H2H tribe

We’ve got so many blogs drafted and we’ve not been posting stuff so have already forgotten how to even use this WordPress thing! But we just wanted to go with the flow, post this here and mark something, because it’s honestly been such a BIG week. (Although someone told me the other day that they can’t remember a week in the last few months/year or so that we haven’t had a very BIG week! Healing is funny).

It’s been a very very spiraling, scary, surprising, stuck, successful, supported, slipping, struggle-y and special week. But we’ve got to the ‘gratitude’ bit now. The ‘purple cloak’/‘add-to-it’ envelope bit. And the bit where our body says – no more thank you, so so much pain, rest only option… and then our Parts seem to still say – ‘oh, rest… hmm… what’s that? Is that the bit where we play with buttons all day!?! The button bit!!!!!!

Alas, now it seems we’re back to the… ‘write about it all’ bit 🤣 – so here you go.

**content warning for mentions of various types of abuse**

We don’t really want to be quiet anymore. We don’t want to be anything but who we are. We might sometimes be quiet or change ourselves, if we choose to. But we don’t want to be told to be quiet or be told to change ourselves by people, professionals, systems, ourselves internally or anyone ever. And we’d like to be able to be NOT QUIET about whatever we need to be NOT QUIET about… be that the grief, the gratitude, the growth or anything in between… including the anger, distress, darkness, rage, joy, needs, worries, fears, achievements, struggles, slip-ups, setbacks, questions, doubts, wishes, hopes, ideas and anything we’d like to say. As long as we are being safe, we can say it. Having to be quiet was a major trauma for some of us inside and we are growing and free now and that means we don’t have to be quiet anymore. We can say things. We can say this is our truth, we can say please help, we can say we’re scared, we can say we’re brave, we can say NO, we can say yes please, we can say go away now, we can say goodbye, we can say wow and yay! We can say things.

Today we wanted to say – thank you. To anyone who listens to and hears and helps with the hard things.

There’s A LOT of people, places, creatures and connections we like to say thank you to as much as we can – been hurt a lot, takes a lot to heal – and we especially wanted to express some gratitude in measures that feel entirely immeasurable for one hugely special soul called Sam; our SAZ, our bee-moon-mushroom-mummy/goat-this friend – who so relentlessly, with such loyal, fierce, compassionate commitment does not turn away or shut out difficult truths and works harder than we’ve ever seen to make space for the pain in this world, as well as facilitate the playing!!

Some things really are not as rare as people think they are.

There are children in every school, in every community, culture, country who are being abused in many ways – so there are adults who are living with dissociative parts and DID around us and in our circles. The more people there are like my beautiful friend, who are willing to have the hard realities of life #hidden2heard, the more chance we have for healing and saving lives.

Children are abused. Including sexually. Often in their homes, by their family and also in homes and ways we wouldn’t expect or imagine. Children are trafficked and involved in criminal situations. Children are sold for sex and not kept safe. Children witness and experience utterly horrific abuses and crimes more than anyone likes to believe. Children are not always being protected, looked after, kept safe, listened to, believed and respected.

Like suicide, these things are still almost ‘dirty’, shocking, taboo subjects to speak about. We still don’t want to or know how to or manage to prioritise thinking about it and being with the feelings it brings up for us. Just like a lot of things people struggle to face and acknowledge as realities of our world, just like so many of the things people would rather ignore, dismiss, deny, silence, keep a distance from, push away or keep at arms length… But these kind of minimising, silencing and avoidant responses to the dark hard stuff are exactly what those of us with DID desperately don’t need more of. In fact it’s what triggers and hinders many of us from healing… The continued sense of being “too much” for the world and those around us. The ongoing isolation and uphill battle to find places we can belong and be included and truly seen, known, validated and expand as our true full selves

We grew up in desperately unsafe isolation and many of us still live with ongoing isolation, rejection and having to be hidden away… and this lack of family, friends, community, support.. continues to retraumatise Parts of us. We were alone, we stayed alone and the we remain alone. And seeing as aloneness was such a huge part of the original traumas we lived through – we remain stuck in trauma and dissociation. We still cannot find enough of the appropriate and safe spaces to exist in our fullness and to receive the care and support we need to heal … It certainly isn’t happening in our mental health systems. So the more we can make it possible in our other spaces and communities the better…. (then maybe to tackle the systems eh?!)

DID, childhood sexual abuse, suicidality… these realities are all still woefully stigmatised, misunderstood, ignored, under diagnosed, misdiagnosed, unsupported and mistreated.

Why?!?

Fear? Our very human, natural and understandable reaction to truly knowing our helplessness and vulnerability, yet also our own power? And our very inhumane, unnatural current societal structures and systems that are operating from places of fear and power, not love and power? 

The less we turn away from the truths that scare us, but can so empower us, and the more we open up our hearts, eyes, ears, homes, minds and prioritise making the space and time to embrace and welcome even the most difficult truths inside of us and around us, (no matter what grief and complexity they require us to face and be with), – the more healing will be possible for peoples and planet.

Some things are difficult, upsetting, uncomfortable, confronting, tiring, scary, terrifying, worrying, painful and very heavy to think about, learn about, try to understand and know how to help best with. If you have DID you know this very well! Dissociation is a way we learn to cope. All of us dissociate. It’s just that those of us with DID had no choice but to live a life of dissociation and learnt to cope this way from very young and over and over until it became a way of life. And at times, dissociation can be a truly necessary and wonderful gift, but also… It isn’t needed sometimes anymore and we actually really really need to find ways to reduce how dissociative we’ve become as humans.

I really believe we could all do with finding ways to work out where we have some dissociative barriers and how dissociation is showing up in our lives… not to remove dissociation, but to understand and use it more consciously. People with DID are having to work so unbelievably hard to live with and heal the ways dissociation isn’t serving them anymore… We don’t need to heal or get rid of or hide out Parts and who we are – but we need to heal the trauma and dissociation that’s still so alive in us.

But this is something we could all do with doing more of too. The more people who can do it who don’t have DID, the better!!! As we said, dissociation can be really really important at certain times if we are unsafe… But when we know we are safe, dissociation can stop us growing and connecting and healing. When we can find safety, unneeded dissociation can be eased and this is when we can bring the dark things into the light.

But for those of us with DID this journey is harder than most will ever have to truly understand. So the more people who can do it around us too – who can stay conscious, speak out, listen, acknowledge the painful truths, feel feelings, grieve…. and keep doing it, the easier it’ll all become – because we won’t be doing it as alone. Which is what we have always said is the worst part. We can do such hard things, we really can, but we can’t do them alone.

When we come together, we need to be able to speak, be heard, be angry, be outraged, be distressed, be terrified and anxious and share our sense of helplessness and fear and then to grieve it all… Together. The more we do this, the less scary, stuck and stagnant it will all be and the more chance we have of truly feeling and fully experiencing love and more deeply enjoying the world and beauty around us. The deeper and darker the roots, the higher and wider the heights.

But unfortunately we’re still so often denying, silencing, minimising, ignoring and struggling to find enough people and places to safely speak out about the difficult realities and to be heard and then supported appropriately… I think when we find community and people we feel safe with, if we can dare to bring our hardest truths and keep those conversations open and flowing… The more chance we have of changing things. It can feel so helpless that we don’t even try…. But let’s explore that sense of helplessness *together*, and maybe we’ll find.. it’s not as helpless as we think or fear and feel…

There are so many children still growing up with what they have learnt is love, that is very very far from love. Children need to experience real love and those of us with DID have children living inside of us who need that too.
Thank you to Sam for knowing us and loving us.

❤