Dear K'diwa readers
The K'diwa epilogue will be up by the weekend probably.
A handful of people reread K'diwa last week for comfort and left comments about it, and so to comfort all of us including me, I'm writing that last piece of it I always meant to write. The background of K'diwa, as many of you intuited, is steeped in my own trauma and more importantly my recovery journey. The message of K'diwa is that deep healing and comfort are possible even if you've survived devastation. The trick is to stay alive long enough.
I haven't slept in several days. The election put me into the worst PTSD regression I've ever experienced. I'm American. The people who just hijacked my country raised me. I escaped a predestined life of jean skirts and submission when I was a teenager. Coping with the fact that these people have managed to regain a form of authority over me has been impossible to take in without falling apart somewhat. As a survivor of rape and sexual abuse, the air stings with an ambient threat these days. And as a woman with a girlfriend I want to marry, there is a lot of immediate uncertainty in my life and community. But PTSD works like it works. I know its tricks pretty well by now. Once the adrenaline and the cortisol cycle out, what's left will be me, and the hugeness of my resolve. For the last year I have been training as a community organizer. Community is our safety now. I wanted to make it known that if you are an American in the mid-Atlantic (DMV) region and if you have an interest in attending a trauma writing workshop that I teach in Baltimore, message me privately and I will give you details.
I am not despairing and I hope you aren't either. We're going to look after each other. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.
