Personal Soul Injuries
Imagine this: you’re interviewing for a job you think you really want. You go through the gauntlet of Zoom interviews over several days.
This was my situation when I started this Substack.
I realized I had a lot of energy and interest for all the health related information I was processing and I needed an outlet for it. Funny, agencies aren’t looking for info dumps on CranioSacral therapy, tongue posture, and my favorite tools for feet!
They needed to see my energy and interest for insights and brands - and I showed ‘em. I did get an offer.
It wasn’t right for me, but the outcome of writing about health from my perspective has absolutely been right for me.
Writing about my understanding of good health has underscored my understanding that life is about figuring out our gifts and then using them to help others.
Not everyone is interested in my help. And that’s ok! This Substack isn’t for everyone and I did experience a bunch of unsubscribes at the beginning. At the same time, I have received some very positive, soul soaring feedback from folks for whom this stuff is hitting just right. No matter what day of the week I send these, there is an average 50% open rate.
What I didn’t realize when I started, however, was that Project 100 isn’t just an outlet for what I found most interesting in this special interest of mine. Project 100 is a reflection of a compulsion I have to speak up when I think I’ve learned something that warrants being shared. I view this compulsion - meaning something that amps my nervous system - as soothing a trauma response. For lack of a perfect phrase, I have a soul injury.
A few formative experiences shaped my essence to be one that needs to share and encourage robust health.
When I was nine, my mother’s mother became ill with emphysema and needed full time care. Nana came to live with us.
She changed the vibe in our house for sure. She needed an electric hospital bed and she also had a Clapper to turn the TV on and off. Her own TV, in her room. That was cool.
My dad built a wooden ramp so she could be wheeled from the bedroom part of the house through our sunken formal living room into the kitchen and den.
She only lived a few months. She enjoyed playing a tile game called rummy cube. And she also had me read to her from the Bible after school. She had me read the book of Job to her, which if you’re not familiar is an Old Testament classic all about Job experiencing suffering and negotiating with God. It’s not a light read.
This emotional tone was underscored when our family dog died that same year. And my dad’s youngest brother took his own life at twenty. Each experience was too much to process with my highly sensitive kid brain.
I learned that life is fragile.
As good Southerners, we performed the culturally appropriate grieving rituals and never discussed these incidents in any depth.
In my twenties, my dad’s folks passed. First my grandpa, who was suffering from lung cancer in his decline. The one time I go over to their house for an intimate visit with my new husband instead of a big family gathering, somehow his oxygen tank wasn’t set right, he collapsed, and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
My grandma lived a few more years after his death, perceived as clinging on to her home. She finally caved to the idea of moving into an assisted living apartment and once moved in, died a few days later.
These are not deaths with positive feeling tones etched on the essence of my being.
I try to see them in their historical context as lessons to take away: All of my grandparents smoked. Doctors used to recommend cigarettes in advertising. Cigarettes were given to service members, so both my nana and grandpa would have been given them. I viscerally learned the impact on multiple people’s lives.
I learned loneliness is devastating. That motivated me to apply and then train as a counselor with the Crisis Textline to learn language that demonstrates listening and diffuses strong, impulsive emotions.
I learned that dogs are here a short time to teach us about the value and meaning that comes from caring for another creature, both ways.
I believe I attuned to the feeling tone of desperation each of these family members felt wanting to die and having to wait.
I attuned to the depression my mom experienced in shifting her relationship with her mother from a child/parent dynamic to parent/child one, paired with the honor to be able to help someone die with dignity. She processed these events while also performing the role of household manager with two small kids.
And I attuned to the social norm of stuffing your feelings right down and masking that you are A-OK.
Soul Injury Defined
There may not be scientific studies about this, but I now see soul injuries in the emotional release work I do. While a soul injury is a subjective concept highly dependent on an individual’s outlook, I’ve found most people identify with the idea of an enduring essence of self whether they feel comfortable with the word ‘soul’ or not.
Each person’s unique perceptions of the events of their lives travels with them. We often use the term baggage to label the difficult stuff. Does it not make sense that we also carry our perceptions of the stories of our predecessors? That our epigenetics are activated or not by the experiences of our ancestors?
These perceptions can carry deep, underlying wounds that affect a person’s well-being, sense of self, and ability to connect with others. And while PTSD is well known, post traumatic growth is becoming almost as well known.
Society Level Soul Injuries
America crossed the threshold of 247 years this week.
She’s just a hair over 200 years older than me.
About seven years ago, I became deeply interested in explicitly stating my own definition of a good citizen. I read The People’s History of the United States. I read Lies My Teacher Told Me. I recommend both of these books if you are interested in the US, particularly if you choose to live here.
I know I don’t have to live here. I am able to live quite well outside of the US.
By living in Amsterdam, however, I saw just how I would struggle ever to be more than an observer. It’s not impossible to become a citizen of another country, and my deep respect to those called or pushed to do so, but it is a huge undertaking to learn another language, culture, and administrative system. It’s also a choice to be an expat forever, still able to vote at home from afar, kind of like the grumpy old men muppets up in the balcony.
After experiencing 35 countries in the world, making my home in the US feels aligned for me.
And with that choice, I want to find some peace with my place in our complex history. Because as I’ve learned more about trauma and the body holding onto it and transforming it into illness, the more I believe releasing emotional tension patterns is the prime thrust of good health.
My naturopath estimates 25-75% of her patients’ chronic health conditions are based in emotions that were not fully processed in the moment and the mental health that results.
Our bodies keep the score.
Can’t you see it in our opioid epidemic? In how we are 5% of the world’s population but consume about 50% of the world’s pharmaceuticals?
Statistics are revealing. So too are the powerful, painful artistic expressions of America’s soul injury. I invite you to listen to Billie Holiday here and feel the pain she is channeling forward.
And this performance by Jill Scott at the Essence Festival held in New Orleans this past week:
As Taylor Swift says:
I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror.
Humans are so good at avoidance! And America takes the flag cake on this one.
Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Gordon Wood, made some observations about America that (mostly) ring true to me:
America is not an ethnic nation. It’s not a religious nation. It’s not a tribal nation.
It is a nation devoted to an idea. An idea that was best articulated in one of the most important sentences ever written in the English language by [slave-owner] Thomas Jefferson that all men are created equal.
He did not include everyone in that sentence.
But the story of America is the expansion of that sentence.
The ever unfolding - however slow, however tragic - inclusion of meaning. That’s the American Dream. We have made progress. Many others have not.
This is very personal and difficult for me to write about.
Having recently come together with a group of my peers to study emotional release, the prerequisite is arriving with an intention to work on our own soul injuries.
What I learned is that our stories don’t start with us.
We are embodied, sure.
But we are also undoubtedly embedded. Into our family. Into work teams. And into many other layers of culture. We spent four days getting on the table and then sitting in a circle sharing our reflections. We are therapists and we all readily admit we still have more to unpack.
The story of America’s soul injury needs more than a day per year to process. How could I possibly begin to sit with the intertwined layers of racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and perfectionism I was socialized in? Those bags alone offer plenty to unpack.
The 4th of July holiday is meant to acknowledge the 247 years of the ever evolving idea of America. But it often becomes a superficial opportunity to consume processed foods and contrived displays of air pollution instead of the profound opportunity to look at what our souls need to process and express.
There is an opportunity to reevaluate the societal brief imposed by the place that we live. There is an opportunity to reassess acting like everything is ok if it’s not. Because there is no escaping struggle and tragedy for any human, as far as I know.
This week, I invite you to look inward at your own emotional baggage. Do you have some things that might benefit from some time pondering through writing, making art, spending time in nature, or seeking a form of therapy that resonates with you?
And beyond the soul injuries you can most easily bring to mind, are there others that might be on another level you have not previously considered worth some reflection and processing?
Here’s just one thought exercise in hopes of higher consciousness and expanded meaning among my fellow Americans as well as global neighbors.
The Three Zones in Becoming Anti-Racist: Which Zone Best Represents Where You Spend Your Time?
FEAR ZONE:
I deny racism is a problem.
I avoid hard questions.
I strive to be comfortable.
I talk to others that look and think like me.
LEARNING ZONE:
I recognize racism is a present and current problem.
I seek out questions that make me uncomfortable.
I understand my own privilege in ignoring racism.
I educate myself about race and structural racism.
I am vulnerable about my own biases and knowledge gaps.
I listen to others who look and think differently than me.
GROWTH ZONE
I identify how I may unknowingly benefit from racism.
I promote and advocate for policies and leaders that are anti-racist.
I sit with my discomfort.
I speak out when I see racism in action.
I educate my peers when I see racism in action.
I educate my peers how racism harms our profession.
I don’t let mistakes deter me from being better.
I yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized.
I surround myself with others who think and look differently than me.
Don’t sleep on that last one. Really think about it. I actually think it’s written poorly on reflection, because it’s ego-centric. Perhaps it would be better if it read:
I invite along, welcome, and do all I can to respect others who think and look differently than me.
And perhaps even one step further, knowing the amygdala is the watchdog of the brain. It is constantly scanning and asking “Am I safe?” and “Do I matter?”
I find ways to soothe the understandably hyper-vigilant, easily disregulated nervous systems in my fellow citizens.
That seems like a powerful brief to me as I ride with America on another lap around this hot, hot sun.
Have you drank some water today? Be safe out there.