how MDMA is deepening my craft for a better, safer future.

why we should talk about trauma

Thank you to everyone who has joined me here. This community is a shining star in my skies. I am floating on the love you have all shown. I have some news landing in the next two months, which will be a big bonus. Hang tight, more soon.

Why we should write about trauma.

"Writing has become for me," Melissa Febos says in Body Work's, "a primary means of digesting and integrating my experiences and thereby reducing the pains of living, or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others."

Culturally, we tend to focus more on healing than the story that got us there, which is simple: trauma is sad, often painful—a total buzzkill.

An elevator pitch version of my backstory: I am a cis-gendered white woman, a farmers' daughter born to a second-generation settler family in the Canadian prairies. 

Now recovering from childhood trauma and being labeled a slow learner. The reality was that my brain couldn't connect letters into language until I relearned reading and writing in my late 20s while teaching my precocious daughter how to read with a Jolly Phonics kit I bought online.

I am dipping my toe into writing a memoir about healing cycles of abuse, awakening through consciousness, and how MDMA is deepening my craft for a better, safer future. 

Most of the stories I write are snippets of my life where I can now offer forgiveness. I have discovered in therapy; we often forget the context. We all have a story. Here, today, I am sharing my first publicaly published work.  

~

SLOW 

Awkwardly holding the HB pencil to the page.

Instructions are unclear.

Dotted line. Name.

Then the test. 

Write. The word, my name, on the dotted line? Or both?

My little consumed brain was leapfrogging concepts, ideas, and words, catching flashes of what might be required at that moment, but not sure. 

Wriggling out my discomfort in not understanding. 

The teacher said something that made sense to the other grade one writers - heads down, pencils scratching.

Ruler slammed, my desk vibrated, my heart leaping, breathing stopped, the teacher now demanding moving madness out of my body must stop.

The stare. A blank page, my pencil chewed to a stub.

Hunched over, the teacher huffed her morning coffee and cigarette at me, explaining for the hundredth time. "TH TH TH," she spits out with a forced lisp, then "E E E like A-  THE."

These words must be read, right? 

Linking letters, into words, into language. It was an obvious combination. 

The vacant look was infuriating; both were confused about how it was not completely clear. 

The years, teachers and grades barely passed. Not that anything improved. It just got easier to fake a created illusion of understanding. 

There had not been a handbook written for those who didn't know how to read it. 

Teachers back and forth with a questioning brow, scratching heads. How could this be? It was easier to answer questions than to know why. 

Slow. 

Slow. Fit for the brain that had to think fast in every situation outside school.

~

For decades I was caught in an endlessly swirling shitstorm surrounding my trauma. Truth be told, I've sat down and pondered if I'm batshit crazy. But I decided no, I just hover over crazy, then I flit away. Finally, I have the courage and support to write about it through recovery. 

Not until Substack have I found such a natural place to combine writing and the tools for healing. Thank you for reading.

 It's a hopeful story, in the end. Your thoughts are welcome. 

More to come,

Resources:

The Atlantic: TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE. WRITE ABOUT IT ANYWAY.

Melissa Febos's recent essay collection shows us how to capture the difficult, intimate details of our lives in writing and why we should. By Adam Dalva

Writing to Reckon: a safe space for writers who wish to explore their personal experience of spiritual, cultic, religious or delve into the challenging terrain of power-over abuse.