Rescue Missions
Today I began the work to integrate the memory from age 5 that connects to the belief that I'm worthless, even dangerous to people. This is a core false belief I have about myself due to the developmental trauma I experienced.
We've been watching The Walking Dead during the pandemic. CK is always looking for series to comfort watch, I usually watch them vicariously as I do other things. She'd started that with TWD, but I got more and more pulled into the characters. I mentioned this to my therapist today who was surprised, I agreed that I'm generally not a horror genre person, but I find the show really compelling. I'm very interested in how the worst monsters are always the humans.
I brought it up because a thought about these trauma therapy sessions stuck me a few days ago. This work I'm doing is like a rescue mission in a show or movie. It's going to be really hard, scary, and I'm going to encounter the monstrous behavior of the people who hurt me. It's worth it though, because I'm rescuing my child self who is stuck at age 5, terrified and unable to move forward.
Even when I uncover new memories that are painful to bring out into the light, I'm doing the work of freeing my child self from terror. Along the way I might get to discover the ways in which I was learning to be resilient. My memory of age 4 revealed how I was already strong, resourceful, and a badass.
The memory from age 5 feels much less monstrous than the one from age 4. When my therapist read it back to me I felt a sense of near relief. While this memory is terrible, because it is a time when I was feeling like I wasn't worth keeping safe. That aside, it doesn't feel like it has anything lurking within it to bear witness to.
Revisiting myself at age 5, feeling terribly unsafe and terrified, it helped me feel even more resolve to do this work. I'm not leaving me stuck there.
An Open Letter to Natural Grocers
August 17, 2020
Natural Grocers Customer Service
I suggest that all of your folks dealing with mitigating the spread of the virus inside your stores, for the sake of your employees as well as customers, read Zeynep Tufekci’s article in the Atlantic about COVID and airborne transmission. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/
This might be behind a paywall to you, in which case Tufekci has a whole thread of tweets related to their article, you can see them starting here: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1288829829912113154?s=20
I started you with this because reading this work made me feel better about the concerns I have about being inside a store, much less within 15 feet, with people who are not properly wearing face masks.
I’m also going to tell you that I am a person who is high risk for COVID. Moreover, my wife is VERY high risk. This is not an exaggeration, this is something I’ve had our physician confirm for me. I take the need for the personal responsibility of wearing a mask very seriously. We aren’t even having visits with family members without everyone being outside and with masks on.
Before you tell me about your “special hours” set aside for people like me, let me tell you that those hours do NOT work for me. The assumption that early mornings are an option for everyone in this category is one that’s common, and really unfair. I can’t do those hours, don’t ask me to.
Instead, I am writing to you to ask that you direct staff at stores to enforce your own policies about wearing face coverings correctly inside stores. Furthermore, in Oregon, where this incident took place, it is a state mandate that face coverings be worn both inside and outside, if near other people.
Wearing a mask isn’t fun. I have so much empathy for folks who are wearing them all day long for work. It slows you down, fogs up your glasses (I wear them), and you have to work a little harder to breath. I have asthma and wearing a mask leaves me feeling like I’m having a bad day with my lungs, but I still wear one because it’s safer for me, for the staff of the places I need to go to, and for anyone else I might interact with.
I never say I feel suffocated wearing a mask. I was suffocated as a small child during an incident of sexual abuse, it is inappropriate hyperbole for people to say they’re feeling suffocated. This is hard information for your to receive, but I’m being up front with it because I firmly believe if I can manage to wear a mask, with an actual history of being suffocated and having asthma, then everyone can wear a mask.
The Natural Grocers marketing campaign assures me you are the cleanest and safest stores, however, I was recently left feeling unsafe in many ways at your store in Beaverton, Oregon. I was shopping there on the afternoon of August 13, 2020.
I completed my transaction with Christine M. at 3:41:35PM
I provide the redacted details so you can determine the names of staff I interacted with prior to my checking out with Christine M.
Christine M. was lovely, sympathetic, and understanding of my upset and agitation that was caused by the unsafe environment created in your store. In fact, she was the only one of your employees who seemed concerned about my well-being.
When I entered the store I was greeted by an employee in a brown apron and white shirt, to me they presented as male with short, light brown hair. Possibly 5’7”or taller.
I assume this employee is there to be sure not too many people are inside the store AND that people entering the store are PROPERLY wearing a face covering.
However, I’m not sure this is the case because I watched someone who presents as a woman walk into the store with her nose hanging out over her mask. I was standing waiting for my turn to checkout and pay for my groceries as I watched this person walk into the store, past the employee at the entrance, with her face only partially covered.
I’ve attached an easy graphic that shows how a mask should be worn. The nose hanging over the top of the mask defeats the whole purpose.
I try not to be the mask police, however, this woman grabbed something and then came to stand in the line to check out. She stood without a properly fitting mask, with her nose hanging out.
I asked her to fix it. I asked more loudly. She pointedly turned her back on me and stepped closer to another person. I walked within 7 feet of her, described what she was wearing and said that she really needed to put the mask over her nose.
She turned around and told me, “Mind your business, Mr. Rude Lady.”
I got upset and noted she still wasn’t masked up and she’d now said something rather transphobic. I have a family member who is trans and I am queer, so perhaps I’m a little more sensitive to being willfully misgendered and called names by someone who was endangering the people around her.
I went to the staff person handing out goodie bags and asked that someone on staff please come deal with the woman not wearing a mask. This employee shrugs apologetically at me, but apparently doesn’t do anything at all. I get that they are busy with the goodie bags and ice cream bars, but they really seemed to not respond.
I went back to my cart in the line.
Nothing seemed to happen. I continued to loudly comment on the selfishness of someone not wearing a mask correctly and the meanness of misgendering me intentionally.
The woman not wearing a mask now sticks her fingers in her ears, turns her back, and STILL DOES NOT PUT HER MASK OVER HER NOSE.
Instead what now happens is another white woman in the store berated me for “You’re talking too much! You’re going to cause droplets to go out your mask into the store. YOU’RE THE PROBLEM!”
Then a white woman in front of me turns around, shrugs and says to me, “You know you can’t control everyone! This is why WE wear OUR masks correctly. Just ignore her. Let it go!”
I’ve now been chastised twice by other customers for not being a good girl, for making waves, for raising my voice, and for harshing out the whole day. This is a dangerous game of niceness and “No bad vibes!” that’s so common among white women (I’m one of them, by the bye), particularly in the yoga industry, which I work in. I’m a yoga therapist who specializes in interventions for living with chronic pain, aging into vitality and end-of-life care.
At this point I spot the employee who was watching the front entrance. I wave to get his attention, I point at the woman in the line not wear the mask. As he comes over, finally she pulls up her mask as he does, I ask him to please enforce the mask policy of the store and the State!
He tells me, “She looks fine!”, and checks with her. He then proceeds to stand there.
I’d thought at the time it was to make sure she kept her mask on. Then I took a step forward to thank him and he puts a hand up and cautions me to “back off”.
So I get the hand and told to settle down. My guess is because the woman who WOULD NOT PUT HER MASK OVER HER NOSE told him I was threatening.
This is how white women are dangerous.
She was quiet, ignoring me, turning her back on me, putting her fingers in her ears. She was the poor attacked one.
I, the one who was loud, who was upset, who was demanding that the policy of the store be enforced for everyone’s safety, I was treated like the dangerous one. I was treated like I was the problem.
As I left the store I saw the woman at another checkout line. She had pulled her mask off her nose as she completed the transaction.
However, as terrifying as it is for me to speak up, I will NOT be silent, complicit in the face of a public health crisis. I will not just smile and put on my own mask, grinning and bearing it when selfish people refuse to follow the rules and GET AWAY WITH IT.
So I want to know a whole lot of things, because as it stands I’m researching all the items I buy from your store to decide where else to spend my money.
- If your store has a policy of wearing a face covering correctly at all times, why are people coming into the store without one in place? Why are they allowed to complete a transaction with a cashier without a mask properly in place? Doubly so if the state your store is in also has this policy.
- Why did it take two distinct requests for employees to attend to a SAFETY issue? A customer standing in the checkout line without a mask over the nose is a danger to everyone. This is where I reference you back to the article I started with, did you read it? Why was this woman not treated like a safety issue, why was she allowed to continue her transaction without her mask over her nose. Once I was out of the group line, out of sight of the woman, she clearly pulled her mask down again and was allowed to do so. Seriously, why?
- Why didn’t the second employee follow up with me to be sure I was alright? He checked in on the woman who had not being wearing her mask. I was clearly upset, but that employee didn’t bother to be sure I was OK. In fact, the goodie bag employee who also watched this go down, and was the first person I asked for help from, also didn’t check in to see if I was OK.
I was in a state of distress because I felt gaslit by your employees (except Christine M., who got it) and the white women in the store who chastised me for being loud and not “letting it go”. As a person who experienced developmental trauma, my Mother had a personality disorder and my entire family of origin were abusive, sexist, and racist, the whole event was triggering to the Complex PTSD I manage.
Once I got into my car I felt the need to lock all the doors for fear of retaliatory behaviors; even though I didn’t think this would really happen, this is how much my anxiety was triggered by the interactions inside your store. Seeing the employee who held up the cautioning hand to me come out of the store again while I regained my composure to go home caused me to feel fearful that I was going to face reprisal. - What steps are you taking to improve air circulation and HEPA filtration system to reduce the ability of aerosolized virus to accumulate inside of your stores?
Signed; waiting for answers and looking for a new store,
Sherri Koehler
When We Speak Up
⚠️Content Warning: Child Abuse⚠️
I was afraid of my Mother. Trying to set boundaries or advocate for myself brought on physical violence. She'd get me alone and use a belt, wooden spoon, or hair brush on me until it hurt to pull clothing on over my body.
The phrase, "Don't rock the boat!", was used during the time we briefly lived with my Mother's sister when we were homeless. I was four at the time
I tried to stand up for myself over dinner one night. The next day she waited to get me alone.
That phrase became a way of shutting me down.
I was so shut down in my family. There's a way that white women shut down voices of dissent that feels so like the way my family silenced me.
Asking for Money
A task I am working at, so slowly, is getting a working budget together and keeping on top of the household checking account. This involves telling CK how much money to move over.
This doesn't sound at all like a big deal when I write it down. My brain thinks this is a very big deal. For the longest time I really couldn't ask, which put a lot of burden on CK to constantly have to figure out how much would cover things, on top of working a very mentally taxing job.
Today I planned to go to Costco to pick up some things, like paper products, we were starting to run low on after I'd gone in March. We also planned to invest in a Foodsaver, which they had on with a rebate deal. It was going to be an expensive trip, we planned for it.
Then I added up forthcoming bills, the money for the trip today, etc. I then texted CK the number I hoped would take us through the rest of the month.
All the while I kept feeling dread. There's all this somatic static when I'm doing these tasks. There's this fear that I'll be humiliated for needing money, for asking for too much, for being greedy.
It wasn't as hard this time after integrating the memories around being homeless at age 4 and shamed for it by my family. This is the subbasement, as it were, of shame around money for me. There have been incidents over the years that connect back to this wound, especially during my first marriage, but now that it's integrated I'm hoping all of those will loose their teeth.
It is getting easier each time I do this. CK responds with a quick, "ok", and I fret that it means she's irritated, but then she'll respond a few minutes later with a screenshot of the money moved. Later, when she's done working, she'll thank me for helping her stay on top of it.
I remind myself each time I do this again that we've had several iterations of the above routine. I ask, she responds that she got the ask, she does the transfer, and thanks me.
Eventually my Trauma Brain will trust that this is really how it works and will spare me the feeling of dread. Not quite yet though.
Breakfast
I most often wake up a little nauseous. My pain level is higher on the morning and I'm often congested from allergies. This makes breakfast pretty undesirable.
By the time by body decides food is acceptable I usually needed to be commuting. I'm not really a morning person and have always found the, "just wake up earlier!", camp of people to be infuriating. My time going to retreats has taught me this doesn't actually help. I'm just nauseous for a longer time.
When I was commuting I'd have a protein bar. Pandemic days have found me struggling with food being unappetizing. Clif bars especially so.
Rather than find something new, I realized I was just fasting. I'd go 14-16 gifts without eating. I'd have tea with a lot of soy milk, butt that's it.
Given my somewhat disordered eating throughout my life, I've fallen back into restricting. My blood tests were playing into it too.
I'd just see all the things needing attention and start, ignoring my body because I'm very good at it.
When you grow up feeling like you're worthless, it's easy to ignore your own needs, your body's needs. When you're consistently praised for the shape of your body, that ignoring becomes a superpower.
Short Term Disability
Five and a half years ago my Mother decided to blow up our life.
I'd stopped responding to abuse in the ways she'd trained me to. CK had seen through the mirage, catching my Mother being emotionally & verbally abusive to me.
I think it was the moment, as movers were trying to remove her things from our home, when we were informed her bed frame had bedbugs, that something just snapped. I was crying. CK was laughing.
The last straw fell in that moment and all my careful juggling and managing of my mental health over the years just stopped working.
In November 2014 I took what I thought was a month of Family Medical Leave. We were moving my Mother out of the house and I wanted to be free of the considerable distraction of my job, a job the often demanded 50-60 hours a work. Work often at night, weekends, on holidays, etc.
In December I was out on short-term disability. In February 2015 I wanted to extend it 6 months. Three members of my healthcare team, including my doctor, my PMHNP, and my trauma therapist, all were urging this. All, my doctor emphatically so, told me I needed to leave not just my toxic job, but my whole tech career.
At the time a strong breeze would cause me to dissolve into weeping. I'd lay on the sofa with our dog, blanket pulled over us both, crying. I attempted to go to a job interview to get out of my job and not go back, but I nearly threw up in the parking lot. This attempt at an interview, plus the fourth member of my healthcare team involved, sank my request for an extension of benefits.
The CBT therapist I'd been seeing for several years agreed that I should just leave tech and teach yoga, become a yoga therapist. It would be so much better for me. Despite this, when she got the paperwork to extend my short-term disability, she refused to confirm that my PTSD was trigged to the point of weeping on the sofa with the dog for hours at a time.
In our last session she said to me, "If I give you this diagnosis it will enable you to not try. Besides, your wife has a good job, you'll be fine without continued disability payments."
I still cannot believe I paid her for that session. I walked out of it.
I was reflecting on this on Twitter this week, in a thread about things that folks with disabilities run into. It was so destabilizing to my health, to CK's well-being. It put so much stress on her to take care of it all.
I was able to get unemployment insurance, I had to jump through several hoops to get it. I had to convince them, having a panic attack in front of my case manager probably didn't hurt, that I wasn't cleared to do a job search for tech jobs. I was ONLY cleared to search for yoga instruction.
I got classified as a "dislocated" worker. I was able to get full benefits for the maximum length of time. I was also put into a program that helped me create my business plan for transitioning into yoga therapy.
One of the things that's been filled with grief for me, even as there is so much success to celebrate, is how I've spent nearly the past 6 years rebuilding my life after a mental health breakdown. I built a whole new career and was getting established.
Now COVID. Now protests continuing. Russia still meddling in our elections.
There's so much grief and anger.
Genetics and Destiny
I was so relived after my doctor's appointment I had potato chips.
"Genetics isn't always destiny.", she said to me.
While I've got significant family history of cardiovascular disease, I have done a really good job keeping the risks down.
My doctor was looking at seven markers, cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, inflammation, and others I'm not recalling clearly. I have over risk factor, high LDL cholesterol.
In that risk, the shape of my LDL particles is the least likely to accumulate. Big, fluffy LDL is good, if you've got it.
I've done everything I can do with dietary changes. I'm dealing with my lousy genetics on both sides. Entering into post-menopause life flipped me over after keeping it low through diet for over 12 years.
I could just say I don't want to do anything else at this time. My doctor backs this up because the good numbers in my tests after very good.
However, I feel like it's a moral obligation to not ignore it. So I'm going to be getting a test at OHSU that will measure any build up in my carotid artery. If that's really low, I'm further reassured that I'm controlling risk factors well.
If it's high, we'll discuss.
I'm also going to try taking a supplement made from red rice yeast that contains naturally occurring statins. It might not cause the usual side effects associated with this class of drugs, muscle pain and brain fog. If I get side effects, I don't take it any more.
We test again in 6 months.
She's delighted I'm boxing on our Switch. Doing cardio exercise daily is "extra credit". Not required, but might help my LDL. Definitely will help the rage I've been dealing with.
We even talked through what "cardio" looks like for someone who's asthma is triggered by usual cardio.
Talked about Intuitive Eating, I'm to stick with it. She's in agreement that I'm lucky to not have a full blown eating disorder. I'm to be work at not skipping meals even though food isn't always appealing.
I'm so grateful.
Integrating: Age 4
When I was 4 my Mother and I were briefly homeless. We went to live with my Aunt and her two children, both of whom were older than I was.
It was hell and deeply traumatized me.
My childhood was spent bereft of adults who were looking out for my best interests. No one in my family took my side. I was the only child of the family scapegoat.
Today, after months of work to take the charge out of the memory I had, plus new horrifying memories of that experience the process revealed, I finished the process of integrating, "installing" the memory, per the language of SAFE.
My Mother was regularly physically violent with me as a very young child. Her inability to soothe herself resulted in terrifying outbursts.
She knew though, all along, she knew what she did to me was wrong. She waited to get me alone to unleash her anger upon me. She continued emotionally abusing me until the end of her life, but that too she would hide. She had a personality disorder, she herself experienced a terrible childhood, and she knew how she treated me was wrong.
I was, am, a remarkable human. I figured out my own ways of grounding myself, releasing my own rage out of sight of my family, learning ways to soothe myself, and resolutely turning away from the examples I was shown. I rejected narrow-mindedness, homophobia, and the casual racism that's so common in the rural edges of Oregon, just and hour outside of Portland.
I'll put an entry in a special art journal I have for this work. Each time I finish with a memory I've made a page. This is the third one, the hardest one so far because with each year we move forward, the more aware I was and making memories.
Today I had another float after my session, that's been really helping these past few sessions. I picked up takeout pizza and a bottle of wine for dinner. It was wonderful.
Some Days Hurt
I woke up in more pain than usual. My left hip aching at the psoas so much that standing was uncomfortable.
I had a moment where an interaction with CK over something minor that totally overwhelmed me with feeling foolish for getting mad at our oven for beeping. Then broken because there wasn't a "good reason" for how upset I felt.
I'd wanted to get up and go for a walk today. Instead I had a meltdown.
It wasn't a terrible one. CK jumped in to tell me to play my games, including boxing this evening. She reminded me that sometimes my brain is so wrong. We even played some tabletop games..
Good News, Anxiety
I heard back from my doctor this morning in response to my letter. I have her permission to continue to explore Intuitive Eating and stop reading, and obsessing about, the saturated fat numbers on all food I consume.
I realized after reading her response that I'd be holding my breath with anxiety this whole time. I was giddy with relief as I started to teach, so I shared that and then did a meditation on the sensations of gratitude and relief in the body.
I've spent much of the day feeling anxious. Being seen, valued, and having my needs met in this way feels good, but also leaves me feeling unsettled. As though my brain can't distinguish between happy excitement and certain dread.
Tomorrow I'll practice really celebrating that I have more good happening with my health even if I've lousy genetics. I'm really grateful for our doctor.