“Come anyway.”
The two words that change my life.
The save. The rescue. The miracle.
Come anyway.
I do.
I flee with a suitcase packed in less than fifteen minutes (a record, folks), and with outfits that perfectly color coordinate. I leave the first apartment and the pink sofa and the twinkle lights shaped like stars in honor of the Lone Star State, a space designed for daydreams and rest and spiritual nourishment as I embarked on an Austin big-city-living quest.
And it’s no longer safe.
The past twenty-hours have been a nightmare, and that first apartment becomes a hornet’s nest, a cat-and-mouse game, and he emerges from the alley when I get back from work, and instinct flares and charges me forward in a series of movement, motions, decisions that in retrospect are eerily calm.
In the closet, I text Barb, my former Airbnb hostess in Austin. I tell her there’s trouble, I need to leave, and is the room available?
“No, but come anyway. We’ll figure something out.”
I arrive in hot pink pants and a rose patterned shirt, and meet once more Barb and her pit bull goddess of a dog, Kali Ma. They welcome me, and in a daze, I follow them through a flourishing garden that wasn’t here when I stayed a year ago.
I sit on the patio with Barb and her daughter, Erica, and Erica’s husband, Ryan, in the late evening light. Their dogs, Chica and Zeek lick my feet. I press thoughts about police, the landlord, getting out of the lease into the back of my mind as I eat (how do I have the hunger to eat?) homemade tacos (ah, yes, how could I turn down homemade tacos?), and they remain the best tacos I’ve ever had because they are safety, family, belonging, tribe.
I snuggle with Kali Ma, and again, think her namesake, the Hindu goddess of destruction and rebirth, makes a timely reappearance.
I disengaged from my life in Kentucky to be reborn in Austin. I didn’t anticipate this episode, a stalker to literally appear from shadows and trigger a traumatic response of flight that flings me into another cycle of destruction and rebirth.
The woman I almost was is gone. She’s been reborn countless times in a year well-traveled in centuries of lives lived and lived with fear and courage all bottled and exploding in the same breath, the same heartbeat of being.
The journey of healing leads me to this post.
Carefully I walk toward the edge and look over to what happened this time last year, and this is why there’s a post, a writing released to shake out residue of trauma.
(After a traumatic event, animals shake. They instinctively know to reclaim their body through vigorous movement. They don’t flee their bodies, or abandon their hearts, they embody, they embrace, they breathe and shake until the fear is let out.)
This is a shake. A shaking of words. A release, a shed, another layer thrown off, a longer exhalation liberated.
As I shake, as I move this experience out of my fingertips and into a story to be illuminated, seen, breathed into being and then no longer a part of me, I realize with admiration and pride, I stood by my own side.
I advocate. I heal.
I determine to be my own advocate, my own healer, because I believe in myself completely and do not abandon myself.
I trust my own instinct over the police, the landlord, even people whom I love and their attempts to water-down the experience, push doubt into my interpretation of events, and explain away this man’s behavior.
I stay true and follow through with my intuition, my gut.
(And my women, please trust your gut. It’s powerful and all-knowing. Do not let this patriarchal society whip doubt into what your bones know to be real and valid.)
I take full charge of my healing, too. I gather my terrified self up and buy the sequin tennis shoes and speak to the friends who are soul-tribe and follow the pull to go to Denver for a trauma-informed yoga training, which recycles my pain and brightens perspective on how this suffering can be utilized as empathetic medicine for students who share yoga space with me.
I sweat, stretch, and even speak out loud the story to healers who live compassion, and one new and lifetimes old friend squeezes my hand and says, “Baby, healing is an ongoing process.”
So when the lightening hits, because triggered trauma is a lightening bolt for me, and the strike can be unleashed because of a certain way a man looks at me, a type of car, a drive bordering on the former neighborhood, I breathe in power; I release fear. And when the strike flashes up the left side of my body, I practice the tools delivered in a circle of yoga mats in the cozy Denver yoga studio.
I shift into gentle witnessing, into soft breathing, into a recalibration of what is real right here, right now, and become present in the senses to reconnect to reality.
And I do not abandon myself, and because I choose to befriend, to advocate, to safeguard my healing, I listen and witness how other people respond to this story, to my story, from the lens of curiosity and compassion, letting it be like water as they say,
“Can you imagine if something had actually happened.”
A collage of experiences, memories, responses, even ancestry shapes how we perceive the world. This incident for me was traumatic, and may not register as a traumatic experience for you. And what would it take for this experience to be deemed traumatic enough to win your valid approval? Hold space in love regardless. Be present in the listening and all that is needed is a “I’m sorry.” Sincere and complete, this is a response that helps another feel seen.
“You’re not over that, yet?”
Healing is an ongoing process. There is no timeline.
“Well, these experiences make you stronger.”
Difficult experiences only make us stronger if we meet the pain and actively show up in our healing. Stepping into suffering with consciousness, mindfulness, compassion takes grit and bravery, and we can’t bypass the pain to instant resiliency.
I understand that holding space for a person, especially a person we love and care about deeply, is difficult, frightening, uncomfortable, and probably triggering as well for past hurts that are not wanted to be reexamined or have been suppressed. Finding a tribe of listeners, a tight circle of flame-bright spirits unafraid of pain and the dark, has been crucial to my healing. Not everyone deserves to hear your story, and most do not have the tools to respond. No judgment. And it’s all right if a mistake was made in sharing to a person who reacted coolly. There is no mistake. We’re just speaking our truths until we recognize that our words are landing with a fierce and tender heart that can hold us in love no matter what.
Show up in love when someone is hurting. Call. Meet. Send the email. Write the letter. Check in. There’s no need for advice, or for sharing a story of your own trauma (may there be a time and place for that story, love, and not after someone has just freshly shared theirs), and no need to analyze or ask questions, just be in the presence of love for the speaker, the sharer, the survivor. The purity of intention communicates even and especially in silence, and with a few mindful words.
Come anyway.
Barb makes space for me. Holds space for me. Walks with me.
This is the shake, too, a walking meditation to breathe in Texas light, a sway into woods, pass streams, and into blankets of grass that are dreamy and soft and sole-feet tickling. A reclaiming of trust, of present moment serenity, of coming home, again and again, to my body.
We walk to the Capitol. Kali Ma, the pit bull goddess, rushes along the trimmed lawns of businesses, leash-less, wildly attentive to new scents on an evening stroll that guides us away from our usual park stroll to the heartbeat of Austin’s downtown.
The sky fades into shades of periwinkle, and I stroll at a pace that is slow and steady, keeping in stride with Barb, my room mate, my spirited Austin explorer, my go-to guru for nutrition, taxes, and spiritual advice.
We talk trauma, addictions, healing.
Come anyway.
Her instant generosity changes my life. She takes me in without hesitation, and this act of courageous kindness still inspires me.
Living in Austin still amazes me. I am beginning to dare again into that feeling of city swooning joy. I am beginning to break open to receiving and appreciating a love language that Barb fluently speaks, an instant giving, a selflessness communicated through thoughtful doing, including, cooking, listening.
Come anyway.
This is a language I commit to speaking, too.
This is the unconditional befriending that leads me through the advocacy, the healing.
Come anyway, terrified, trembling, brave and determined.
Come anyway, messy and all-knowing.
Come in love to the dark night of the soul, to the suffering, to the pain.
Come in love and release the fears of saying the wrong thing and shed any ego-plan to preach.
Come in love and be a presence of peace, of unconditional, unbridled caring that ripples remedies into the very air of shared space.
I come exactly as I am. She takes me in. And almost a year since our paths crossed that fateful second time, we walk and take our time as we step forward into twilight.