5. Honour Our Holy Sh!t

Holy Sh!t is the holy work we do in this life to become aware of and shift the blocks held in the body that interfere with our ability to connect to Beloved Presence and live from the fullness of love and inclusion. 

These blocks can be inherited, come from wounds and trauma in this life, misunderstandings or misaligned beliefs we have about Beloved Presence,  ourselves and our place in the world. There are plenty of ways to be wounded.

Most happen in our childhood family of origin and then are immediately frozen or buried deep so we don't have to feel or process the painful event. The earth offers us the great service of holding those wounds and allowing the energy to continue to flow so we can live and grow and participate in our lives. 

We must accept responsibility for our holy sh!t and accept ownership of our role to do the best we can in healing it.

No one heals our sh!t for us. Ever.

What healers and energy practitioners do is provide us safe space and encouragement to heal ourselves. 

My Sh!t

TW: childhood sexual abuse

I am an Adult Child of Alcoholics

I am an adult child of alcoholics. I accepted my father’s alcoholism and my mother’s enabling a long time ago, I just never opened up to the recovery until now.

Just now. Last week.

It’s part of the trauma of children of alcoholics - even when we acknowledge the alcoholism, the trauma is still somehow our personal fault and is separate from the disease. Because the disease wasn’t my disease - it was a family disease and the reality of my childhood.

I was sexually invaded by a neighbour when I was very little. It happened a couple of times during isolated visits. I immediately buried the events and the experience and the feelings as deeply as I could. The actual memories didn't resurface again until I started on my self-initiated healing journey - but the emotions were always there leaking out and causing problems. 

I became a bed-wetter and I went through early puberty - both of which point towards childhood sexual invasion. I went through periods of unexplained depression and anxiety - often triggered by 2 stuffed animals in my room.

Stuffed animals given to me by my abuser. 

Victims of childhood sexual invasion often aren't able to form strong boundaries or develop body autonomy and sovereignty - both of which are reoccurring wounds in my life.

However, I must have been able to develop enough boundaries to prevent re-victimization by others (which also often happens in childhood sexual abuse), because I was able to say no and respond effectively to prevent further unwanted advances in different situations. 

There are so many instances of men exposing themselves to me in public or older students or teenage neighbours inappropriately touching or wanting me to "go behind the shed" so they could "show me something" or the two years we had an obscene caller call our house. 

Normally he would just breath heavy in the phone and I'd hang up. Once he said he was calling because I had been entered into a contest and I could win money if I could guess what he was holding. I asked if he could give me a hint. He said it was long and stiff. I asked was it a hot dog? It was not a hot dog. I quickly understood what was happening and hung up. I didn't tell my parents about that until years later, because I was ashamed and felt like I had made it happen.

I felt like it was my fault. I was NINE.

When I was twelve I used to pray to g-d to kill me before letting me be raped. I thought getting raped was worse than anything else in the entire world, and that I'd rather be dead.

That's not fucking normal - but I didn't know it wasn't normal.

It was just my holy sh!t leaking out all over. 

There's so many more examples that every mature woman knows so well - cat calls on the street, strangers rubbing up against us on the bus or subway, men putting their hands on our bodies like they have rights to it. This was all before Cosby and Weinstein and #METOO and the conversation of consent.

Men felt entitled to do what they wanted with women's bodies and nobody said shit about it. 

It felt very scary to be a woman in the 80’s.

Gail Cooper was my energy healer in my twenties.

She held a safe space for me to open the door to those memories for the first time. Up until then they had remained hidden and nightmarish. I would dream of dark stairways with dark doors at the bottom. Terrifying images of being chased and not being able to close the door in time and a pervasive, underlying sense of shame and badness.

Victimhood, Responsibility & Fault

When I began healing my holy sh!t, I moved quickly from victimhood to responsibility in regards to my sexual abuse.

I didn't want to be a victim. It felt bad and powerless.

Look up the etymology of victim - it literally means being a sacrifice for another.

NO WAY was I going to be a sacrifice for my abuser. No fucking way was I going to be used for his benefit. That fire energy, the angry energy moved me from victim to responsibility and ownership for the abuse. 

Responsibility is not fault.

Ownership is not fault.

These are core and important aspects of healing trauma.

Response-ability literally means that I hold the power to respond to my abuse. I hold the power to decide what that abuse meant in my life.

I hold the power to decide what that abuse meant in my life going forward and how I will create meaning in my life in response.

Fault is a failure, a flaw.

Being at fault is a shortcoming, a deficiency, a lack, creating a break, doing a deed that harms, creating a crack.

Being at fault is being the problem causing these things to happen. We are not at fault when we own the ability to respond to our abuse.

Becoming conscious of the abuse in my life and beginning to process the feelings ironically dissolved any residual sense of fault I held. Up until consciousness of the trauma, I had felt at fault. 

I now own the responsibility for the abuse. I hold ownership of the abuse. It is mine to do what I want with and to use in whatever way I decide is most beneficial to my healing and wholeness. 

Responsibility is not fault. Ownership is not fault.

I am not at fault for what happened. I own the right to respond to the event in the way I choose. 

God does not need me to be a sacrifice to my trauma.

Victimhood is one of the stages of healing. It's where we are until we can step into responsibility and ownership for what and how that wound will function in our life - what stories we tell ourselves about it and what it means - to US. Victimhood is necessary and we stay there until we can move on. Some may never move on from victimhood. Some may never receive the support or guidance or experience the space needed to feel their victim feelings.

Victimhood can be appealing because the victim always has the moral high ground. Victims are innocent, blameless and worthy of unquestioning attention, support and nurturing. We don't have to be victims to be receive attention and support.

I wonder how many stay in victim-hood because of a misunderstanding that responsibility is not fault. 

I wonder how many stay in victimhood because of the false belief that their innocence has been lost and can only be regained as a victim.

We need to own the responsibility for our holy sh!t. We need to own the responsibility of how our unconscious, buried, holy sh!t creates havoc and crises in our lives. 

We are not at fault for our holy sh!t, but it is ours to heal or not.