🌕 In My Experience… Sad & Free [Everybody, Everybody]

it's a full moon in aquarius 🌕

Image Description:  Single file line of approximately 25 people hiking into an open  filed of tall green grass, daisies and yellow wild flowers with a backdrop forest of pondersoa pines and blue sky with a few cumulus clouds. Photo by the magnificent Yong Oh.

Hi friends,

I missed the last lunation! But I made up for it through this one’s length (sorry, not sorry). 🤣

As I mentioned on Instagram, after having not done any worky-work throughout this year of medical calamities, teaching two retreats back-to-back was intense. Fact: I started the first retreat exactly one year to the day since a PET Scan revealed "joint pain” that was actually a left hip made up primarily of metastatic-jelly-bone, cancer that had spread all throughout my body, and a completely fluid-filled & collapsed left lung. It is not hyperbole to say it felt miraculous to be at 9,000 feet, strong in body & spirit, supporting the beautiful practice of wonderful people, guiding long mountain hikes, while repeatedly singing This Joy. Miraculous, indeed. Also, a lot. Afterward, I needed time off. Even if those two weeks did not feel like “work,” I required rest.

I’ve never better understood just how radical rest and pleasure are than I have this year, so, I did plan for a break after teaching. Still, I thought I'd send a newsletter. When I finally realized I had no energy to write something meaningful to you – I felt fine about it. But, when the rest continued on for a few more days (of napping, watching movies and shows, eating my favorite foods, and generally doing no-thing), well, then a familiar critical voice began to surface, doubting my continuing need for ease. The L-word (lazy) even tried to make an appearance. But I caught this pernicious pattern and said, Oh no, not today Societal-Satan. No more of this fuckery! First of all, I am a grown ass human lady and I can do whatever I want. Also, I am the boss of me… literally.

Of course, there is a growing movement around rejecting the pathology of productivity*. Me? Apparently, I require the advanced rest & pleasure curriculum (some resources 👇🏾). This past year, a teacher of mine gave me the same assignment over and over (and over): to practice saying “no” to any-thing that does not excite me, to choose only activities that give me pleasure, and (here’s the real challenge) to know the difference. She asked me to make a list of what I currently do that brings me joy and, oh man, that was one of the toughest exams I’ve ever sat – after about 6.5 things, I was grasping (does making lists in my head of people I need to call/text count?)!!

Y’all, this practice of rest & pleasure is a deep dare to my system. I MUST do it over and over (and over) again in order to fully reprogram my patterns. My life traumas have conditioned me to do the exact opposite of the above assignment: I choose obligations and duties that drain, I reject joy and lightness that uplift (or somehow twist those into work too… hello, meditation as a task!!), and I dismiss my body’s signals even as they continually warn me of this fundamental confusion and imbalance until I'm in burnout or on the verge of collapse. I am humbly and forever a student, learning to be free... 

Time in nature definitely helps: water, mountains, trees, land, sky – exquisite teachers of what it means to simply be with what is, without anxiety or performativity. I am their humble student.

Below is today’s In My Experience… exploring trauma. And freedom.

I’m happy to be back, well rested, and choosing to be here with you in joy.

With much love,

Sebene

p.s. Thank you to everyone who has responded to these newsletters. I ready every message and am often moved by your heartfelt shares. I cannot respond to every email. And I do appreciate hearing from you. 

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Does it help to recognize and define our trauma identities? Lately I’ve been feeling like the naming of them is not the taming of them and instead becomes the focus on them. How can we balance these learnings as we open to these vulnerable sensitive parts of ourselves?

Dear Sad & Free

Wow, I really appreciate the way you’ve worded this question! Everything you’ve said here resonates for me – these parts in me are sensitive and vulnerable, and they can also become reinforced by how I give them attention. My response to you may simply be an affirmation of your inquiry.

First, a strong caveat. Nothing I say here is intended as medical or therapeutic advice, nor can it replace work with a trauma specialist. If you are new to trauma work and in need of support, please seek the help of a trained therapist. Also, what I say below is a very limited exploration of a complex topic — there are many valid ways to approach trauma, I have experienced only a handful of methods, this is very much my experience, and I continue to learn.

In my experience… it has been vital to identify my numerous traumas, yet also understand that the unconscious-continual naming of them can calcify them into identities — when I clearly recognize my traumas as unfortunate pains of life, consciously (re)define them as healing opportunities, and apply appropriate-for-me soul medicines**, then I am able to experience trauma as a pathway to being sad & free.

I believe that, overall, it’s been helpful that more and more people are aware of trauma. Duh. And, I am emphasizing the overall. I do not agree with the recent dominant pushback against the growing prevalence of trauma in popular culture (like here and here). And, I do wonder about the ubiquitous overuse of the label. As trauma becomes mainstream, some people are projecting that concept onto all sorts of challenges, as well as largely identifying only as victims of trauma but not perpetrators of it. I’ve done the same, not always with accuracy. It can be confusing to untangle what caused my trauma from what can trigger that trauma to be expressed through my many (many) patterns. It has been imperative that I find opportunities to understand my traumas, create ways to witness and mourn the real pain my traumas have caused (me and others), while learning not to wallow in sadness or drown in grief about my traumas.

My traumas are extremely old and come from ancestry, family, community (including the global one), and karma. My patterns (that express those traumas) are set off every. damn. day. in minuscule and massive manifestations (see above patterns around productivity). Sometimes, these expressions lead me to inflict harm on others (talk to Frederic… oof). The experiences that trigger my patterns are not necessarily traumatic — though they may seem so from inside my emotional reactivity. As I’ve said before, the often harsh mirrors of relationship, the wise counsel of teachers & guides, and my continued willingness to acknowledge what is not pleasant or comfortable to see within myself have all been crucial for healing my patterns – and, thus, my traumas.

It’s taken me a while (half a century or so) to unpack just how traumatic my childhood was. I now understand my early experiences to be closer to true neglect than I had been willing to admit. My parents and theirs and theirs and… did not have many healing options and really were doing the best they could (even if sometimes their best was ridiculously deficient). I have very little information about the specific experiences of my ancestors, but I have had glimpses through numerous encounters. They had rough, ruff lives. And they passed on those traumas.

I am half Ethiopian/half Eritrean, Black, first generation immigrant, and a woman. I grew up within sometimes-actively racist white communities, disconnected from ancestral traditions, in a deeply-divisive jumbled-identity reality of inter-ethnic violence (that makes little sense to non-Horn aware folx). I did not seek a mainstream lifestyle nor its material benefits, have had four occurrences of so-called “late stage” cancer in a bonkers healthcare system, and until very recently experienced periodic financial instability in no-safety-net America. There is not enough space here to unpack all that trauma.

Also, I believe in karmic trauma. By karma, I am talking about reincarnation. This may not make sense to those of us who understand reality only through a materialst lens, but some of my deepest healing has occurred by examining patterns that are carried through the mystery of consciousness. This particular work has challenged my previous politics of trauma (which mostly functioned within specific racial/cultural designations). Consciousness beyond death is subtle stuff. I hope to share more about it in the future (and I mention a couple of resources below). 

I am finally capable of mostly recognizing my traumas without habitually being triggered. When I am triggered, I can  work with it (often with help). This is a testament to the immense amount of healing I have done. “Done” primarily through extensive trial and error of pretty much every modality in existence: talk therapy, trauma therapies, meditation, energy healing, psychic processes, plant medicine, ceremonies & rituals, body work, esoteric practices, and lots and lots of community support (most of this costs $$$ – that’s why it’s called healing justice). “Healing” meaning countless moments of: 1) identifying and accepting my trauma – feeling the pain without getting lost in the sadness, 2) recognizing my patterns as unconscious (maybe the most important word in this email!!) reactions to the world , and 3) consciously choosing a different response.

Three frameworks that support me in my ongoing work are viewing trauma as memories & messages that hold medicine (mmm!). In the system of tarot and numerology I study, all traumas are referred to as memories (ancestral and karmic) — memories surface in order to be healed (and humans come here to do just that). Similarly, in Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy (IFOT), trauma expressions are considered to be messages from the ancestors containing specific medicine for healing – medicines are continually revealed within and around us. Whenever I am reactive or have a strong manifestation in my life (repeated illness, recurring experience, persistent thought, intense feeling, vivid dream), I try and remember to meet it as a memory in need of healing or as a message from the ancestors delivering medicine.

Finally, it has been immensely transformative for me to recognize that everyone has trauma. That sounds obvious. It is. It can also feel overwhelming. There is so much suffering! Everywhere!! I often shut down to the trauma of others. Especially those I do not know or with whom I do not identify. But to actually move through this world with an understanding that every single human is acting out patterns set by long-dead ancestors, misguided guardians, an endlessly pain-full society, and the memories of past lives reverberating in shared consciousness — to know that each one of us holds our own memories, messages and medicine? This is also the pathway to my freedom. Everybody has sadness. Everybody longs for freedom.

This past weekend, I went out dancing and when the 1990 Black Box song Everybody, Everybody came on, my friend Rebecca asked each one of us in our little group what we thought was being sung in the chorus. One by one, without any doubt, we said the exact same thing: “Set me free.” “Set me free.” “Set me free.” That’s what we had been singing for over thirty years. “Set me freeeee-eeeee. Set me freeeee-eeee.”

Nope. 

The chorus is this:  Sad and free, Sad and free…Everybody, everybody. Sad and free.

May we all be free, everybody. 

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*The phrase "pathology of productivity comes from the amazing Chela Davison. Her newsletters are medicine.

**My dear friend Lindsay Fauntleroy's book, In Our Element: Using the Five Elements as Soul Medicine to Unleash Your Personal Power, was released this week and I am thrilled for her and for anyone who gets to partake of her magic. You can read what I wrote about what she and the book mean to me here. The IG Live I did with her tonight is here.

The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein offers a beautifully clear-eyed and compassionate exploration of trauma as an everyday aspect of life.

I am looking forward to the soon to be released workbook, Journal of Radical Permission, by adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor – the title alone relaxes my nervous patterns.

If you are interested in the idea of consciousness beyond death, I recommend exploring the work of Jim Tucker, the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. For decades he has conducted scientific studies of children (mostly South and Southeast Asian) with memories of their past lives. His books are academic and dry as dust, but ever so fascinating. He's also featured in this episode of the Netflix documentary Surviving Death.