I wish I could go back and tell newly-married, twenty-two year old Mimi: Hey, you are not crazy. You are not losing your mind. You need time to heal and be gentle with yourself. It won’t happen overnight but it will come.
Unfortunately for me but maybe luckily for you, nothing about the effects of ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) or childhood trauma impacting the body was really trickling out into my world. It took the fact that we started having babies and I was reading every book on neuroscience for babies and attachment that actually started helping me understand. It took the science and psychology coming from secular places to begin shedding light. It really took my second post-partum to bring me crashing so far down we actually found help. Stephen took me to see a counselor and I remember her looking him in the eyes and telling him that this was serious. That we were looking at a future of me chronically exhausted and bed ridden with maybe no more children. I was maybe 27 years old.
Up till then, I kept trying to find language to unlock what I was feeling. But my words were not conveying anything clearly to my husband. I wanted to tell him I felt trapped in a body on fire. I wanted to explain how little things made me want to crawl out of my skin but that I understood how illogical it all looked. I wanted to tell him that I was desperately using every ounce of my strength to carry myself through every waking moment and also make sure that my babies were not lacking love or connection because of my inner pain. He just kept thinking if I tried harder I could overcome the exhausted fog, the shell of a person I felt. He genuinely wondered if I was lazy. That day, sitting with a practitioner who was trauma-informed- changed all of our lives. Suddenly, I was not lazy or crazy. We started to have an inkling of how my childhood impacted both my physical and mental health long-term and that it was not my fault. We started finding supplements and discovered modalities such as EMDR, yoga, and books like The Body Keeps the Score. Now, we could be a team working together to heal instead of getting caught up in the consistent, frustrating repetition of useless arguments.
Let’s re-wind, shall we? Twenty-two year old Mimi got married and moved out of her parent’s home all at once. I had stayed at home because of the umbrella theory of authority I was raised with. I stayed home because the theology I was raised with meant I was going to be kept safe under my father’s authority until I was then moved under being a husband’s authority. I was raised being taught that being a girl meant I was incapable of being out from under the umbrellas of authority. I was raised to live a life submitted to men. I was raised to be a wife or a missionary. Martyrdom being considered holy and optimal in either of those options. There were not many openly happy marriages in the church I grew up in. Basically, it was like being raised a Victorian in modern times. Isn’t it how so many of us were raised in the Evangelical church in the late 90s and early 2000s? I want to say, somehow, I was lucky enough to marry someone who while being raised similarly, did not buy into any of the archaic theologies or philosophies regarding women. I married someone who saw me as a person and refused to let me stay small or be what the kids call now, a ‘trad wife’. He has always challenged me (much to my initial annoyance) to grow and evolve. I thought marriage would mean massive shifts of freedom and lack of stress. I thought leaving my parent’s home would solve my problems. I was wrong. What happened instead was a sort of deep physical exhaustion and collapse. I was safe and instead of having energy, I sort of toppled over. I felt numb and hazy. Either I was turned off or I would feel everything at 100. I did not know how to stay and fight things out. I would just run. My brain was operating at such a primal level. Everything was survival or flight or fight. Within the first year of marriage in addition to all the challenges I was living, we suffered a miscarriage of our first pregnancy and then also later became pregnant with our now oldest daughter. I struggled deeply in that first year through fatigue, depression, and a lack of knowing how to communicate to the person I loved the most. I suffered and he suffered in my mess. Somehow, we found incremental growth and change and I was able to gain resilience and trust.
I was barely hanging on but I did. I didn’t know then that I had such strength and grit. It has been a slow and steady course, more like the tortoise than the hare. Twelve years later and today, I know the stuff I’m made from. It makes me wonder in amazement that the strength was inside me all along, carrying me through. I wonder in gratitude for my body and brain, that while keeping the score of what I was living through- they also managed to keep me alive. Thankfully, all my life there have always been glimmers of light in the darkness and I’ve edged along, following my gut and the flickering light. I’ve traced a path through and found healing and a path to wholeness. I’ve become grounded and steadied, comfortable in my own skin and discovered how to love myself. In this place, I’ve found myself able to love more authentically and forgive more deeply.
Mimi, Thank you for sharing your experience with ACE. Admittedly, I have not heard about this before. So your piece here is a strong incentive for me to learn more about it (and be watchful of how it might affect my kids).