Taking the Headlong Plunge into Trauma Talkin’ (Part I)

“Have you ever heard of THERAPY!”

This comment was written on social media in response to a friend’s blog-writing/sharing about the four-year-anniversary of the stillbirth of their full term son. It was unclear whether this was a question, or a statement, by the comment, or what their intention was. Right before this ending statement, the comment-maker acknowledged that the death of a child is hard/sad but that it had “been awhile” and then ended with that.

Later, she and her husband did a podcast about grief, trauma and recovery – and speaking about traumas – and referenced this situation. I recall her saying that it came across, whether intentionally or not, as though “the goal of therapy would be to make someone stop talking about their trauma(s) rather than to facilitate their opening up.” (this is my paraphrased recollection of this part; here is a link to the actual podcast )

Is this “too funny?”

Or, is this “too sad?”

And, in my mind, there is an additional question of, “What do we do with things that are sadly funny?” (at least parts…or…if one can re-frame into dark humor?)

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Many people regularly read non-self-published self-help materials, true-life autobiographical works, attend films and the whatnot (that are sanctioned readings/films, etc by some industry of experts whose monetary and other forms of stamps-of-approvals message us that, “this story is worth your read”) and we are just fine (and curious) about people’s life stories. Because they have the good fortune of getting their book (for example, The Glass Castle) as a bestseller/movie, I think there is a false premise that the author has been given some platform by the world from which they can tell their story (and any needful sanitizing of their story has passed through the hands of experts), while these stories/underlying patterns themes are experienced by so many ordinary people on a daily basis.

In fact, the reason people want to read on is…perhaps…they are drawn in by the telling to help process their own recollections of traumas. Even if with different details.

Right?

I say sanitized because, people’s (especially early) life stories can be really, really messy. Even in churches, sadly, where one would hope to find the embrace of the most loving acceptance and spiritual family, we humans fall short of knowing how to listen and help heal. There is a discomfort, I believe, when there is no practical advice to be given – only to bear witness to someone’s sufferings with the ability to listen and sit with it.

I think of other talks which I have found good such as S4E7: Self-Compassion: Kristin Neff and S3E14: The Soul of Shame: Curt Thompson.

Our personal life stories, individually (and collectively) can be filled with violences, sexual abuses, alcoholism, drug addition, illicit sex, profanity, losses and griefs of all sorts…and all kinds of dysfunction and drama.

Many of the Old Testament stories are just fascinating. These are stories told that we all struggle, at times, for some meaningful and encouraging take-away or even an eternal, timeless truth.

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Um…let’s see…just last night I was chatting with a friend about the story of Jacob, Leah and Rachel.

I’m going to rattle it off in dark summary off the top of my head. Anyone interested in the actual references or any error in my recollection of the account, can Google it!

Women (and men, too) should pick a life-theme that describes them.

Who are you, from the Bible?

I might say, among other biblical figures, “I am Leah.”

I seem to have been no-one’s first choice, unloved (but a somewhat rock-of-a-woman, maybe…arguably, of course...having been twice divorced now…well….don’t want to digress….)

So in the Holy Bible we have in one family snippet a man encountering two sisters, one very beautiful and wanting her, but not desiring the other. This man works in servitude years for the woman’s father to get to marry her, and then, on his wedding night the father sends (into his “tent” in the “dark”) the uglier, weak-sighted sister, Leah, to consummate the marriage!

OK, so far…we have women as property and deception.

Got it.

Next, the father says, “work longer and I’ve give you Rachel, too.”

Got it.

Um…now we have more servitude, more women-as-property and (wrongful) patriarchal domination…and…add in…you guessed it….polygamy.

Then, we begin the dysfunction of sister rivalry. “My womb will out-compete your womb!”

Oh, and add in the layer of statements that the Divine is opening and closing their wombs. I’m not sure what this means, but I don’t think it means what some (or the casual reader) might think it means.

So. It gets better. Together, each of these sisters (both having relations with Jacob) and produce the sons that eventually form the twelve tribes of Israel. Leah conceives and produces six of the twelve patriarchal heads and Rachel, only two. Both Leah and Rachel also gave their maidservants to Jacob to each produce another two, equally, totally four born from maidservants.

Without digressing into this ancient practice…

Jesus descends from Leah through the tribe of Judah, and, you got it…Rachel, sadly, dies in childbirth with the youngest, Benjamin.

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I believe Scripture is given to us as God’s divinely inspired words. What precisely that means, is another topic. There are many views on this and I will simply say, I love Jesus and I love the sacred, ancient texts. Understanding their messages, genre, authorships, process of canonization and more is a whole other topic I am not qualified to fully give opinion on! I did hear one talk I found interesting for thought, while back.

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So. This is a long, hard intro to…“Trauma Talkin’!”

I grew up with a lot of trauma. I think my trauma is in a category harder to describe, harder to explain, simply.

I am an artist – highly creative – and I have always done well with writing, too.

At my age and point in life, I’m feeling a need and desire to tell even more of my story. I think I have an amazing story to tell. But how to do that, can be tricky.

I have encountered many over the years who seem terribly uncomfortable with my attempts at articulating my life story and in particular, details of my bizarre childhood and death of my father at age sixteen and its lifelong impact on me, in certain ways.

Like the podcast Jessica and TJ did together addressing the social media comment someone made, “Have you ever heard of THERAPY!” I resonate so much with that episode!

Because. These days…just like in the music industry where now, with internet and other means, anyone can be a musician, produce albums/CD’s, self-publish books, write blogs and do their own podcasts it can be hard to know where and how to channel our stories.

I have always liked to be in control of my own most personal artwork expressions. Things I do first for myself, and secondarily for others.

Non-commissioned works and of course, non-commissioned, non-controlled-by-anyone’s-voice but my own, personal writings.

Ha.

And I LOVE IT.

But, then, there’s the flipside, too. Many flipsides, ha ha…of non-sanctioned expressions.

But the worst (at least in my mind) is the squirming discomfort one perceives at times on social media or otherwise when you openly do various forms of the “Trauma Talkin'” stuff! One can perceive someone thinking (judging), what is WRONG with her? Why can’t she stop talking about this stuff? And, ha ha…as Jessica and TJ so amazingly and gracefully discussed and dissected in their podcast, “Have you heard about THERAPY!”

This was an amazing talk, well worth the listen.

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That’s a whole other thing – talking about trauma with comedy. I mean, who does that?! They have another episode “Four Years Without Luca” where at minute 26:50 of the show, they do this thing. They actually, for a moment, talk about death and comedy in the same breath, in a story told and how they tell it. If you can’t understand how this is possible, listen. She says at one point, when there is loss/grief, it does not mean that comedy no longer exists. She does a much better job articulating this idea.

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Oh dear. This ability God gave me to process my life difficulties and pain with both laughter and tears has been, in my opinion, one of the things that most positively affected my outcome in life (along with my “village” of teacher, neighbors, family, friends…)

I really love parody. The funniest things come from taking something from one context and re-framing it into another. Think, Weird Al, Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Show.

Over the years I seem drawn to and greatly influenced, creatively, through dark-film-comedies such as every Wes Anderson movie, ha ha (start with The Royal Tenenbaums) and more….to…Little Miss Sunshine.

Even the book of Proverbs says “laughter is the best medicine!” (paraphrase of Proverbs 17:22 “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”)

When we laugh there is a chemical rush of endorphins that can work mind-bodily-miracles!

And then, there’s the hidden somewhat morbid delightful amusement of skillfully forcing readers/listeners/movie-watches (I speak in general terms) into the terrible bind of whether to laugh at something they clearly know is very painful, difficult, frustrating, tabboo or essentially…no laughing matter.

This is the art of dark humor – the tragic comedy.

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I have been wanting to come out or dive in, somehow, on my blog here, about some of my life stories and have not been sure how to transition there! Today, through a conversation with a friend, I decided, today is the day!

I’m just going to take the metaphorical writing plunge!

I hope there are others out there who might benefit in some small or greater way from my writings. For me, and others who tell their story, having a witness to the trauma even years later, and being able to take something really difficult and turn it into some type of a gem, is more valuable than any pill or therapy. For me, I am grateful God has enabled me, for the most part, to do self-directed art therapy for my continued lifelong process of healing and growth. It comes easy to me.

Writing poetry, short stories and now, beginning to do little illustrated audio-visual slideshows….I just love it. I am also grateful to those who listen with interest and with care. So many of these treasured friends and acquaintances in my circles over the years.

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I developed a little cartoon character of myself (first with one story back in 2006) but later returned to this same figure around 2015…it is “little Eileen Slifer” on a bench with her “show-n-tell-mom-bag” from the 60’s-70’s.

She has braids, is eternally-temporally about nine or ten or twelve years old even when depicted in adult life stories I plan to tell, just for the artistic idea and theme continuity, not that I am immature….eternally-temporally wearing a July 4th red-white-and-blue shorts set.

I remember this outfit for some reason and ironically I later found a photo of me wearing it, and the picture dates from probably the peak of some of my mom-related traumas, perhaps, in the mid 70’s. In this photo I look like a wild child!

Ha.

I actually just noticed there is a tennis racket emblem on the shorts. I can recall somewhat where this was bought (there was a store on Kirkwood Highway in Delaware called The Fashion Bug) and why I liked and wanted it – I loved playing an racquet sports around this age and later.

The source and inspiration for some creative work I did in 2006 with both short story/illustration/simple animation came from a PBS documentary produced in 1992 I had seen years earlier that I found fascinating. It is called Thank You and Goodnight, and was a personal work of Jan Oxenberg:

“a unique memorial…Comedian/filmmaker Jan Oxenberg comes to terms with the death of her grandmother, in a so-called ‘docu-fantasy’ which is easier to recommend than it is to describe. The Borscht Belt humor and odd cardboard (yes, actual cardboard) characters can be a little distracting, but under all the self-indulgent padding and low-budget artifice is an emotional true story taking a unique, personal approach to the universal experience of mortality and grief.

Oxenberg’s comic musings on the afterlife owe a lot to Woody Allen…” (Imdb)

Like Forrest Gump, I sit on the bench with my “mom bag” telling my life story to random (and not-so-random) people that come and go! Actually, I started this idea of my “mom bag” when I saw a therapist in Alabama. It was the first time I ever therapy with a woman therapist in my life. I was a bit uneasy, but it was a wonderful experience.

I think my second session, I showed up with little photos of faces cut out and glued to popsicle sticks (like puppets) to introduce her to all the main characters in my life and situation. She laughed. I mean, that’s kinda…unforgettably creative, perhaps, ha ha. Considering she once said some clients sit there for the hour mostly silent, unable to articulate or express easily.

I have taught and homeschooled before…I know how the brain works with associations. I was both visual and verbal, and, with creativity. Part of what prompted this were some brief, prior several sessions I had with another counselor who was elderly, and each session she seemed to forget the players/characters I was mentioning, in my life! I remember once (and bless her heart, she was almost eighty I think!) on about the third visit I mentioned my sons, once again, and she said, “Oh you have children? Where do they live?”

I was looking at her, from some chair in Decatur, Alabama, having already told her how I ended up in that state and that my sons were up north, and my struggles with that, and more…

I often associate my daily experiences with some movie scene or conceptual idea – many times ripping it into another context – I was thinking, “Is this like the romantic comedy Fifty First Dates?” Like…um…“Fifty first therapy sessions.”

Ha.

So there I was, this time with a younger, professional person, showing her my popsicle stick photographic hand puppets of sorts (!) and carrying a duffle bag of “stuff” (props, ha ha) from my childhood.

Just to give her a baseline starting point of understanding and knowing me. Ha. I mean…I already knew what the root of my problem was. She just had to quickly get up to speed!

I the course of almost five years with her in Alabama, I would read her some of my stories and she would laugh. So very affirming. She said, “they are funny…but…so…personal…the (references!)”

People love the parody of Weird Al because they first, know the original song. Parody gets lost in translation if you don’t know the original references.

So, how to tell my story…hmmm….
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I think this is probably a good intro and starting point. If you want to be sure to hear Part II (which I may yet do soon…maybe…) you can always Subscribe so you will receive email notification of new posts and be able to save until you find time or interest in reading whatever it is.

I do thank you for reading and sharing in my journey in this messy, messy, crazy…painfully funny universe!

When thinking of a title for this, I thought of what I put, along with a quick illustration I did this afternoon, for this one. The phrase “Trauma Talk” came to mind…which morphed into “Trauma Talkin'” which of course, reminded me of an old song (and this in itself is funny to watch!) called “Jive Talkin.'”

Jive talkin’ means (I looked up to be sure of my best guess…):
1 : to talk in a foolish, deceptive, or unserious way : to talk jive (see jive entry 1 sense 1) He’s just jiving. 2 : to dance to or play jive (see jive entry 1 sense 2)

Wow. I mean...sometimes I marvel at how ideas and articulation just seems to fall into place. This is perfect for all of this. Like some of the Old Testament stories to many stories I have listened to from others recovering from Complex-PTSD (ongoing, chronic, micro-traumas….the proverbial “death by a thousand cuts” so to speak…especially damaging in the early, formative years…), I sometimes think, “Wow. You just can’t make this stuff up!”

One thing I do know, as a trauma(s) survivor, people have a deep need to be believed.

To be listened to.

To know and be known.

And, to be unconditionally loved, accepted and supported – worts and all. To always know that even when things in relationships are tense, those closest to them and most intimately acquainted with them are always “for them” and not “against them.”

How painful when the very people we should most trust and love become our most vicious adversaries.

Anyone who has gone through trauma knows the need for deep, trust-building friendships and relationship continuity. When we have suffered from a mentally ill parent, an alcoholic parent or fill-in-the-blank….that sense of “walking on eggshells”…of never knowing for sure how a person we depend upon for our most basic physical and emotional needs (as young children, and also, later in life such as in marriage or other situations) is a safe, predictable person.

Issues of triggering, gaslighting, shaming, and so much more can be woven into our very being and relationships. So much so, for many trauma survivors, they cannot even speak or articulate with clarity what is prompting their responses to others based on past recollections of similar things. What they have been through.

As I listened to this video I wondered what might these song lyrics might look like if I substituted “Trauma Talkin'” into it. I will put that, below…in parody….

But first, I invite you to muse and laugh at the original song by the Bee Gees!

Ahhh the seventies….

I want to name my collection of personal life stories something like, “If Only My Mother Had Taken Me to Woodstock – Then I Would be NORMAL.”

Ha.

Stay tuned…someday…I will write about that idea and humor, and what prompted the thought!

Trauma Talkin’
(parody of Jive Talkin’ – Song by Bee Gees)

It’s just your Trauma Talkin’
You’re telling me lies, yeah
Trauma Talkin’
You wear a disguise
Trauma Talkin’
So misunderstood, yeah
Trauma Talkin’
You really no good

Oh, my child
You’ll never know
Just what you mean to me
Oh, my child
You got so much
You’re gonna take away my energy

With all your Trauma Talkin’
You’re telling me lies, yeah
Good lovin’
Still gets in my eyes
Nobody believes what you say
It’s just your Trauma Talkin’
That gets in the way

Oh my love
You’re so good
Treating me so cruel
There you go
With your fancy lies
Leavin’ me lookin’
Like a dumbstruck fool
With all your Trauma Talkin’
You’re telling me lies, yeah
Trauma Talkin’
You wear a disguise
Trauma Talkin’
So misunderstood, yeah
Trauma Talkin’
You just ain’t no good

Trauma Talkin’
Is all very fine, yeah
Trauma Talkin’
Just isn’t a crime
And if there’s somebody
You’ll love till you die
Then all that Trauma Talkin’
Just gets in your eye

Trauma Talkin’
You’re telling me lies, yeah
Good lovin’
Still gets in my eyes
Nobody believes what you say
It’s just your Trauma Talkin’
That gets in the way

Trauma Talkin’
Is all very fine, yeah
Trauma Talkin’, just isn’t a crime
And if there’s somebody
You’ll love till you die
Then all that Trauma Talkin’
Just gets in your eye, yeah yeah

Oh Trauma Talkin’
Trauma Talkin’
Oh Trauma Talkin’