and I can feel the sun kissed
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  Speaker 3: my cheeks. I used to see myself as a stagnant
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  Speaker 3: object that only acts when someone exerts their own force
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  Speaker 3: onto me. But now I'm learning to see myself as
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  Speaker 3: my own object in motion that exerts my own force.
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  Speaker 3: I am not a wallflower at a budding plant in
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  Speaker 3: the garden of my life. In the center of my
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  Speaker 3: universe and can make quantum leaps in my own nonlinear growth.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you Risk. That was beautiful, John. What stayed
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  Speaker 2: with you from this piece?
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  Speaker 4: I felt it was a beautiful piece. I could relate
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  Speaker 4: to a lot of the readers looking at herself from
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  Speaker 4: the outside, the narrator being able to observe oneself from
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  Speaker 4: the outside. It takes a skill and a lot of
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  Speaker 4: experience and a lot of work on results to be
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  Speaker 4: able to do that. But what I really liked I
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  Speaker 4: like the imagery of the pool. I liked the object
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  Speaker 4: that is takenant and is waiting for someone else to
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  Speaker 4: exert forcenate in order to move, And I could relate
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  Speaker 4: a lot to that. What I really loved was the
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  Speaker 4: realization at the end that yeah, I learned to exert
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  Speaker 4: my own course in mind, I'm not waiting for anyone else.
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  Speaker 4: That was a message of hope that someone can do that.
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  Speaker 4: Quantum so physics, but the physics that are not physics,
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  Speaker 4: and I'm not linear anymore, and I do whatever I want.
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  Speaker 4: There was a beautiful, beautiful piece, lots of hope. I
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  Speaker 4: could relate to a lot of it. Thank you for sharing.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks John, so Ris so much stayed with me. I
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  Speaker 2: just want to say, first of all, the whole piece
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  Speaker 2: shows a survivor's growth and awareness of the growth. You know,
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  Speaker 2: starting with I noticed something but really jumped out to me.
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  Speaker 2: It was first being the daughter of immigrants that learned
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  Speaker 2: to survive by treading water in the deep side of
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  Speaker 2: the pool, and then going and growing to swimming to
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  Speaker 2: the shallow and the pool where my feet can touch
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  Speaker 2: the ground and it can kiss my cheeks. That just
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  Speaker 2: it gave me such a shell. I loved it. Thank
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  Speaker 2: you so much, Ris, Thank you for listening. All right,
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  Speaker 2: So John, well have you read okay?
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  Speaker 4: For those of us who were touched by evil, who
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  Speaker 4: someone tried to wipe us out by what some people
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  Speaker 4: call crime, and yet some others do not, those of
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  Speaker 4: us who perhaps looked into the face of the abyss
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  Speaker 4: and then we found the strength to look away, to
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  Speaker 4: break the chain. Nonetheless, the darkness follows us as we
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  Speaker 4: continue dragging that chain, constant reminders of who we might
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  Speaker 4: have been, or perhaps who we hardly are. For those
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  Speaker 4: of us committed to an instatable discourse with both fear
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  Speaker 4: and evil, the dark are dark. The one that touched
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  Speaker 4: us committed us to a dialog for eternity, but also
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  Speaker 4: to the wisdom that radiates from it, or by breathing
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  Speaker 4: the foul breath of dark, by surviving the freezing, thunderous
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  Speaker 4: nights in the mountains, we learned to endure, and we
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  Speaker 4: learn to find the beauty that lies in the opposites,
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  Speaker 4: in evil bites, the sacred in dark bites, the sparkle
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  Speaker 4: in night bites, the twinkling star. It is better to
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  Speaker 4: live this way than the opposite. We found the light
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  Speaker 4: in the darkness, and so don't need dark to find
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  Speaker 4: us in our brightness. Let us live with our companions,
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  Speaker 4: the wolves of the mountains, the Society of Weirdos, the
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  Speaker 4: black Sheep. It is better this way.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, John.
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  Speaker 4: Ris.
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  Speaker 2: What stayed with you from this narrator?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there were two main things that stayed with me.
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  Speaker 3: The first one was those of us who perhaps looked
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  Speaker 3: into the face of Abyss to break the chain. I
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  Speaker 3: could really visualize that like looking into a deep void,
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  Speaker 3: almost like a black hole, and unflinchingly just being like
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  Speaker 3: I am not going to quiver, I'm not going to
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  Speaker 3: back down. And that ties to the other thing that
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  Speaker 3: stayed with me, where you wrote, we found the light
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  Speaker 3: in the darkness, and so we don't need the dark
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  Speaker 3: to find us in a brightness. Yeah, thanks John, good,
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  Speaker 3: thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, first of all, you're such a poet. This
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  Speaker 2: narrator is such a poet. The metaphors are just so wonderful,
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  Speaker 2: the freezing, thunderous nights in the mountains, the beauty that
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  Speaker 2: lies in the opposites. But I really that that's the
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  Speaker 2: shine that Shane. We continue dragging that Shane. It's a
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  Speaker 2: constant reminder of perhaps who we partly are. That just
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  Speaker 2: resonated so deeply with me, and I felt brought to
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  Speaker 2: a higher place when at the ending, when the narrative set,
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  Speaker 2: narrator said, let us live with our companions. What a
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  Speaker 2: wonderful directive. Thank you so much, John.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you.
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  Speaker 2: Free Buck. All right, I'll read this. One's called the Vice.
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  Speaker 2: Time was I couldn't find words for how I felt
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  Speaker 2: or what I'd been through. When I didn't even know
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  Speaker 2: I could search for words. All I had was silence
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  Speaker 2: and being silenced. My father's command whispered in my right ear.
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  Speaker 2: You tell anyone and I'll kill you. Lodged itself in
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  Speaker 2: the back of my skull on top of my spinal cord,
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  Speaker 2: perfectly positioned to send the message up to my brain
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  Speaker 2: and down through my spine to permeate my nervous system
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  Speaker 2: until I purged it, until I replaced it with the
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  Speaker 2: words telling is healing. His command was a vice on
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  Speaker 2: my spirit. My healing opened the vice one turn at
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  Speaker 2: a time. Muscles had to be built up to grab
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  Speaker 2: hold of the bar at the side of the vice.
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  Speaker 2: Twisting a quarter turn to the right took weeks to perform.
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  Speaker 2: It took years to loosen the vice enough for my
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  Speaker 2: voice to slip out that mighty It took years to
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  Speaker 2: loosen the vice enough for my voice to slip out
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  Speaker 2: of that mighty grip. First, she just flopped down on
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  Speaker 2: my chest cavity, poor voice, flat as a pancake. She
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  Speaker 2: stayed there a long time. Gradually, one of her edges
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  Speaker 2: nudged onto the left ventricle of my heart. She'd been
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  Speaker 2: hearing my heart beating, but now she could feel my
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  Speaker 2: heart beating. Being released from the vice was a miracle.
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  Speaker 2: Not only was my voice free, she was also being
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  Speaker 2: shown what it meant to feel alive. Butt them, butt them,
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  Speaker 2: got them, and that be promised to feed her forever.
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  Speaker 2: So what stayed with you from my writing? Ris?
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  Speaker 3: I loved how the narrator used a lot of words
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  Speaker 3: that related to the body, like the chest, cavity, the
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  Speaker 3: nervous system, the spine. I think it really speaks to
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  Speaker 3: how trauma is stored in the body too. And I
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  Speaker 3: love how the narrator didn't have to say that and
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  Speaker 3: they just captured it in their writing so effortlessly. And
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  Speaker 3: the second thing is I love the last line the
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  Speaker 3: beat promised to feed her forever. I think it speaks
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  Speaker 3: to our own ability to be a self healer, our
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  Speaker 3: own regenerative abilities to transform, to grow, to heal. How
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  Speaker 3: we have that power in us, and when we engage
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  Speaker 3: in our healing journey, we find out how we are
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  Speaker 3: transformative in our own ways and capable of being our
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  Speaker 3: own life for us.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, Ris John.
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  Speaker 4: I found this to be a very powerful piece. I
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  Speaker 4: was gripped. I was kind of shaken because you tell
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  Speaker 4: anyone and I'll kill you. So whisper to a little girl.
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  Speaker 4: These are words that you see in movies. These are
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  Speaker 4: not words you can even that we can even conceive
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  Speaker 4: what it means to hear these words as a child
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  Speaker 4: from someone immensely powerful, who has total control over us,
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  Speaker 4: and at the same time it's hurting us. And I
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  Speaker 4: think the narrator quite powerfully described how this has lodged
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  Speaker 4: the back of the skull like a foreign object, and
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  Speaker 4: how it went down the spinal cord in the entire
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  Speaker 4: nervous system, and it control the whole body. And then
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  Speaker 4: when an arraider said until I perched it and I
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  Speaker 4: replaced it with the words tailing is healing, I found
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  Speaker 4: myself thinking, yeah, wow, but wasn't that easy. And then
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  Speaker 4: of course there was a description of the arduous, long
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  Speaker 4: process of healing, which doesn't doesn't come. We make it come.
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  Speaker 4: We fight it step by step with our nails, with
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  Speaker 4: our blood and with our tears, and it took years.
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  Speaker 4: And then of course there was the beautiful last paragraph
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  Speaker 4: of the voice, which was it was funny that fell
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  Speaker 4: flat as a pancake, but it was the voice has
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  Speaker 4: a life of its own, and that's well, that's what
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  Speaker 4: stood out to me, that the voice came, and the
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  Speaker 4: voice is looking around and looking for help, and now
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  Speaker 4: I found the heart, the biggest, the biggest ally and
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  Speaker 4: then beating from the heart, how that gave the voice
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  Speaker 4: life and a promise that it will it will feed
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  Speaker 4: her forever. I found that very very optimistic, very very positive,
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  Speaker 4: and the opposite of how it started with a threat
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  Speaker 4: to a promise. Thank you, thank you for sharing, Thank.
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  Speaker 2: You so much, Thank you both, thank us all. What's
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  Speaker 2: something that stayed with us from our own writing? So
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: let's go the opposite, John, why don't you say? Can
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  Speaker 2: you say what stayed with you from your own writing?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? What stayed with me was giving myself the courage
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  Speaker 4: to have a choice of the people. I will live
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  Speaker 4: with their companions, the weirdos, the outliers, and just be
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  Speaker 4: with them. Give me permission to do that.
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  Speaker 2: What about you, Donna Well? I love describing my voice
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  Speaker 2: as a pancake flopping into my chest cavity. For some reason,
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  Speaker 2: I just thought that was it just popped out. And
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  Speaker 2: I loved that I described my voice that way. How
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  Speaker 2: about you Ris?
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  Speaker 3: For me, I love just the phrase quantum leaps, which
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  Speaker 3: is so visceral to me. It's so visual, and I
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  Speaker 3: think it shows that we are capable of growth beyond measure.
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  Speaker 3: Then we're capable of.
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  Speaker 4: Dreaming of I just want to say thank you to
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  Speaker 4: Time to Tell for years of support for help me
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  Speaker 4: discover myself, for helping me be with others, find community
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  Speaker 4: and make quantum leaps in my own in my own
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  Speaker 4: a journey.
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  Speaker 3: And Ris don't know what's actually staying with me is
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  Speaker 3: the line from your piece telling is healing. I think
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  Speaker 3: that's the whole point of time to tell. And I
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: think it could have not been a more potent example
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  Speaker 3: of like what this work does with the circles offer
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  Speaker 3: like I would. I think you need to publish that.
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  Speaker 3: I think it needs to be out there.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, well, thank you both for joining me today. This
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: has been great fun, and thank you everyone for listening.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: Goodbye the doubt being Homo s