新媒网 · 跨境数据社区

✨ What if you learned very early on to be AFRAID of your Beauty (&/or Sexuality)? ✨ I was maybe in second or third grade. Standing at the public bus stop on McKnight Road, with my Very Young (in her early 20s) mother and my younger sister. **My mother had me when she was 16 years old.** The highway was a bit scary to me. It was warm outside, my mom was wearing a green, terry cloth, wrap around dress. Suddenly, I sensed the danger. My mother’s body stiffened and she held my hand a bit tighter. He was tall. Full of sexual energy directed at my mother. She stood taller. Full of primal fear. (It would be years later until I realized she was likely also *very triggered* from the abuse she faced at my bio-dad’s hands & had fled from only a few years prior, with a black eye that covered half of her face). He came closer, walking a dirty walk and saying things I didn’t verbally understand but knew the non-verbal meaning of clear enough. My mom was being circled like prey. My mother’s lip curled, she tried to be light about it, she glanced downward to us over and over while speaking to him in a pleading voice, repeatedly saying… “Not when I’m with my children”. I don’t remember what happened next. Either it ended? The bus came? Or I blocked it? But I will Never Forget that core memory. Fast forward to my being 28 years old, pregnant with my first child and walking down Carson Street in South Side. I don’t know what triggered this, but I was walking happily to the little boutique I was headed to, when suddenly I had a PTSD episode. [It would take me another 15 years to even know that I had C-PTSD or what the word “triggered” meant.] I had this overwhelming fear and this extremely loud thought “If someone attacks me, I can’t run away now because I’m pregnant”. I gained a lot of weight with my pregnancy. I went from feeling very strong (red belt in ninjutsu) to feeling completely weak, vulnerable & helpless. Some of that was physically true, my body going through so many changes that weakened me. But, most of that was purely Mental. It was a bizarre mental break down. I kept rationally asking myself, “Tracy, who is going to attack you?” Telling myself, “No one wants to hurt you”! But my Fear of Being Raped became greater than ever in that moment (& it was a lifelong fear that I had way before I knew what sex actually was). As a child, I had come up with a backup plan - after a staggering (in retrospect) amount of thought around the subject… If someone ever tried to rape me, I made the Formal Decision that I would rather die and that I would hold my breath until I did. (If I couldn’t fight them off. I even justified that I would be ok with Killing someone if need be, to protect myself from that violation.) I was in elementary school. 😢 I was too little to understand that holding my breath wouldn’t have worked, but I’m grateful I didn’t know that and it soothed my tiny, troubled mind into feeling empowered in the event of that potential threat). It would take many years later for me to have compassion for a tiny child who was so afraid of being raped that she needed to come up with her backup plan! 😢 And to understand how that has affected my relationship with my outer appearance. My desire to look attractive in conflict with my fear of being a target. I often wonder how much of my weight gain after I became a mother was a subconscious layer of protection? Feeling I would become less of a target? Hiding myself? When we go through life with these types of fears… they direct us. They walk with us, right below the surface of our conscious awareness, twisting and turning our path. They can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors. Why did I not go to that interview or tryout? - we beat ourselves up! Not knowing our “fear” was not simply of being rejected, but perhaps it was much more primal than that? Perhaps we were afraid of being SEEN? When we’ve spent so much time trying to be invisible? Self-Awareness is so important! The Journey Within and Through our Fears, Blocks and Limitations will set us Free! Ps) In case you need to hear this, Therapy is Not an admission of Weakness! I PROMISE YOU 🙏 it is an act of Strength and Courage! Much Love & Light Always! ~ Tracy 💫