The Treacherous Path to Strong

In recent weeks, I find myself spending hours of each day in contemplation. Too many of those hours between three and five AM every morning. Ghosts from the past have awoken to cast their shadows over my present and stalk my dreams.

When I logged back onto this blog a week or so ago I found that my last post had been two years prior, almost to the day, and the topic had been the domestic violence in my past, and how I found my way to freedom through an offer of help. I suppose this is just that same contemplative time of year coming back around for a visit.

Nearly three months ago, I returned to the study of a Martial Art, but a new one: Aikido. My new school and style is wildly different from my old style in every way I can think to compare: philosophy, technique, energy, leadership. It is really good to once again be in a learning place. At the same time, not everything I am learning is exactly what I had envisioned when I stepped back out onto the mat.

That first month, focusing solely on newness of the physical techniques, I was aware of some nervousness. I chalked this up to wanting to avoid a misstep in my new school. My old school was not always kind to people who came in with previous martial arts experience, and I felt a bit as though I was waiting for a shoe to drop. It hasn’t, and I have no reason to think that it will. Everyone has been startlingly kind and supportive.

In truth, I’m realizing that this had nothing to do with the actual difficulties I have been experiencing. The Sensei saw through to what was really going on well before I ever did. This knowledge was illuminated by a comment he made after observing my being taken to the mat by another student – something to the effect that I was just going to need time and lots of positive experiences on the mat.  I was completely taken aback. What did he mean? What could he see that I didn’t? What could even *be* there to be seen? After all, that trauma was well behind me, wasn’t it? It has been seventeen years since I walked out that door and closed it behind me. How could he possibly see my past trauma? I felt terribly, utterly exposed.

I suppose that is the way of it when the Universe invites us to grow.

And this one is not an easy invitation to accept. On the mat, I find myself freezing when someone initiates contact (which happens a lot because … it’s a martial art) or, worse, responding with way more energy than officially required when the intensity ramps up a bit. Off the mat, I’m struggling with anxiety and with far too much thinking about the past. I am not typically a person who struggles with this, but my current state is akin to what I experienced immediately after leaving my ex-husband: glancing over my shoulder everywhere I went, terribly afraid.

I started Aikido because I thought it would be fun and enriching. I didn’t expect to be confronting my past again. I did not expect to be called upon to find this lost strength I once called upon to free and ultimately find myself. Or maybe it wasn’t exactly lost. Set aside, perhaps? For safekeeping until such time as I was once again ready to embody it? I think I liked it better where it was.

Because if there is one thing my life experience has taught me, it is that being too strong as a female in our society can be life-threatening. I saw it in my first marriage. I saw it in my old dojo when, a scant week before my 2nd Dan test, a senior black belt took it upon himself to knock me down. HARD. And it is only in reflection this past week that I realize the timing was no coincidence; that this occurred just as I worked to reclaim my strength, my power after years of abuse. I had overstepped my bounds as a woman in the dojo by reaching so far. And for the first time in fifteen years, I’m angry.

But it’s not enough to be angry. The challenge at hand is whether I can find my way along this treacherous path toward “strong” and whether I can keep myself safe at the same time. I am not worried about DP – he will always celebrate my strength and my victories right alongside me. But everywhere I look there are others out there who are only too happy to use violence and intimidation against women, against minorities, against anyone who holds a different world view and stands tall doing it.

Is it safe to once again invoke my strength? No.
The question is whether I should do it anyway.

Settling in to the Dark

Happy Solstice.

It’s a festival of light.
But it doesn’t always feel like it.

As I look out the windows into the thin and colorless light of this day, I can feel the heaviness of the dark of the year settle upon my shoulders like an enveloping cloak. My thoughts turn as dark as this night promises to be and I feel myself drawing inward.

There are burdens that I have carried with me for years, some almost unnoticed as the decades slip by. They are so completely a part of me that I don’t know how to set them down, even as I recognize that the journey forward would be easier without their added weight.

I suppose that’s the question every survivor faces: survivors of violence, of illness, or just the toll of decades of accumulated grief and loss. In the end, we’re all survivors trying to face the next day with strength and courage. How can we turn toward the light and all that it promises when the darkness is so full and present around us?

That is the work of the Winter Solstice.