Kimberly Ann Johnson Quotes

A trauma is a place where it becomes impossible to remain connected in and to the present moment. Trauma is a part of the human condition! Healing is also a part of the human condition, and we have the capacity to transform difficult experiences into a wellspring of personal and spiritual power. Trauma occurs when there is a rupture in our boundary system and our capacity to metabolize an experience is compromised. Every single human being on earth has trauma. It's an interruption of our ability to stay in the present moment, anything that lags or is not harmonized on the layers of body/mind/spirit/soul/psyche. Rachael Maddox has called it an" embodied interpersonal violation hangover." Ale Duarte called it "an open loop." Lately, many people have been telling me their stories and then telling me how they are "lucky," that "it's not that bad" compared to other people's situations. All of those statements happen in the mind, and they are largely attempts to keep ourselves from feeling the depth of our pain or sorrow. We may have white privilege, we may have class privilege, we may have had homebirth privilege—the animals of our bodies don't actually understand mental and philosophical constructs like privilege. What those constructs contribute to on an individual healing level is a lot of confusion, shame and guilt, that in spite of everything we "have," we may have still experienced helplessness, hurt, anger, or outrage or collapse, or whatever it is that our system felt. We actually cannot control those responses.

WomanCode by Alisa Vitti.

When your system is under threat, your response is not voluntary—your rational mind is not doing the choosing. You don’t decide to fight, flee, freeze, or collapse. Your nervous system responds with the capacity it has in that moment, based on how it’s been conditioned by past experiences, what was modeled to you as a child, what you’ve tried before that worked or didn’t work, and where you have gotten stuck in a rut.

Even though empathy and nurturing, the feminine traits that are activated in early motherhood, are enormously valuable.. most of us haven’t learned to value them equally with productivity and intellectual prowess.