Supporting you during this women’s crisis

Can you relate? 

What’s happening now to women’s reproductive rights is having a compounding traumatic affect:

It’s traumatizing right now, and it can actually be triggering past trauma for so many. And it’s a trauma that’s been shared by generations.

So many women have already been  directly and immediately affected by the court’s decision to overturn Roe V. Wade. 

That immediate, quick change is traumatic.

Other women are protected by privilege by local laws or financial means, but that doesn’t mean they’re not  emotionally affected by this decision. 

And the inability to see how far this will go, or where this will lead women when it comes to our rights is traumatic. Not feeling like we have control over the future is scary. 

But there’s another effect here too: many women are being re-traumatized, or triggered, as past traumas come to the surface.

Many women, myself included, are finding their rage. And it’s coming up swiftly and easily, even if they aren’t immediately or personally affected by what’s happening.  

When I ask myself why the rage is so intense relative to the fact that my life is not immediately affected by it, I wonder if it’s not indicative of something bigger and deeper than what’s going on in the present.

This moment seems to be triggering the suffering caused at the hands of the patriarchy, to generations on top of generations of women. 

That trauma and suffering is inherited and stored in our bodies. We call it generational trauma. 

In those moments when I’m not feeling rage, I believe my habitual trauma response from earlier stages of development are being triggered.

These were the moments when I had to comply with arbitrary - and sometimes cruel - rules made by those in charge. I wasn’t able to protest or feel like I was making a difference, and I was scared. 

I ended up feeling small, insignificant, helpless and powerless.

In the present it makes me feel like I’m a small cog in the wheel, and it can leave me feeling like there’s nothing I can do to make a difference. 

I could stay this way, which is exactly what the patriarchy wants, or I can use this opportunity, when my emotions are so easily accessible to me, to heal from both the present trauma and the past trauma that is being triggered.

We need to do the work, both for our own sake and for the sake of our society. It’s very hard to change things as long as we are too busy dealing with our own trauma.