The Truth As the Body Knows It by Lynda Archer

I know the news moves on quickly, but I am still back, as I expect some of you are also, with what occurred in the US Supreme Court a few days ago. I am sharing with you all an essay that I couldn't not write after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. Trigger warning for some of what I write. Feel free to share with whomever you wish. And thanks to those who have read earlier versions. You know who you are. 

Continuing from Dr. Blasey Ford’s Testimony, the Truths I Know 

I watched closely the Supreme Court events in the US and found myself becoming increasingly sad, angry and churned up with the process and the ultimate outcome. Spoiler alert. Yes, I clearly side with Dr. Ford and I will over the course of this essay endeavour to show you why. 

I am not myself a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. But at this historic moment I am reminded of all the brave women who I was honoured to treat in my capacity as a clinical psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor within the Dept. of Psychiatry at McMaster University. As a clinician I bore witness to the words of women who were 30, 40, 70 years of age when they spoke to me, often for the first time, of their childhood sexual abuse or their sexual assaults as adults. Assaults by uncles, fathers, brothers, friends. 

This is what I want to say. This is the truth as I know it. This is what I’d like to shout to certain individuals. Twenty, thirty, fifty years later. Those women in my office remembered. Those women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, wives, lawyers, doctors, artists, plumbers, Asian, African American, indigenous... women.

Those women remembered. They remembered very well.

In great detail. Every one of those women remembered ALL that was done to their bodies. They remembered the words he said to them. They remembered how he whispered and taunted, told her that she liked what he was doing. Told her how he’d kill her cat if she spoke out. She remembered that he told her no one would believe her. Those women remembered. They remembered his body odour, his cologne. They remembered where he put his fingers. They remembered the weight of his body on their own bodies. 

But what I also know to be true. All those women longed to forget. They craved that their memories of those moments would evaporate.

Those women, every one of them, all those women, wished and hoped that the memory would depart from their brains and their bodies. 

Those kind, intelligent, caring, compassionate and courageous women.

Each in their own way had worked so hard to forget. Drinking too much. Working long hours. Chastising themselves. Pretending it didn’t happen. Telling themselves it wasn’t that bad.

Denial. Repression. Dissociation. All the psychological defences were employed.
Employed for months. Years. Decades. Wonderful defenses they are. Except they only work in the short term. They don’t eradicate memory.

Those defences don’t work in the long term because those kind of memories have a life of their own. They are not to be obliterated.

They will not be erased. That’s not how traumatic memory works. The body remembers what the mind forgets. The body does not lie or deny. The body may create disguises and diversions. Depression. Anxiety. Panic disorder. Headaches. Stomach aches. Nausea. Suicide attempts. Nightmares. Sleep disturbances. PTSD. But still the memories of the abuse remain. 

The memories of the abuse remain alongside SHAME. Shame rushes in with haste the moment the abuser leaves the room. Shame fills every cell of one’s body. Shame freezes the voice. Shame tells you that you are bad, unworthy, no one will believe you.

Shame is always there after abuse. Shame is the great silencer. “Shame holds secrets like a banker’s vault. Only death does a better job.” (Tears in the Grass, Lynda Archer)

I honour all the women who have courageously spoken out. I honour all the women who might never speak out. And in the words of Maya Angelou: 

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Lynda A. Archer, Ph.D., MFA
Clinical Psychologist (Retired),
Assistant Clinical Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, McMaster University (Retired)
Author: Tears in the Grass, Dundurn Press
October 16, 2018

For those who find Christmas painful.

Some thoughts for those who cannot enjoy the season.  Those who are still grieving a lost one - my heart goes out to you as you bring out (or in) the tree and can't bring yourself to decorate it because the grief overwhelms you and instead of making you happy you are struck by how locked outside you are feeling, like the little match girl with your nose against the window.

Or how focusing on choosing gifts for others seems so superficial and shallow even though you always enjoyed it in the past.

Or, if you are living in poverty and you can't spend money you haven't got, on presents for the most vulnerable in your family - how it just makes your situation more acute, And the thing you can't ignore is that anger sitting there like a stubborn goat.

Or, you recall a past Christmas where there was trauma - a relative that assaulted you or someone you love. Or a relative that drank beyond their ability to know what they were doing and the rest of the family spend the day walking on broken glass trying to avoid the elephant. 

Or, an unexpected break up after all the preparations and anticipation you put into the day.

Or because you do not identify as Christian and were excluded from these holidays. The memory of being left out made you feel like you didn't belong.

Whoever you are, wherever you live, I wish you good books, perhaps lots of sleep, or whatever it is you need most - a supportive and empathic family.

Crisis centres across Canada: http://www.partnersformh.ca/resources/find-help/crisis-centres-across-canada/

The Source of Addiction

"Through the generosity and courage of their sharing, I saw that the sources of addiction do not originate in the substances people use but in the trauma they endured. In fact, the self-medications my patients employed were an understandable response to a set of unnatural circumstances, namely the historical trauma inflicted on First Nations throughout Canadian history, and up to the present. " Gabor Mate, First Nations Health Authority.

It's time for us to realize how we might be saved by our First Nations teachings.  They are teaching us that abusive power is toxic, and as we see our leadership becoming more ineffective in dealing with the toxicity of oil pipelines and tankers, seemingly unable to choose a clean future, we will be imprisoned in the residential school of economic tyrants.