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Emma’s Top Ten · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, 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.
• 0:59
  It's a gorgeous day after a week of rain, and so we've come to sit outside at the park with the children and watch them play. The sun is warm. The children are happy, and there's a rainbow in the fountain in the lake. And as I walked over to a place where I could talk freely and record what we wanted to share today, we saw a baby bird fall from its nest with the mother barking on the limb above. It slammed into the ground hard and floundered there like it didn't yet know that it could fly.
• 1:47
  Maybe even that it didn't know it already could fly. It was hard to miss the symbolism in that, and it's exactly what we wanna talk about today. So I sat not far from the bird and watched the mother bird talk to the baby bird. She flew down to join it there, not abandoning it, but also not flying for her. The baby bird, now maybe a toddler bird or almost an adolescent, had to learn to fly for itself.
• 2:28
  They chattered loudly with the mother going back up to the nest to show how it's done and coming back to bark again. It made me feel not so bad as a mother for some of the barking that I do, which always stresses me out because I so much want to be kind and so much want to have compassion and more than anything want to give my own children a different experience than the kind that I had growing up. It somehow normalized things that I could be a mostly good mother and have mostly good children, and maybe it was normal and we're doing okay. It made me feel better somehow, even as I watched the bird struggle to learn how to fly. I sat for a long time, watching it struggle, watching its wings work, watching the baby bird test the air and cry with its little tiny squeaky beak.
• 3:44
  The mother stayed in the nest barking down where the baby bird bounced in the grass, trying to hop like a little duck. And finally, for a third time, the mother bird came down to the baby bird. But instead of barking, nuzzled it a bit, flapped her wings again in demonstration, and then went back up to the nest. There was a lesson in that for all of us, I think, the connection that it made, the connection that it showed, and the gentleness that came from a nuzzle instead of barking. This time, the mother bird waited at the nest, her head cocking side to side, back and forth, watching the baby bird, but not barking or squawking at it anymore.
• 4:44
  I wondered if it had given up, if the baby bird had been forgotten, or if it was getting the silent treatment. But I don't think so because the mother bird maintained eye contact, and the baby bird didn't lose sight of its mother. They were there in this attached connection, looking at each other, seeing each other, both of them feeling the same wind, but only the mother bird knowing what it means to fly. In some embarrassing and awkward attempts, the baby bird flapped its wings, testing the air, hopping a little further this time, a little higher, but not willing to let go of the ground. And I thought, I know what that feels like even as I try and struggle to find my own sense of self, to pull together my memories and my feelings all at the same time, To believe that I can fly enough to do the things they say I know how to do but cannot remember.
• 5:58
  There she is. That was the mother bird. Did you hear her? And I stayed and I watched. And every time the baby baby bird flapped a little higher and a little further, the mother bird came down again and gave it a nuzzle and a little squawk and flew back up to the nest.
• 6:29
  And each time, the baby bird flew a little higher and a little further. And each time, the baby bird flapped a little higher and a little further until almost as if on accident. She went up, up into the sky where the sun shines and air is warm. Away from the itchy grass that's uncomfortable with the way it pokes even until she got back to the nest, lined with the soft feathers of her mother, it was perfect timing, this life lesson from creation. On a weekend where my struggles are all about mothers.
• 7:28
  I have heard in my head and seen in my notebook that my mother was complicit in the things that I don't remember. And if I try to face that instead of avoiding it, then it means they are things I don't want to remember. And the idea that my mother was complicit in some of what's happened to me swallows me up the way the sharp blades of grass were taller than this baby bird. And it's cold there and dark in the shade. There's nothing warm or inviting or home like.
• 8:38
  But my therapist is up there saying that she can see more than I can see and that everything is really okay. And that if I keep trying and that if I keep feeling the wind, then maybe I can fly. I have always, always hated Mother's Day. The relationship with my own mother was difficult enough, and then she was dead. I didn't meet my own husband until I was 35.
• 9:23
  So there were years of not having my own children and so not understanding what that made me if I wasn't a mother or understanding who I was without being one. And then we fostered children, and I was just the mother of other people's children. And we had miscarriages one after another, and I was no one's mother. And all of my babies were dead just like my own mother. These were painful years, lonely years, years that I didn't want to go to church on Sunday for holiday where I didn't belong, for a holiday where all of my worst hurts were broadcast to everyone, for a holiday where there was nothing in me to honor, for a holiday where I couldn't hide the things that hurt me most.
• 10:55
  I hated it. There was nothing good about it, nothing easy about it, and nothing in me strong enough or refined enough to offer anything to anyone else. There was nothing in me left to give. No mothering to offer anyone. And it felt, at the time, that there was nothing I could do about that.
• 11:34
  As I tried to address some of my own issues, it got a little better, but only because I was pretending, only because I'm good at dissociating, only because I'm good at putting away what hurts so much. I did some things that I thought were protective, but now I know are just avoidance, like not going to church on Sunday when it's Mother's Day. But in other ways, I faced it head on trying to do what was best and what was right even though it hurt me more than anything, like spending most of Mother's Day, handling visits with the biological parents of my adopted children, making Mother's Day about them, making Mother's Day about their mothers, and honoring the children I have by loving the women they came from. And maybe it was good and maybe it was right, but that doesn't mean it didn't sting, and that doesn't mean it didn't hurt, and that doesn't mean it wasn't hard to resent, that nothing alive has come from me and knowing that I have come from nothing good. That's not an easy thing to sit with for an entire day, even when the shadows are lined with flowers.
• 13:25
  And secrets are drowned out with songs. What changed for me this shift from hating Mother's Day to at least trying in the ways that I could. Was taking to heart the words of Clarissa Pancola Estes from the book, women who run with the wolves. She talks a lot about mothers, the unmothered, the badly mothered, and how really, no matter what our story is, we all need many mothers. And one of the stories she tells is about the ugly duckling and how maybe we really are a swan being raised by ducks or chickens or horses or cows or even monsters.
• 14:34
  I don't feel much like a swan. I don't know that I believe it yet, but it speaks to me as if God were a mother bird in the tree while I am in the cold, sharp grass on the ground. So now it's time again for Mother's Day this year with the terrible timing of therapy or whatever this process is of shining light on the shadows, which only makes them grow longer as the sun sets on the illusions distance I put myself from it. The problem with waking up is that you can't pretend anymore. And the problem with speaking the truth is that you can't hide from it anymore.
• 15:48
  And the problem with looking directly at the light is how much it hurts your eyes. Is how much it hurts when you see what there is to see. I missed therapy last week, and I don't know yet if I get to go on Monday. I'm recording this on Friday night. Tomorrow Tomorrow should be easy.
• 16:34
  I won't go to church on Sunday if I can get out of it. But I still have to make it to Monday, even if that means I have to wait another week for another Monday. And as I watch the baby bird struggle in the grass, I realized something, that I really have to choose how I wanna get through the next couple of days because I can either drown or I can fly. So I wondered what would help me most in this context of Mother's Day to remember that I am strong and brave, like my therapist said, because it's not a day I feel it at all. So today, I want to talk about my therapist for Mother's Day.
• 17:51
  Not because I'm needy or confused, and not even because I'm in crisis or to prevent one. I know she's not my mother, and I know she doesn't want me to be creepy or intrusive or weird. I don't mean anything like that. But I do have a heart full of gratitude that she has been a safe place, a nest full of feathers, that's teaching me how to fly even when it's really scary and even when sometimes it hurts. And when it does hurt, she doesn't leave me alone in it.
• 18:50
  She's there, and I'm grateful. So what I want to do for me and for you to honor her is to share some of the things that she has taught me, that has helped to heal me that has helped me to heal me. In our circle notebook, the one where everyone inside writes their introductions and answers questions so that I can learn about them, so that we can learn about each other. There's a section in that notebook where we specifically write the things that we learn. Sasha calls them truth bombs.
• 19:53
  The things that she teaches us that are life changing that are life changing in a single sentence. Things that we drive home thinking about for four hours and spend weeks writing about and more weeks trying to practice. Things that teach us about connection and who we are and when we are more than just a notebook that gives us reassurance as we have learned the things that we've learned in the last year and made the progress that we have in the last year. These are the things that have taught us about love and hope and shown us compassion even for ourselves. Maybe it will be important to me.
• 21:24
  Maybe it will be special for her if I'm brave enough to send it. But it's a gift that I can give that she has given me, and I want to share with you. Some of these things we've already talked about, and practicing them on the podcast and talking about them on the podcast has helped a lot where we can listen to them over and over again. So if there's anything I would want any part of me or any part of you to know, it would be these things. I wrote them in order order of how they made sense to me.
• 22:25
  Not necessarily the order others learned from, but the order in which they clicked into place for me. And made them into kind of a top 10 list of things my therapist has taught me. Number 10, now time is safe. I know we've talked about this a lot on the podcast. We rely on it still every day.
• 23:03
  There are still days I have to write it on my hand, still days I find it on my hand when someone else has written it there, and other days, we still have to text her and be sure it's still true. But it changes everything. It's a hard thing to learn when you don't know what safe is. But holding on to now time being safe is part of what taught us what safe is. And that's number nine, now time is different.
• 23:46
  Part of what makes now time safe is that it's different than in the past. Hard things happen to us because life is sometimes hard, but there's no one in our life now that intentionally hurts us. And even if someone ever did, we would know who to tell, how to get help, and what to do about it. We aren't alone. We aren't locked up.
• 24:23
  We aren't hungry. We can play without getting in trouble. We can share pieces of ourselves and express ourselves without being violated or betrayed or abused. Now time is safe and now time is different. Number eight, memory time does not change now time.
• 25:11
  Memory time is in the past. The past was not easy, and the past was un pleasant. We were hurt in the past. We were alone. The past is when we were hurt and didn't have help and were never rescued.
• 25:40
  But talking about memory time, the past, doesn't change now time. In now time, we are still safe. We still have help, and we are not alone. And even when we remember hard things or have to write about hard things or have to read what someone else has written that I don't remember or remember writing, even then, now time is still safe. We still have help, and we are not alone.
• 26:31
  Talking about memory time does not change now time. Number seven. She is real all the time. Our therapist is. Our husband too.
• 26:47
  He's real all the time. Our therapist, if we tell her things, she says that she's going to believe us, ask how she can help, and she won't go anywhere. All the other feelings we have or worries we have or scary thoughts we think, all that's from memory time from before. But now time is different. She is different.
• 27:16
  And she is real all the time. So we go by the evidence that tells us now time is different. Like how we've already told her some things, and she's still here, and still helping us. And when we forget that, struggle to remember it, then that's number six. We can ask for reassurance.
• 27:41
  Sometimes that's all we need. She's still there. She won't lose us. She won't forget about us. And it's okay to reach out and connect.
• 27:55
  It's okay to reach out and confirm that now time is still safe. It's okay to reach out and ask for reassurance. That's part of being real. Real about how we're feeling and real in who she is. And it's how we'll learn that we're real too.
• 28:26
  And because we're real, we have number five. Number five is you know better than anyone else what you need and what is right for you. This was actually one of the first things we learned from her. We were in a situation where lots of people were telling us different things about what we should do or what we could do or what we ought to do, and it was really confusing. We had choices about where to live and where to work and who to be friends with and what to do for our children, and it was a really scary and hard time when we weren't functioning well and so overwhelmed.
• 29:11
  And it felt like so many people were dependent on us figuring out the right thing. And when you have good and safe friends, it's important to talk to them about things, to ask for their perspective, to vent your feelings and sort them out, but the work of sorting is your own work. Clarissa, in the same book, The Wolf's Book, has a whole chapter just about sorting. So it's okay to talk through things with a friend, but deciding what to do is your decision. And especially if the people in your life are not healthy or safe, then they are not the ones who get to decide what's best for you.
• 30:07
  You know what is best for you. You know what you need. And you taking care of what you need and doing what's best for you, that's how you learn how to fly. Number four was one of the most profound and powerful things that anyone has ever told us. It's shaken things up so much, I still don't know what it means exactly.
• 30:37
  I mean, I know what it means. It's not that complicated, but it's a really hard piece to hold on to and even harder to practice. What she said was, it's not our secret. It's their secret. The bad things that happen to us, the bad things that happened to you, it was not your fault.
• 31:02
  It was not our fault, and it's not our secret. The things they did to us were wrong and not okay, and it's their secret. We don't have to keep their secrets anymore. This is huge. It changes everything.
• 31:23
  It's the difference between feeling the cold breeze in the shade of the tree, huddled in on yourself and cold like a storm is coming. The difference between that and learning how to use the wind to fly, it's what set us free, this peace. It changes everything that was so complicated and so hard and so dangerous about talking because it's not our secret. And if it's not our secret, we don't have to keep it. We don't have to carry it.
• 32:04
  It's not on us to protect what they did wrong. We know better than anyone else what we need and what is right for us. And what is right for us, what we need is to set that down, to walk away from it, to get rid of it, to tell what there is to tell. It's not easy, though. It's hard starting to talk about things, starting to read things, starting to learn what happened is painful and scary, like getting pushed out of the nest.
• 32:51
  It's absolutely terrifying. And when you hit the ground, it's hard and it hurts. But when I watched the baby bird hop in the grass and then learn how to fly, I saw it scoop back down again because it found a little bug and a little worm. And it realized the grass wasn't just cold and sharp. It's also where the tools are to build your own nest.
• 33:27
  It's also where the food is hidden in the ground. It's also the very life of Earth that gives birth to trees where nests are held safe high above the ground, away from predators, away from where the river floods its banks. So if we're going to fly and have our own nest and even raise our own family, We have to know it's not our secret, and that's what frees us from the heavy burdens of shame and the silence of not telling and the fear of the consequences if we do. It's not our secret. But how we do that, and when we do that, and what that looks like as we do that is up to us.
• 34:46
  That's number three. You always have a choice. This is hard to remember because when you're dealing with trauma and you're living through hard things, it often feels like you have no choice at all. When your feelings are big and your circumstances are difficult, it's easy to feel helpless or hopeless. And it's true that you can't control other people, and it's true that sometimes there's nothing you can do.
• 35:23
  But you always have a choice. You can choose how you respond to what is happening. You can choose with whom you interact and how you interact with them. You can choose what you do about your circumstances and how you live in them or get out of them. You always have a choice.
• 35:48
  You can choose to take care of yourself or not. You can choose choose to empower yourself or not. You can choose to fly or not. If you choose to fly, that means not letting them win. That means not keeping their secrets.
• 36:11
  It means doing the hard work to say the hard things. It means taking care of yourself and yourselves while you do so. And that's number two, turn the lights on. We can do what we need to do on the inside to be sure that people inside are comfortable and safe. For us, this was big when we learned about the attic and rescuing some of the littles that needed to get up there and to be safe.
• 36:52
  But then it also meant looking at what they need, learning their stories and what made them comfortable and safe, and doing the things creatively to reach out to them, to let those parts of ourself know that everything is already okay. We hung up Christmas lights. We painted walls. We made blankets. We sewed clothes.
• 37:19
  We painted pictures. We painted and painted and painted. We drew scary things. We drew happy things. We bought salsa.
• 37:38
  We filled our backpack with crayons and bought one big enough to hold us stuffed bear. But turning the lights on can be done on the outside too. Sometimes that means reaching out. Sometimes it means learning how to make friends and what connection is and how to find safe people who are real and deep and worth investing in. Emotionally and spiritually.
• 38:22
  Sometimes it means being the son and saying true things and sharing your story even when it's scary. Sometimes it's sharing Sometimes sharing what you're learning still even though you don't have everything figured out yet. Sometimes it's sharing truth that saved you in case it helps someone else. It's being vulnerable but wise and holding out hope that maybe instead of just an imaginary friend in a window, like Katie in Anne of Green Gables, that there are real people with skin and bones who might hug you or invite you for tea parties or read poems on the lake like Anne and Diana. Sometimes that's going for a walk or playing outside or taking a hot bath with a book.
• 40:09
  Sometimes it's lighting candles or eating peppermints or diffusing oils. Sometimes it's the color of the grass or the smell of paint. Sometimes it's a crocheted blanket or the touch of a hand or an arm around you when you're most afraid. Sometimes it's a tissue when you cry. Or a text when you're alone, or the light of a watch shining in the dark.
• 40:58
  And because now time is safe, you can try to do those things, learn to do those things, practice doing those things, and that's how you learn how to fly. Because number one is, you're not a little girl anymore. In some ways, I don't know if we ever were a little girl or ever got to be a little girl, and yet there are little girls frozen in time. And I still still am learning how to help them, how to reach them, and don't know or don't want to understand the things that they have been through. I watch my girls run, and I'm happy that they're strong.
• 41:42
  I hear them sing and laugh, and I'm glad they are happy. But they also protect themselves. They know not to talk to strangers. They know not to let people touch them if they don't want to be touched. And they know how to tell if someone does.
• 42:10
  But they're also soft. They snuggle with me, they play with my hair even as it grows back from chemo, and they like to rub my feet because it keeps me still long enough for them to talk to me. They are free somehow in a way I never have been. They are strong somehow in a way I never knew I could be. They are beautiful somehow in a way I've never felt.
• 42:47
  So part of learning that you're not a little girl anymore isn't just about the age of the body or helping littles grow up or remembering that now time is safe. Part of remembering that you're not a little girl anymore is knowing that little girls are strong and brave, That it's okay to cry, but it's also okay to smile. That it's okay to scream in a rage when you're really angry and there's injustice and you have something to be upset about, but it's also okay to laugh and to sing and to dance. For me, being a little girl meant having no power, meant being hurt, meant being stuck, meant being tied up and violated and touched by slimy and disgusting things. But now time is safe.
• 44:15
  And those days are over. And if there are snakes in the grass, there are nothing but stars in the sky. And everything is already okay. So maybe we still have a long way to go, but we've learned a lot in a year, and maybe there's still lots to learn and to try and even ways to step out of the nest. And trust that we won't just fall or be stuck or be lost or be forgotten.
• 45:01
  But also, maybe it's true that there's something in us that already knows how to fly. Maybe it's who we were meant to be. Maybe letting go and soaring is who we were created to be, who we already are. And the funny thing about having your wings clipped is that they grow back. And the funny thing about a storm is that it blows over.
• 45:38
  And the funny thing about night is that morning always comes. Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemspeakcommunity.com.
• 46:28
  We'll see you there.