weaving as healing

trauma healing, and healing overall, is a little less like a one stop cure, and a little more like weaving.

trauma is at its essence a disconnection. it is what happens when we experience something too overwhelming for us to hold alone, and there is no one else there to hold it with us.

when it goes on for a long time, we call this relational trauma.

when it goes on even longer and is woven into family lines and is co-opted by power in service of domination and hegemony, it becomes cultural. Violent. like the current genocides in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Artsakh, or here in the US with Covid-19. Or like ongoing police violence and racism against Black folks, indigenous folks, brown folks, transphobia and queerphobia against trans and gender non conforming folk and queer people, and the discarding of disabled folks.

trauma culturally engineered into violence by power becomes oppression and white supremacy, so that we are disconnected, disappeared, and ripped from our entire people.

Susan Raffo, in her book Liberated to the Bone, says that for healing to occur, first we must stop the violence. She insists, and I agree, that this is literal. Stopping police violence. Land fucking back. Stopping the genocides (Palestine, Sudan, Kashmir, Congo, Tigray, Covid-19). And stopping the violence inside too, the maelstrom created when we live under the conditions of violence. After we have stopped the violence, then we come into the present time. Noticing ourselves. Noticing, deeply noticing, our lives. And then, we create the conditions for deep healing.

this essay is about deep healing.

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for deep healing, after the violence has been stopped, the thread must be woven back into the pattern. we have to be reconnected.

this is true individually and it is true relationally and it is true culturally.

in weaving, in order to make a pattern, the thread doesn’t just pass through the loom once.

the thread is woven in, and in case of elaborate patterns, it might be woven in one small spot, in one small space, in one line.

and then again, maybe it is picked up in the next line, maybe in a slightly different spot, held tight by the other threads around it.

and on it goes, the singular thread tucked in with the other threads tight around it, not holding alone, until it creates a pattern.

deep healing and reconnection is not a one time event. not one thread in one moment and boom, you’re done - pattern is finished.

somatically, as I talk about this, I think about glimmers. in somatic experiencing in particular, “glimmers” is the term they use to describe spaces in your body that hold hope, connection, home. even if they are very small. often glimmers are tied to memories, slight moments where even if for 2 seconds, you felt a sense of connection: to earth, to other than human kin, to your loved ones - and then we notice how that connection feels in your body and where.

I am a chronic word changer in terms of popular somatic words (don’t even get me started about what I use instead of the carceral term “regulation”) but I will leave the term glimmer. not because of any other reason than this is actually how it feels in my body. like one small thread of my body is shot through with light, the light catches it, and i feel it woven back in.

one strand of golden thread in one particular line, holding a remembrance of what it feels like to be connected.

some of my glimmers are:

the eyes of a friend who looked at me with warmth and concern and without trying to fix when i told her i had been suicidal for the past 2 years - when I think of this moment, I feel this in my body like a pool of warmth in my tummy and around my heart.
the outstretched hand of my training practitioner in my Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training, touching my own hand - when I think of this moment, the entire front of my torso releases and I take a deep breath. “I am not alone.”

each of these moments on their own are truthfully not enough to create a sense of healing in me, beautiful as they are.

but as I hold each of them, and collect more, it expands. slowly, I am woven back in. my body relaxes, unclenches. i can feel warm threads of light in my stomach, my chest.

i have lost sight of these glimmers before. been unable to feel them at all in my body. another thing I like to say is that healing is a place more so than a destination (with thanks to Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s wording of “freedom is a place”). life is long and the violence of white supremacy is intense: it is very likely i/we will lose the glimmers, the threads, again.

but thank fuck, a thread, when weaving, is never just woven in once or alone. it is woven in, tucked with other threads tight around it.

again. and again.

and again.

and again.

the moments in my life where i have lost glimmers, how i have found those golden threads again is in connection. a window, a thread of a moment with my cat laying on my chest. or the wind blows in answer to a desperate exclamation. or seeing the care and full body presence in the eyes of someone who loves me beyond all reason.

healing is never just one thread woven alone. it is a golden thread, tucked in tight in a line with all the threads around it. and again in the next line, perhaps in a different place but pulled in tight again with each thread.

over, and over.

until over time, back and forth, back and forth, threads woven in, healing becomes a pattern.

the violence is ongoing in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Tigray, Artsakh, and here in the United States. as the first part of healing is to stop the violence, it is our imperative to dedicate ourselves to a little action each day of stopping the violence. one way you can do that right now is to support this family in Gaza. this is a verified paypal link for a family my friend has been raising money for for months. please support if you are able.

somatic snacks is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.