{"id":4595,"date":"2018-01-08T00:07:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T05:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healwritenow.com\/?p=4595"},"modified":"2018-01-10T11:46:27","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T16:46:27","slug":"sacred-sunday-soul-food-clarissa-pinkola-estes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healwritenow.com\/sacred-sunday-soul-food-clarissa-pinkola-estes\/","title":{"rendered":"After Oprah’s Speech: Questions, Courage & Quotes from Clarissa"},"content":{"rendered":"
We were so moved and energized by Oprah’<\/a>s speech<\/a>. Now what? What do we do with all that motion and momentum now that the red carpets and cameras have been rolled up and put away?<\/p>\n I started a survivor blog fewer than four years ago because I couldn’t find ANY other person writing, thinking and talking about life after a childhood full of trauma. I wasn’t looking for stories about child abuse or trauma but about how adults manage life, love, and parenting after surviving. I didn’t meet, see or hear from anyone in ordinary and daily circles at work, school or in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n I was looking for conversations that didn’t come with a co-pay or a diagnosis. I wasn’t looking for a fast fix (o.k., maybe a little0 but even more I wanted the company and camaraderie of others living the same questions at the same time in real time and our real lives. That’s what I ached for. It wasn’t available anywhere that I could find.<\/p>\n If and when I dared to speak it was usually in\u00a0whispers to lovers, friends or my journals as well as therapists.\u00a0A few short years later there’s open, public, and televised conversation about surviving and sexual violence.\u00a0That’s a boatload of change. I am living, seeing and feeling it and I am reminded daily that I’m not alone.\u00a0We all know what #MeToo means now. It’s astounding.<\/p>\n As a culture, we’ve got more to sort through and figure out though.<\/p>\n It’s not all over or all better.<\/p>\n We’re not all good or all done.<\/p>\n Survivors know the vulnerability and the backlash that comes after disclosure, how the truth hangs out in the world waiting to be held, healed, acknowledged or responded to. And how often, it isn’t. That wait can be a long, lonely, and painfully revealing. We celebrate all the women on Facebook who shared Oprah’s speech, women who maybe never say things like rape culture, survivor or trauma-informed and also we notice how few men are sharing the same national broadcast. I don’t know any men in my world talking about the #MeToo movement this week.<\/p>\n Often, the\u00a0world returns to normal too soon even when the old normal is exactly what so many of us are still recovering from.<\/p>\n How do we get back to day to day, changed, in a world ambivalent and inexperienced with hearing, holding and healing?<\/p>\n How do we rally together and move forward?<\/p>\n Many are sharing words and experiences in public and private forums for the first time or considering doing so. Many are thinking about if, when and how to share life experiences and the stories we’ve carried silently, alone and within forever.<\/p>\n Many are weighing the personal and professional consequences and repercussions that come with disclosure\u00a0– as well as how we feel with ourselves in the middle of the night in the after.<\/p>\n How can we heal, get real, and deal with the aftermath all at the same time? That’s where so much of the work is and it’s the part we can’t do alone.\u00a0What now? What next?<\/p>\n Thank f_ck we’re not alone in figuring this out.<\/p>\n Suffering isn’t new. Surviving isn’t either – although it’s not guaranteed and this is serious, scrappy business.<\/p>\n Before we had Oprah on TV or vulnerability Ted Talks with Brene Brown (so good…) we had Clarissa Pinkola Est\u00e9s who is mixt of Maya Angelou, Brene Brown and Mary Oliver.<\/p>\n l love her so much.<\/p>\n While she’s most known for writing Women Who Run with the Wolves but speaks, performs and has written on many topics. She was a trained psychoanalyst with a clinical practice for 25 years but that’s not her biggest credential. She’s a storyteller, mother, wild woman, teacher, author, healer.\u00a0 She introduced many to the concept of the wounded healer and shares about her own childhood pain, loss and trauma as well as that of others in myth, fable, history and in the daily experiences of women and men all over the world. She lets her personal life inform her professional work and her professional work inform her stories. She’s mesmerizing, powerful to hear or read or learn from. She’s been raising up women and helping us find ourselves and each other for years.<\/p>\n I’ve been pouring over her words again which are food, fuel,\u00a0and guidance.<\/p>\n for what’s next.<\/p>\n The sharing.<\/p>\n The caring.<\/p>\n The healing.<\/p>\n From the\u00a0Faithful Gardener.<\/a><\/p>\n Stories Explain Survival & Recovery<\/strong><\/p>\n “What does it mean to live with a war and memories of war inside oneself? It means one lives in two worlds. One looking for hope, the other feeling hopeless. One looking for meaning, the other convinced that the only meaning in life is that there is no meaning in life.<\/p>\n In each of our people who have suffered so greatly, there were two struggling persons. One living the life of the new world, the other running, constantly\u00a0running, from memories of hell that rose up and gave chase. Ghosts animated by themselves, roused by a click of a door frame, a cat in heat screeching suddenly in the night, the innocent dog at the screen\u00a0door scratching to come in, a sudden gust of wind causing a curtain to sweep a jar off a table in a shot to the floor.<\/p>\n Mundane matters caused terror, tears, or revulsion: the smell of a certain gun oil, the first snow and fresh blood of deer gutted for food, a certain kind of bone ache from field work, an old story about a bridal veil, a sound of cattle hooves on a metal culvert, a sudden train whistle and the sound of the long trestle rumbling.<\/p>\n There were wars in Uncle that make him remember, as he said, “too much.” There were wars between the death of hope, and the hope\u00a0for death, the hope for life, and a life of hope. Sometimes the only cease-fire that held for any length of time had to be negotiated by a treaty forged with much schnapps and much vodka.” pgs. 23-24<\/p>\n<\/p>\n