2014-1-9 The Gift Of Healing

THE GIFT OF HEALING

One of the Christmas presents I received this year was a book called, Women Writing for (a) Change, by Mary Pierce Brosmer.  From what I have read so far, my understanding is it is writing for personal change and healing which could result in a more global change from awareness.  The subtitle is, "A Guide for Creative Transformation".  I have been feeling a little stuck on my healing journey.  I still get entangled in the difficult memories and I feel a little lost and alien in this world.  I am doing things but I feel detached.  This book seems like a tool that can help me on the next phase of my journey.  I had gone to a therapist earlier in the year and it was an opportunity to talk through the grieving process, but I reached a point where I needed more.  I needed projects or homework, exercises to do to help me along the path.  I have found this type of work in this book.

The exercises from the book use writing to help with "dissociation" and produce healing for the wounded.  When the author described "dissociation" a sense of relief and understanding came over me.  "Dissociation occurs when, as a response to trauma, the Self splits from the self". Though I was functioning, and moving in this world, I still felt numb and detached.  I was thinking it was because of Gage's suffering and passing my perspective had changed and I did not view the world the same as others.  The author explains there are two "selves" and that our identity is not our biography.  I believe this relates to spiritual books that describe the "earthly self" and the "spiritual self".  Meditation, prayer, fasting, ritual are the attempts of the "earthly self" to connect with the "spiritual self" and thus "coming home".  Home with a capital H is "at-home-ness with our participation in the all, a depth of longing, and peace with things as they are and ourselves as we are".  The small h home, is "this world, our limited bodies, beauty and gritty ugliness as well as our wounded, changing mysterious lives".  Experiencing this world is a healthy balance between the two selves or two homes.  When trauma happens, "dissociation is a critical survival strategy, but on which often persists afterward as a habit of "going away".  That may explain my feeling of disconnectedness to this world because my "earthly self", my identity, was dissolved the day Gage passed.  I often have said that I don't know who I am anymore.

The book describes the exercises as "transforming dissociation into healthy awareness of the self".  I now realize I need some guidance to help me find myself.  Now I see my journal entries here as a combo of glimpses into the past and my progress as I go though the exercises of the book.