My friends love me dearly. They do not want to see me retraumatized. They know I have been through enormous layers and experiences over the course of my life that caused a major disruption- not only in my nervous system, but in how I experience the essence or Truth of Anita.

My understanding of reality is a spiral- envision a seashell. In order for me to heal what happened early on in life, when developmentally things went awry, I must revisit those experiences energetically. We do not have to re-live the awful or devastating experiences which created the ‘charge’ of trauma in the nervous system, but we will have a sense of what’s stuck or happening somatically.

Holy Ghost called me to a local church 7 years ago shortly after I met my birth father for the very first time at age 49. I was baptized by my pastor within months of arrival. That relationship became one of the most important in my adult life in order for me to discover the myriad ways I’d lost power and was in the process of reclamation. You see I’d experienced abandonment by the 3 most important male figures in my little girl life before the age of 7.

At my monthly mentoring sessions, she’d say- do you realize how often you say his name (my pastor)?

It took a long, patient, inner exploration for me to understand and appreciate the shadow work that was underway. He represented generations of the masculine who’d come to minimize and disempower my women folk. Don’t get me wrong, he is a complex individual with many beautiful gifts and sweetness. He did not represent this masculine shadow to anyone else in my circles. This was personal. And I was given the capacity to hold it all: the good with the difficult, and thus the iron sharpens iron began to produce a felt sense of how very soul drawn I had become. My ego was not the driving force of my life any longer. My soul’s fullness was.

But from my friend’s standpoint, it is confusing why I’d ‘agree’ to what on the surface appears so disruptive, so chaotic, so maladjusted. Well, within me lived all of those qualities!!

But my unconscious (read God) is leading the path to wholeness– not me, the 10% conscious self. I understand that we can trust Elohim, the ancient of days to know better than we do.Where I’ve lost power is in my shadow and shows up as the ways that I judge, distance, fear and control. I tried all of these with this man and others.

So, bottom line is that my time in the church was not re-traumatizing, it was unearthing all the patterns of self-betrayal and abandonment that I could not see. Bringing light into the darkness so to speak.

Week after week in small group, my body would often develop a rising tide of anxiety. I’d sit on the floor to try and get more grounded. I’d breathe deeply. This trauma charge was a vibration in my torso and was being activated in order that it might move from chaos to order, or Logos.

Trauma is dissonance in the system. My daily practices of asana, chant, breathwork, journaling, time in nature and meditation help me lean into how painful it is to somatically feel so much happening in my physicality. We create capacity for healing, integration and the light to be embodied. The light that forgot it was a harmony of rainbow colors. It got scattered and I’m helping the healing beauty to spread through my art, writing, service and love of neighbor.