I’ve been sitting on this blog post for quite a while now, and I finally feel like my thoughts have percolated and settled enough for me to write it. It’s changed substantially from when I first started drafting it a couple months ago.

First I want to make a confession: I totally underestimated how much publishing a very vulnerable story of sexual assault and healing would require me to work through so much fear and resistance, and how much deeper I’d be called to go in my healing process. As it turns out, despite being a dancer and having experience performing onstage in front of huge audiences, this was a whole new level of being seen – and a much more personal one, at that. And it was scary as shit.

On top of that, the momentum that #MeToo had gained while I was in the process of writing my chapter meant that stories of similar trauma were everywhere: all over the news, all over social media, and a constant topic of conversation wherever you went. Hardly a day went by without a new revelation of yet another powerful man having abused women, and everyone seemed to have their opinions on what was happening, how it was happening, and what women “should” or “shouldn’t” do in response.

I didn’t even realize how much all of this was overwhelming me at first. But sometime in February, I started to notice I was feeling a profound exhaustion that I couldn’t seem to shake off. I’d also developed a habit that was pretty unusual for me: I suddenly found myself wanting to cocoon myself and zone out in front of a screen (and I don’t normally watch much TV). I started taking bubble baths in the dark while I watched old X Files episodes (I call them Spooky Bubble Baths**), and this became a regular thing for me.

Around this time I listened to a podcast where the host (the awesome Thais Sky) mentioned that with all the cases of assault, harassment, rape and abuse being front and centre in the news and public conversation, for so many of us this was a deeply painful time where past traumas we may not have thought of in years were being brought to the surface every single day. She gave a potent reminder to take care of ourselves and our boundaries during this process, and I burst into tears: she’d just put into words what was going on for me internally. My exhaustion and escapism made perfect sense. True healing requires boundaries to contain the wound and the pain that comes from it – we can’t just leave the wound raw and exposed all the time. I’d been delving into a deep wound and was feeling all the aftermath of pain, but I had no boundaries to protect myself and hold me in my grief.

No wonder I’d been hanging out in womb-like warmth and darkness, immersing myself in stories about things that aren’t of this world! This was an attempt to balance myself. I needed better boundaries.

I started to think about how I could actually honour this process rather than just forcing myself through it, and how I could set boundaries to create a safe container for grieving, anger, and ultimately, a deeper level of healing. This also required me to think a lot about what I owed myself in this process, and what I did and did not owe to others.

I’m sharing here the list of reminders I made for myself to create that safe container. If any of it feels right, take it, use it, or adapt it – and keep in mind that lists like these evolve as you do 🙂

1. Be deliberate with boundaries in your life.
   It’s important to note that my bubble baths (though very entertaining) were not actually self-care and retreat in the true sense: they were my way of shutting off and collapsing due to overwhelm. They were a response to a lack of real self care. The antidote to this kind of shut-down is being deliberate with our boundaries, so that we’re creating that safe container for ourselves intentionally rather than being forced to fall into it.Over the last few months, I’ve become much more intentional about what I will and will not allow to take up time and space in my life. As a very introverted person, I’ve needed much more time in solitude, because this is how I process things. I’ve put limits on how available I am to others –  including when, where, and for how long I’ll see them – and also on what things I may or may not be up to discussing. And I want to be clear and honest here: talking about boundaries is easy, but setting and standing behind them is not. Some people will resist your boundaries. Some will get mad, and some will just disappear. I’ve definitely had all of these things happen to me. It’s shitty and it’s painful, but ultimately the way people respond to our boundaries reveals a lot about the quality of the relationship we have with them in the first place.
2. You have the right to redraw your boundaries day by day.
   Boundaries need to be strong and intentional, but they also work against us when they’re too rigid. I learned pretty quickly that depending on situation, the context, what my week had been like, where I was in my cycle, etc, the exact same boundary with a person could feel reassuring and safe one day but stifling and isolating the next.I learned (and am still learning) to flow more with how I feel and the effect that the conversation has on my mental health. Over the last several months, assault, rape and violence against women have become topics of everyday conversation in a way I don’t think they ever have been before – and in some ways, this is a really positive step forward, but it can also be damaging to have our trauma constantly up for discussion. And honestly, your level of energy and emotional resources on any given day can make the difference between a conversation on this topic being productive or destructive. And here’s where your boundaries can be pliable: the fact that you and a friend may have had a great discussion yesterday about the Bill Cosby verdict or your workplace’s updated harassment policies doesn’t mean that you will benefit from or are even capable of the same type of discussion today – and you can say so.I know this seems obvious, and I think we know it to be true intellectually, but how often do we actually exercise this right, rather than just going along with the conversation because we did so before? We can use our right to say “Nah, I can’t even with this today/tomorrow/this week/this month etc.”

   Oh, and also – we need to keep in mind that others have this same right. We need to be mindful of how others are responding (or not) to our attempts at having these conversations, no matter how well-intentioned our desire for discussion is, and respect their right to not engage. Pay attention to body language and tone, and let’s remember that we never know what experiences have been brought to the forefront for someone over the last few months – they may be processing things that they’d kept buried for most of their lives and can now no longer avoid. This shit is hard. Respect the process. This is how we create genuine connections that elevate and sustain us.

3.  You are not obligated to engage in debates on command.
   In the last point I referred to “discussions” and “conversations” — exchanges that     are productive and mutually beneficial, where both people want a positive  outcome. But there’s another common type of exchange that’s been happening often in the waves of #MeToo: so-called “debates” that are really just people (ok, usually men) playing devil’s advocate for sport. You know who I mean: the ones who say “but haven’t we gone too far now, and made it hard to be a man?” or “don’t you think we’re starting to view everything as harassment now?” (No and no. Duh.) These are not productive or mutually beneficial exchanges. These people are expecting you to “prove” your vulnerable and traumatic personal experiences while they treat the entire interaction like a form of entertainment.  This type of “debate” puts you as a woman in the position of having to convince the other person of your humanity and the validity of your lived experience. They’re emotionally draining, and usually end with you feeling exhausted and dismissed by the other person, who viewed the entire conversation as a game to begin with and never intended to take your pain seriously.It’s fine to not engage with these people, and say you’re not open to discussing the topic or just flat out end the conversation. The other person will probably not like this. That’s also fine. People don’t need to like your boundaries in order to respect them.
4. You are not obligated to “educate” people who resist learning.
   Over the last few months, I’ve seen so many women exhaust and exasperate themselves in an effort to get men to see why they should care about feminism, justice, and the conversation around consent and boundaries. I’ve done this myself for years, thinking that if only these people could be properly informed, they could be convinced and their perception would shift.I’ve learned this is often a waste of time.

   It’s not that I think education itself is a waste of time – it isn’t. But education requires openness and readiness to learn, and a willingness to take responsibility. There are plenty of men who are genuinely open to learning, self-reflection and dialogue…and you know what? They’re usually easy to recognize because their actions show their level of openness and readiness. They do the reading and the reflecting, they listen, they get uncomfortable, and they keep themselves accountable. They do not require prompting, pleading, prodding, or convincing. The simple truth is this: real change requires hard work, and people who really want change really do the damn work. Don’t spend your time, energy, or wisdom on people who don’t want it in the first place. 

   5. Avoid people who ask you to bypass your pain.
     Somewhere along the way in the realms of wellness and spirituality, people seem to have internalized the idea that emotions like grief, anger, fear, etc. are “negative”, and that we should work hard to “transcend” them so we can be positive and feel good again. They say things like “you need to focus on  love”, or “we always have to show compassion”, or “anger is unevolved”.

   This is essentially just avoidance and denial dressed up in flowery language. At its core, this kind of bypassing is a defense mechanism that likely relates to that person’s own unhealed wounds: after all, if they can’t hold space for their own grief and anger, they won’t have the capacity to witness yours. And beyond that, I rarely find that these kinds of statements can bear the whole weight of the truth anyways. Focusing on love doesn’t mean showing forced softness and sweetness all the time. True compassion can be fierce as fuck. And in my experience, anger is often the catalyst for evolution, not a barrier to it. 

   The space of healing can be a rough one. Spend as much of it as you can with people who can hold the wholeness of you.

   6. You don’t have to prove how “healed” you are to anyone.
   On top of our tendency to deny difficult feelings, our culture also has an obsession with moving on and being “over” things. We often speak of healing like it’s a concrete place that we arrive at after following a specific path, and we’re all eager to find that path and just finally get there.

   Except….I’ve never seen any evidence that this is true. I’ve actually come to see healing as a kind of deepening, like a tree: we progress and grow outward only so far as our roots continue to grow downward. In other words, there really isn’t any place to “get to”, and there’s no hierarchy of people who are healed vs. people who aren’t. There’s just people at varying degrees of depth in their understanding and integrating of their wounds.

   Knowing this, we need to be careful that we’re not carrying an expectation of ourselves to share vulnerable, personal details of traumatic experiences simply because we feel we “should” be able to do this if we’re truly healed. I do believe there’s great value in vulnerable sharing with an audience of course – but once again, boundaries are what make the difference between sharing being helpful or harmful. I’ve fallen into this trap myself, wanting so badly to be done with my pain that I shared it at times and places where it really didn’t serve me just so I could try to prove that I was in control.

   We don’t need to judge and justify ourselves like this. Healing isn’t linear or convenient or predictable. We’re all continually in a process of tending to our wounds, and owning your story doesn’t mean owing your story.
   

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   I hope some of what I’ve learned in this process resonate with you and can serve you well.
   ** For the record, I do still highly recommend Spooky Bubble Baths, and if they ever become a thing remember you heard it here first! #mulderandscullyforever