WAKE UP CALLS: A WOMAN AWAKENING PIECES IT TOGETHER
In this blog series— “Wake Up Calls,” —the threads of seeking, loss, and discovery are woven together through personal stories—creating a tapestry of a life’s calling. This calling is an answer to the cries of humanity as we attempt to survive ourselves.
As I get ready to post the first blog in my “Wake Up Calls” series, I am struck by why this story, in particular, has been on my mind. I wrote about this first wake up call a few weeks ago. Since then a great deal has shifted with tensions building at an alarming rate. I view the story from a much richer awakened landscape as I get ready to post it. I am more aware of my white privilege, internalized patriarchy, and a deep divide between white women and women of color. Turns out I am only at the beginning of this journey as I look back on previous wake ups.
A perfect storm of events invited me to peek into a wormhole of potential ancestral and collective healing from two perspectives. One is the perspective of a privileged white woman living in the Southern United States. The other perspective is the multigenerational trauma of racism and misogyny in a “power over” patriarchal culture seen through the eyes of my Mother, Jacqueline Longmire, who lives in my hometown of Louisville, KY. We are talking on the phone the night after 7 people were shot downtown not far from where she lives. The shooting followed a peaceful and passionate call for justice protest for 26 year old African American woman, Brionna Taylor. She was an EMT who wanted to be a nurse. She was in her own bed when police broke in on a narcotics investigation and shot her 8 times. I’m not a detail person. Bottom line, she was innocent.
That’s the backdrop of current happenings, now back to my mom’s story. She is telling me about the police on horseback preparing for riot control followed by the sounds of gunshots later in the evening. In her heightened triggered state, she recounts her earlier trauma from her high school years. It was 1958 in Clinton, TN when her high school was destroyed by dynamite after being one of the first southern schools to desegregate. She talked about how she remembered seeing the KKK riding on horses with their hoods and the crosses burning. She told me how her beloved minister was badly beaten after organizing support and escorting The Clinton 12, the first black students registered at Clinton HS. We were definitely in a cosmic vortex and I knew her story needed to be told many times. Now I will share mine.
An Early Wake Up Call
I was 18, a college freshman. My Mother had recently entered therapy for depression and anxiety related to childhood sexual abuse. I had learned that my Grandfather, Great Grandfather, and Uncle had all been her perpetrators. This was mind boggling for an empathic sensitive child of a mother who was navigating some dark and dicey terrain. We were a close family and I was raised in a home where we talked openly about sex and bodily functions. The fact that this secret had been underlying my Mother’s family psyche was certainty fuel for the wounded healer in me and years of unpacking for a future psychotherapist, both as client and therapist.
I felt enraged about how this could happen and it must have ignited a search. The secret was out now and it explained why the infrequent visits to my Grandparents house always felt awkward and creepy. We were city/suburban folk. They were definitely country, some would say hillbilly, and not much for words. I remember the smell of musty antiques, chewing tobacco and the cold hollowness of my Grandmother. My Mother was raised by her Grandmother unlike her 3 older brothers which was for the best. However, she still grew up unprotected in order to protect the abuser and keep the secret for no telling how many generations.
My Mother began a heroine’s journey of healing from immense trauma and I was taking my first steps out into semi-adult freedom. I couldn’t wait to get out of high school, more alive than ever and excited to find my way. I pledged a sorority and part of our requirement was to do volunteer work in the community. I chose the Rape Relief Center and trained to be a victim’s advocate. I think I was looking for a way to help the cause to stop violence against women and the woman who raised me. It was in the days of beepers and I was on call for a 24-hour shift once a month. I answered crisis calls and met victims if they wanted an advocate to meet them at the hospital to do a standard rape kit. Sometimes the hospital would call and request us to come.
On this particular night the hospital called in the middle of the night and I went to meet a rape victim who had been badly beaten. When I got there, the hospital staff told me she was most likely a prostitute—perhaps to prepare me for something. I’m not sure. My innocence thus far however did not prepare me for the shock of seeing someone in this state. She was an African American woman. I stifled a gag reflex at the site of her injuries and the stench of violence and blood. She was unable to meet my gaze or ask for anything from me. I had no idea what to offer other than my willingness to be there with her.
Looking back now, I think I had some kind of white privilege shame attack but I had no idea how to identify it back then. Her image haunted me and for some reason, perhaps with this odd form of shame, I never talked about it with anyone. This felt like an initiation into the reality of darkness and how our culture has attempted to disempower and beat down the dark goddess, witch, mystical women, queer women, women of color. I only put those words to it now, looking back. It was a shock, an awakening to my white, middle-class suburban privilege. It is a recognition of an important thread of truth that I sought, experienced directly, and continued to seek.
I am a woman on fire and ready to burn for our sisters of color, all women, all children, future generations and the men who support us. I am answering the call for new spiritual feminism. I am asking that we join our worlds, walk between them, and learn from one another until we have come together in a new level of consciousness. Divine Feminine values and embodiment turn powerlessness into empowerment. They turn “power over” to “power with” others and have the capacity to turn the existing paradigm into a free world of empowered humans. Come on! Let’s be free!
Blessed Be!
