05/31/2025
The tragedy of relational trauma presents itself as a betrayal in soma and soul, and shatters the circuitry and organization of the self. We have no choice, then, but to engage the primitive defenses of dissociation and splitting, which come in to save us from full scale fragmentation and the potential end of our world.
In this unworkable situation, we simultaneously long for and are terrified of “the Other.” We don’t know whether to move toward or turn away. This is unbearable for a ripening little heart and nervous system.
For a young child – who remains alive, yet crystallized and frozen in subcortical and bodily circuitry – the attachment figure is God or Goddess, magician, sage, and seer, and without this one, the end is near.
But when this figure is also the very source of terror and overwhelming panic, shame, and rage – or when the caregiver is terrified and traumatized him or herself – we find ourselves in uncharted waters.
It takes everything to sit in this field with another who has been shattered in this way, and has come to organize their experience around this sort of rupture and duplicity. It shakes us to the core and can grind us to dust.
But inside the particles of this dust, the seeds of love are there, of a love that has never left.
To provide even a sliver of hope, a moment of empathic attunement, where the other can feel felt and understood, where they can re-link, re-associate, re-embody, and know that a new world is possible.
To look up and see and feel that you are there. That you honor them and the validity of their experience, as it is. That you will not demand they quickly transform or heal in order for you to stay near.
Never underestimate the power of love and what you can do to help. A few kind words, softness in your eyes, listening carefully, holding the scattered pieces, offering shelter and refuge, helping them to feel safe, even if for only a few seconds. Many have never known this in the experiential depths of the body.
To be a vessel in which love can come alive here, through which the Beloved can incarnate and embody, for ourselves, others, for nature, and for the ancestors; and, for the ones preparing to arrive.
