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The Hungry Soul: Woman to Woman

One out of every four women in our society will be sexually abused before she reaches the age of eighteen. Take a deep breath and notice right now, in your own body, your reaction to that statement. What arises in you...sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, images, as you hear this statement again? One out of every four women in our society will be sexually abused before she reaches the age of eighteen.

The truth is that we really don't know how accurate that statement is. It is quite possible that it is a low estimate. The point is that thousands upon thousands of children's bodies are physically and sexually violated in our country, in the world, every year. And what does that mean for our own physical well-being? And what does that mean for the well-being of the world body?

When I hear that statement what arises in me is a painful awareness that the enormity of this problem is a reflection of a mass image, we all share-- a fear of the feminine principle of receptivity, openness, vulnerability and the distortion of the masculine principle of activity and expansion that seeks to dominate and control not only the bodies of women and children but the body of the earth.

Thus, the same distorted masculine energy (inside us all) that views women and children's bodies as possessions that can be controlled and abused for quick and easy need gratification is the same distorted energy of mass consumption and profiteerism that rapes the earth of her essence and exploits her resources for quick and easy need gratification.

Sexual trauma is the wound that most clearly reflects this distortion. All matter is feminine; that is, all matter (including our bodies, whether you are a man or a woman) embodies the feminine principle. Spirit reflects and focuses the masculine principle. If the masculine principle, in distortion, fears the feminine and seeks to possess, control and penetrate from that distortion, then an out-picturing of that inner turmoil, on a personal level, might be sexual abuse and on a global level, the destruction of the rainforest.

So how do we heal this mass image? We begin with our own bodies, with re-establishing contact with our souls' divine wisdom by walking back into our bodies and transforming the distortion of the masculine principle and fear of the feminine within each of us.

The most pervasive secondary elaboration, or after-effect, of sexual trauma is dissociation, which manifests in many forms such as; compulsive over/under eating, alcohol and drug abuse, psychic and physical numbing, withdrawal into fantasy or addiction to television, and in the most extreme circumstances Multiple Personality Disorder. Whatever the specific form, dissociative reaction is a defense against the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain of the trauma of that boundary violation. It is, in essence, a child's method of coping with overwhelming experience. This survival technique eventually becomes a way of life. It is a means of dis-identifying with the body, the foundation of grounded experience on the earth, that now becomes the object and source of fear.

So we turn our awareness away from our terror by burying it deep within the recesses of the unconscious. Then we turn away from our sensate experience because that alienated, fearful self wishes to avoid, no matter what the cost, the child's experience of pain.

Thus, the child, grown into adulthood, develops and maintains a mistaken belief that it is not safe to experience the self in the body, to be embodied, to feel the full richness of being alive, which includes experiences of both pleasure and pain. Healing from childhood sexual trauma is a process of inviting that false belief into conscious awareness with tremendous compassion for the courage required to open that dreaded doorway; the primary, sensate experience of the physical self.

When our bodies receive a shock (which is essentially what trauma is) the sensate experience of that trauma is encoded into our neural pathways and the very cells of our beings. So whether or not our minds consciously remember the injury, our bodies do.

In order to heal trauma we must enlist the sensate wisdom, the mind/spirit within our cells, to help us locate the fear (which is always expressed by tension, pain or discomfort in some part of our physical beings), invite it into consciousness, into the light of loving awareness, and test it against the reality of the current moment. The mistaken belief we are not safe in our bodies will dissolve into the here and now of eternity.

I would like to share a story from my own experience that might clarify this process. I used to suffer from an irrational fear of saliva, to the point where I refused to hold babies and avoided contact with floppy-jowled dogs because I was afraid they might drool on me. The thought sent ripples of dread and disgust up my spine.

I never understood this apprehension until several years ago when I remembered during a Breath session (an experience of deep conscious breathing that enlivens our sensate awareness and carries us fully into our bodies) an incident when I was a teenager. I was with my church youth group volunteering at a nursing home, when an elderly man approached me, grabbed me roughly, drew me towards him, and before I realized what was happening stuck his tongue in my mouth. When I thrust him away with my arms, his saliva was in my mouth and on my face. I was overcome by a sense of contamination and disgust. In fact, I felt so ashamed, I never told anyone about the incident. I buried it deep within the recesses of my unconscious . . . but my body remembered. My body remembered every time a dog or baby drooled. My jaw would tense, my arms brace against an unknown danger and I would experience the same revulsion I felt that day so many years ago.

In the process of re-inhabiting my body, through experiences such as the Breathwork, I have been able to uncover the origin of my fear and face it. Since that Breath session I have allowed babies and dogs to drool on me; and although it is still not my favorite experience, it no longer frightens or repulses me in the way that the original trauma did and I no longer need avoid babies or floppy-jowled dogs, whom I love and enjoy tremendously. I have also developed more compassion for my own bodily fluids which have continually repulsed me (fear of my feminine essence) and which I actively rejected or forcefully controlled (distortion of the masculine principle).

As I have learned to listen to my body more deeply, with loving awareness, through processes such as sober living, prayer and meditation, the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, mindful eating, Breathwork, non-forced, authentic movement and writing I have been able to unearth my fears and distortions, and begin to treat my body, this woman's body, the body of the world with the love and respect deserving of the sacred vessel of spirit that it is. This is truly the reconciliation of the feminine and masculine principles through personal healing.

So why has childhood sexual abuse become such a pervasive societal problem? Why are the rainforests being destroyed with wild abandon? Perhaps it is the world soul's dramatic and painful out-picturing of the inner split between the feminine and masculine principles, between matter and spirit, between body and soul. It is time to invite this turmoil of the unseen world into our conscious, loving awareness to heal . . . to heal our personal wounds and simultaneously heal the body of the earth. As women (the embodiment of the feminine principle) we are eminently qualified for this task.

Each time we dare to meet our own fear of the feminine with compassion, instead of desecration, we transmute the distortion of masculine energy into expansive love and kinship with the feminine in all beings and the great mother herself. In this way we transform the vicious circle of abuse into a benign circle of love.

Copyright, 1994 Patricia A. Burke

This article originally appeared in The ODYSSEY, October, 1994 and is reprinted here with the permission of the author, copyright, 1996, all rights reserved.

Learn more about the author by clicking on her author bio in The Hungry Soul's Contributors Feature.


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