Sex Gets Real 210: Jen Cross on healing trauma, dissociation, & the erotic

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What if we could not only write ourselves whole after trauma, but write our way into the erotic and desire?

This week, Jen Cross, author of “Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal from Sexual Trauma,” is here to talk about healing and the power of the page.

Let’s start with the giveaway! Jen generously provided me with a signed copy of her book to offer as part of a giveaway to SGR listeners. If you’d like to put your name in the running, there’s a handy-dandy entry form here.

Jen and I talk about trauma and the ways it can impact us, plus the power of writing and storytelling to move beyond our trauma. There is something extremely meaningful in sitting in a group of people who understand the ways we move through the world and having that witnessed and held.

We also talked about the importance of the people around survivors (partners, family, friends) in getting their own support and holding space for the pain that comes with trauma.

Despite the heaviness of the topic, the conversation is surprisingly light and I had such a great time connecting with Jen.

We also field a listener question from Fearful about dissociating during sex and why we have such high expectations for ourselves around staying present – with and without trauma.

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In this episode, Jen and I talk about:

• How writing and the page is a place where we don’t have to take care of it’s feelings. We don’t have to care whether it gets overwhelmed. We don’t have to worry about it talking back or telling us that we are taking care of it wrong. Writing is a place to be utterly ourselves.
• Jen’s relationship with writing as a means of surviving the aftermath of sexual violence.
• The power of writing and being in community with people who understand our identity or experiences because there is just so much of ourselves that we have to keep silent all of the time.
• The process of healing being a process of learning how to be alive and be a human being.
• The process of recovery is learning to live with ourselves and accept ourselves and accept our complications and accept that we are imperfect.
• Why forgiveness is a burden and a harmful thing to ask of sexual violence survivors. We dive into the good survivor narrative and why we can heal and be happy, healthy humans without forgiving what was done to us.
• How to be supportive of a partner or sister or coworker who is a survivor.
• We also field a listener question from Fearful who is a trauma survivor and they are worried because their mind wanders during sex. We talk about dissociation and being present, even if we haven’t suffered trauma and why it can be so challenging in our world.

About Jen Cross:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: This episode is brought to you by the Explore More Summit. It goes live April 23rd and runs for 10 days. If you haven’t signed up and you want the full experience, go do it now – exploremoresummit.com. There are 30 talks, ten days, hundreds, literally, of pages of workbooks for free, all about self-reflection and growth and yummy questions. Here is a little sneak peek from one of the talks.

Change for change’s sake. That isn’t necessarily evolution transformation. But we’re talking– I think when we’re talking about evolution and transformation, we’re talking about, literally, the alchemy of moving from one state of being to a really different state of being, which is serving us much more. That type of transition is not just like A to B. That is A to ampersand to Mars to C maybe then to Z. It’s very nonlinear. And so there’s an element of being able to keep increasing your capacity and having patience for the cycles in these types of changes, in this… It’s like a little bit– I always say two, three steps forward, five steps back. Two steps forward, one step back. Six steps forward, two steps back. It’s just a little bit of growth integration. “Wow. That was too much!” Baam! Back in, eating the chips at one in the morning like for me. Whatever you’re thinking. So having a tolerance of that, which is really hard. I mean, at least it’s hard for me. Maybe it’s not hard for other people. I mean, I think it’s just that’s a challenging aspect of it.

The alchemy of change, the capacity of how we tolerate uncertainty and being in relationship with each other, that is just one tiny piece of where we’re going with this year’s Explore More Summit. Kink, bodies, love, pleasure, trauma, it is all there. It is free and online. Grab your ticket now at exploremoresummit.com.

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!

Hey, you! Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I am really happy to announce that this week we have a giveaway because of the speaker who so generously sent me a signed copy of their book to give away to one lucky listener. If you like free things, then you should sign up for the Explore More Summit. Just kidding! Keep listening and I will give you details. I’m sure you heard in the intro that Explore More Summit is happening again. I have been working 16-hour days, seven days a week for the past couple of weeks and it’s not slowing down anytime soon, trying to make this thing for you. Oh! I love it!

I also love the conversations that we have here on the podcast. This week’s guest is Jen Cross. Jen wrote the book, “Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal from Sexual Trauma.” I just want to offer to everybody listening, Jen and I do discuss sexual violence and sexual trauma in this episode through sharing our stories and some of the experiences that she has witnessed through her writing groups, of writing about trauma and surviving. It’s a really good chat and it’s surprisingly light. We have a good time talking about writing and bodies and the erotic, the power of community, how we can be better support systems to people who have survived some kind of trauma or sexual violence. It’s amazing. 

Dawn Serra: This book is one of those books that I suspect I will probably read 20 times because every time I’m going to get something new out of it, the writing prompts are important, the stories that are shared are important and it’s just all about healing. We also talk about why forgiveness is a burden that we should not be putting on survivors. That survivors can heal and be healthy, happy, joyous human beings without ever having to forgive and the complexity behind that. We also talk about the erotic movement that is pen to paper and the power of the page that can absorb all of us, all of our stories and fragments and contradictions. It’s good stuff. 

If you’re a Patreon supporter and you support at the $3 level or above, the entire bonus chat this week is Jen and I talking about writing the erotic. If you are interested in, not only writing through trauma and healing and just finding new words for self and the stories that you tell, but you’re also interested in how you can write about the erotic and essential for healing and growth, then totally check out that bonus chat. Go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to either listen if you already support or to throw a few bucks my way if you want to hear it. 

Dawn Serra: So let’s talk about the giveaway – signed copy of ”Writing Ourselves Whole,” a book that I personally am going to highlight and dog ear and write in and learn from and grow from. I really, really love this book. If you want to put your name in the hat to potentially win a copy, there is a little entry form. The link is in the show notes for this episode and the link is also at dawnserra.com/ep210 for Episode 210. Please either click through on the show notes or head to dawnserra.com/ep210 and you can grab the link to put your name in the hat. You have to be over 18 and you do have to be in the US or Canada in order to be eligible to win. Totally go do that! I would love to send free things to one lucky listener. Maybe that’s you. You won’t know until you put your info in and cross your fingers. 

Okay. Let me tell you just a little bit about Jen and then we will dive into this yummy chat, all about writing and healing. Jen Cross is a widely published author and the founder of “Writing Ourselves Whole,” an organization that offers Amherst Writers and Artists writing workshops, creating spaces in which the true and complicated stories of the body can emerge. Jen has worked with hundreds of writers through private workshops and in collaboration with colleges, social change organizations and other institutions throughout the US. Jen’s also written and pulled together some anthologies with Carol Queen, has done a whole bunch of sex positive work. Eve Ensler reviewed the book. Yes! This is good stuff. So here is my chat with Jen Cross. Don’t forget to go enter to win the giveaway. And don’t forget Explore More Summit is starting now, this week. If you’re listening to this when it gets released, April 23rd through May 2nd 2018. I want to see you there.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Jen. I am– I don’t know that I have the words for how I feel about this conversation. But to say that I am looking forward to it and the richness that I know is going to be revealed is making me feel giddy. So welcome!

Jen Cross: Thank you so much. I’m super excited to be here and to talk with you.

Dawn Serra: Just so everybody knows, I have a couple of copies of your book, “Writing Ourselves Whole: Using the Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal from Sexual Trauma.” We will be doing some giveaways for those copies that are signed. We’re going to be talking about trauma and healing and messiness and all those things today. I would just like to offer any listeners, if you are feeling tender around trauma or triggers and you need to care for yourself by not listening or stopping at certain points, please do so. I would love to start, Jen, a little bit about your story and how you got to this place of having such an incredible relationship with writing.

Jen Cross: Well, I have always loved to write. I know too, for a lot of folks, we play with words in our drawing pages – or whatever – with crayons as we’re starting to bring all of those pieces together when we’re really young. I did lots of writing. I had a little poem notebook and I wrote stories. I loved to do that part. I love to read and I love to write. When I was a teenager, that was when my mother married the man who would go on to abuse her and both me and my sister. And writing… I continued to write some, but it no longer was a safe place to be. Because I did not assume that my writing would be private. I didn’t assume that anything would be respected. There was no kind of confidentiality in the home. 

That’s the thing that I hear from a lot of folks that journaling, when we are in a situation where we’re being abused or traumatized or we’re not safe, doesn’t feel like a safe thing to do. Sometimes folks will continue to write, but maybe they leave their notebooks somewhere else. I can held onto that tether and that love, but it wasn’t something that I could go to as a way to process or name what was happening. 

Jen Cross: It wasn’t until I was 21 and beginning to break contact with my stepfather and get out of that situation that I went back to writing. I spent hours and hours and hours in my favorite cafe. I had gotten away from home when I went away to school. So I was able to be in a private space. I was not at home, so I couldn’t hear the phone ringing when my family was trying to call me. I could just have a giant mug of French roast coffee. At the time, they had these huge mugs of coffee and there were 25 cent refills or something. I would be highly caffeinated. I would just sit and write and write and write and write. The writing was a way for me to name what was happening, It was a way to respond to the spinning in my brain and the fear. It was a way for me to figure out who I was, what it meant that I had a new lens on everything that was happening. Suddenly, I had a new name for what was what my stepfather had been doing all those years. I needed that space to fall apart really. I needed a space– I talked about the page being a place where I I don’t have to take care of its feelings. I don’t have to worry about whether it’s going to get overwhelmed. I don’t have to worry about it talking back to me or telling me that I’m explaining it wrong. I forgot some important detail that explains why everything actually was all my fault and not his fault at all. I could contradict myself. I could have all of my emotions there. That was the first, and still remains, the most consistent kind of healing – transformative, exploratory, liberatory place for me.

Dawn Serra: Something that really stood out to me as you told your story in the book was how, at first, so much of the writing was this feeling of, “I have to get the facts right. I have to document the truth,” and then how there was a shift away from that towards something else down the road as you settled into the writing and the safety of the page. There’s this really beautiful passage in the introduction and if you’ll indulge me, I’d love to read a couple of sentences from it because it really hit me. I know a lot of the listeners will feel this, “Oh. Yes!” kind of feeling. Would it be okay if I shared a little bit? 

Jen Cross: Sure.

Dawn Serra: So it says, “All of us who are trauma survivors know there are the stories we tell and the stories we don’t tell. There’s the trauma story that we have rattled off so many times that it rolls from our lips in one continuous breath, so polished and packaged, we can barely feel it anymore. The story that is neat and clean and careful not to make anyone too uncomfortable. And then underneath that are the messier stories of our violation and survival. The many stories we never tell anyone, the parts that are still raw and throbbing and sore, wounded, and tender and fragmentary. These are the stories that don’t fit into a good survivor identity.”

That I’m sure lots of people listening can relate to. That packaged version of the story. And then the story that maybe we don’t actually yet have words for or know how to sit in. So much of what I’m hearing about your process of coming to the page was… I love this I don’t have to tend to the feelings or the overwhelm of the page. I can just be messy. I can be raw. I can be unfinished. It’s a chance to start finding my way towards those words. 

Jen Cross: It was also a time, right at the same moment that I was coming to a consciousness of myself as an incest survivor. I was also coming out to myself in a more fundamental way as queer. I was also doing a lot of writing about desire and about hunger and about longing and identity. And then I felt very confused. Should I be having these feelings while I’m also really struggling with all this other stuff? Again, having a place where I could just move seamlessly from one to the next and no one was going to get whiplashed or confused or freaked out was very helpful and necessary. Because we are all of these parts. We are all of this hunger and all of this fear and loss and joy. All of this is in us all of the time. Then we walk out into the world and feel like we need to put it all back and press everything into a shape that people are going to feel comfortable with and not be overwhelmed by. And so there’s just so much of ourselves that we have to keep silent all the time. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’m wondering, because you’ve had a chance to witness so many people through all of your workshops and offering them a space to do the writing, what are some of the things that really stand out for you of people having an opportunity – survivors, specifically – to be that inconsistent, unfinished, figuring it out, contradictory kind of mess together? What have you seen unfold in all of this work?

Jen Cross: I think the most common response that’s popping up for me right now is a sense of relief, a sense of I am not the only one who is in this place in this way. I think that we do. There’s that saying, I feel in 12-step meetings, about not comparing your inside to somebody’s outside. But that is really hard not to do. Especially when we’re bombarded constantly by everybody’s outsides, with the social media. It’s easy to feel like everyone else. Even people we know who are struggling with histories of trauma are fine, are moving along their lives and everything’s going great. And then when we get to come together in a space where we all come together, knowing that everybody else in the room is a survivor of sexual trauma, there’s a piece of our guard. It doesn’t maybe drop all the way immediately, but comes down a little bit. We know that there is space in this room for pieces of ourselves that, in other places, those pieces are not welcome or are responded to in ways that don’t help us or can feel harmful sometimes. 

What I noticed in folks is a sense of gratitude where It’s a terrible gratitude. I don’t want anybody else to have gone through this. And then, at the same time, I am profoundly grateful when I’m in a space where other folks are willing to name this part of their experience. They’re willing to name the parts that are confusing. They are often very really mixed emotions toward a perpetrator, especially if this person is a family member. It’s not uncommon for folks to talk about the violence that someone has done and the love that they still feel toward this person. To be in a space where that can be named and no one is going to look at them like, “What in the hell is wrong?” but instead, you’re in a room with people who have a– It’s almost like the ground, the baseline is lifted a little bit. The baseline of understanding. We don’t have to explain ourselves as much. We don’t have to assume that people in the room are– How do I want to say this… We don’t have to assume that the other people in the room are going to be harmed by our words, even though we still often come into the room with that concern. I think, yup, that feeling of relief is profound. It’s really profound. I’ve been in rooms a number of times where folks will name that this is the first time they’ve been in a space in which everyone acknowledges that they are survivors of sexual trauma and they have a room… They have space to grieve. They have space to be angry or frightened and the people in there are going to hold that. What a difference that makes. What a difference that makes.

Dawn Serra: I had an experience last summer where I went– I’m in a fat body. I went to a day-long event that was designed and centered around people in fat bodies. It was the first time I had ever been in a space where the comfort and the experience of people in fat bodies was prioritized. There was this collective sense of, “I’m so sorry,” and, “God! I’m not alone.” It’s a similar feeling to what you’re talking about of– Folks, who’ve listened to the show for a long time, know that I’m a survivor of multiple abuses. The first time I was in a space where it was survivors getting to share their stories without having to package them or apologize for them, I was worried it would be too much. It was actually the opposite. It was this sense of, “Oh, my God. All of the things that I’ve ever told myself or been afraid were true.” These people have told themselves and were afraid were true. And we can all find this relief of, “You get it. And you’re right.” There’s something really beautiful and sad all at the same time in finding that. The power of that community cannot be overstated.

Jen Cross: I agree. I agree. There’s a way in which we can care for others. We can feel anger. We can feel grief hearing other stories. Sometimes easier, more easily than we can for ourselves. And then we receive that from others who are having the same experience that they were witnessing that. That our story invokes anger, invokes grief in folks, and something begins to shift, I think, inside of us like, “Oh. Right. That was bad.”

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Jen Cross: And we can begin to feel that in a different way.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. That was actually something that I 100% have experienced too, of other survivors saying, “That’s really terrible. That should not have happened to you. I’m so sorry.” Having an opportunity to hear someone else say, “It’s okay for this to be terrible.” Instead of “No. No. It’s okay. It wasn’t that bad,” which was what I was trying to do. The permission from other people to be like, “No. This was wrong.” I needed someone else to give me those words first. Yeah. 

How do you create space? You know, so many people who listen are members of a variety of communities – kinky communities and poly communities and queer communities – and I’m really curious about we know the community is really important, at the same time, being a community can be really messy and uncomfortable sometimes. So what is something that you found helps for people to be in community together when it might get really messy or ugly?

Jen Cross: I use– I base my work on a particular writing workshop model, which is called the “Amherst Writers and Artists Workshop Model.” It was developed, as you might expect, in Amherst, Massachusetts by a poet and a writer named Pat Schneider. This method is sort of the foundational structure for the work and the way that we hold the space together. And the way also that in the room we stay focused on each other as writers and as creators. Actually, everybody who comes into the room gets to lead with that part of their identity. Even if we come in feeling like, “I’m not a writer. I’m a terrible writer. My teacher in eighth grade told me that I’m a terrible writer. Sometimes I like to write poems. I don’t know why in here. I’m a terrible writer.” That’s so common and it’s okay. It’s really okay to feel that way when we’re approaching the page. 

In this space, though, I always like to clarify for folks that this is not a therapy group. It’s not a support group, even though there are transformative uses and therapeutic uses to the practice. It’s absolutely a supportive space. But one of the ways that we care for each other is by focusing on each other’s writing and each other’s words. In that way, there’s some containment around what’s shared and also how we respond to each other. I think that’s one of the things that can get – I have found sometimes – overwhelming in therapy groups or in support group spaces when there’s maybe a piece of my story I want to share and folks are asking me, “Well, can you say more about that? I’m curious about this person. Where was this other person?” and asking for more information than I’m really ready to give. Not with any ill intent right there, the questions are out of sheer curiosity and support. And yet I begin to feel a little bit out of control of my story. In this space, folks are writing what they choose to write, sharing when they choose to share only and receiving feedback. from each other that is focused on the writing, that is focused on what folks, what other listeners find really powerful and really strong because we’re responding to something that’s brand new. Also, response to the narrator or the characters in the piece. And that is a very different thing from a therapy group where we would say– We wouldn’t say, “Oh, my God. Your narrator was having a really hard time there.” They would say, “You were afraid.” That’s the common way to do it. 

And that one piece of our method is sort of the foundational difference, distinction between a therapy space, a more clinical space and this creative space. It’s a way that we create room for each other to play with this material, which can sometimes sound completely counterintuitive. Why do I want to play with this? And yet, this is our material. We get to do whatever we want with it. We can write poetry. We can write a play. We can write fiction. We can write a memoir. We can do whatever we want with it. So we’ve got room in this room to take those risks and to experiment. We also know that no one is going to ask us, “Can you say… Can you give me some more about that piece?” We get to be in control of how much we share. Of course, then, we hold in confidence everything that shared in the room. That can be a piece that needs reminding when I need to remind folks about when we are sharing community out in the world or we’re sharing community online. Just reminding each other that everything that shared in the room really needs to stay in the room, really stay in the room, unless the writer – him or herself or themselves – chooses to take it out into the world.

Dawn Serra: What I’m hearing as an sex educator who talks about consent a lot, boundaries in containers help us to feel safe, so we can play.

Jen Cross: Absolutely. There it is. That’s right. That’s it.

Dawn Serra: Yup. 

Jen Cross: In all different contexts.

Dawn Serra: Yes. Exactly. God. That’s so beautiful and so powerful. I wish that for everyone listening to find a space or an opportunity for something like that. It’s really important. So one of the things that I get a lot in emails from people who write into the show and from people who come into my coaching practice and even in my life too, of navigating this body and this story, is it’s really common and normal for people to want to get to the other side. “I just want to not be like this anymore. I just want it to be different. I want it to be healed. I want it to be how it was before.” What are the ways that I can do that as quickly as possible? Because the in-between can feel intolerable. Something that just came through so beautifully in your book in so many different ways, not just in the word specifically – the slowness of healing – but in the invitations that you give to people of like, “You don’t have to finish this. You’re allowed to just walk away after you think about the question. You don’t even have to put pen to paper or go watch a movie because you just wrote about your shame.” Can you talk a little bit about just the importance of that slowness in our healing and our storytelling?

Jen Cross: It’s so painful and aggravating. It should be something that we, I mean, that we can just snap your fingers and be done with and yet this– I mean, the process of healing, for me, has been a process of learning to be alive and be a human being. That isn’t a thing that ends, hopefully, for quite a while. It’s an ongoing process. I think that the language of healing is helpful in this context. But it comes out of healing of physical wounds, which generally, we can see the wound, we can see the cut, we can see– Maybe we can see where the blood is, and then we bandage it. Then we have a little bit of time and you can watch that cut begin to seam itself together and the skin returns to, if not exactly the way that it was before the cut, it’s something near to that. And we don’t have to worry about protecting that wound so much anymore. Whereas when we’re talking about psychological trauma, PTSD recovering from sexual violence and sexual trauma, this process of healing is more learning to continue to be alive in the world knowing that this is part of us now. I did not want that to be true. I wanted to be able to write it out of me. I wanted to be able to get it all out and have it be in my notebooks and have it be finished. I thought that– 

I came from a background… My mother and stepfather were both psychotherapists and I was indoctrinated to a way of thinking about therapy and healing that you have an intensely painful, cathartic experience, and then everything is better. Actually what that is is just a cycle of violence. It’s that kind of tense, tense, tense, tense, tense build up. There’s a huge explosion, and then there’s relief after that, which is not the same as actually being healed or feeling better. The process of recovery is very different from that and learning to live with ourselves and accept ourselves and accept our complications and accept that we are imperfect, let me say this, that that was true for me. That I had to accept that I was not a monster and the worst person in the world. I also was not perfect and more evolved than anybody else. I was just the person like everybody else. That was an intense and painful and disheartening thing to have to come to and sit with. I was really invested in thinking of myself as just a terrible, terrible person. That once everybody knew that I was a terrible person, they would walk away from me. Beginning to release that story takes some work. It’s a shift in our identity. Does that make sense? 

Dawn Serra: Absolutely. I personally – and I don’t want to speak for anybody else – but so much of my suffering as a survivor for so long, and occasionally still is true, is the “I don’t want this to be me. I don’t want this to be my story. I want to be who I was before.” That kind of wistful looking back and the not wanting to be here in this truth was something that I struggled with for a really, really long time. I wanted to be the version of me that was before There had to be some really deep mourning and grief around that. Sometimes, still, it comes up and surprises me in little moments. Just now, at least, having a little bit of that language of, “Ah. Okay. I know this story and now I have some tools for dealing with it.”

Jen Cross: That’s right. And that’s the thing that begins. I began to notice that maybe as recent as… Maybe less than a decade ago. I’ve been doing this for a minute. I began to notice, “Okay. There’s kind of a pattern that’s happening.” I’m feeling really low and I’m really depressed and I’m really sad and somewhere in the back of my brain is saying, “This is going to pass. This is going to pass.” And I know that now because I have lived in this body and lived in the long term aftermath of trauma. That is I begin to learn my own rhythms and begin to honor them. I think that it’s easy for me to pile on if I’m feeling… If I’m in one of those low stages, and then beating myself up always helps a lot and I come right out of it the meaner I am to myself. If only that were true. It doesn’t work like that. That that I can know, “Okay. This is a time, maybe to cry. Maybe this is a time to do some different kinds of writing or to rest or to have some downtime.” If that’s something that I can do with my day. Knowing that this is going to shift, it’s going to shift. There’s chemical pieces. There’s hormonal pieces and emotional pieces that all work together. 

I think that’s one of the reasons that being in a community with other survivors can be so helpful. That we can look at folks who are at different points in their recovery and in their healing and in their walking in the world. We can say, “Alright. They are– I love them. And I think that they are incredible. I see that we are struggling with similar things. But I want to be able to get to where they are, so I want to keep at this. I want to keep going.” We can do that in our writing practice, in a sense with ourselves. If you’re writing over time, being able to– I can go back to my journals from 1993 and see. Or, from five years ago and see, “Okay. Right. There’s– I’m in a different place now.” It can often feel like we’re just dropping into the exact same place, but the spiral… There’s that image of the spiral that’s rising. It feels like I’m in the same place, but I’m actually at a different level. Like you said, I have different tools and different experiences with this.

Dawn Serra: I’d love to just touch on a little bit because we’ve been talking about the importance of community and people who understand our experiences, at least in some level, whether it’s a survivor group or if you’re black and having community with other black community members or your queer and having community with other queer folks or trans, having those places where you don’t have to explain yourself and you don’t have to teach someone the labor of teaching. I think something that’s that survivors get a lot is this forgiveness narrative. I’d love to just hear from you a little bit about why that forgiveness narrative can be so burdensome? 

Jen Cross: It works my nerves.

Dawn Serra: Yes. It makes me mad.

Jen Cross: I mean, I think folks that have very different responses to this idea of forgiveness and the cultural push toward forgiveness. We hear a lot that you should forgive not for the other person, but for yourself because then, you are releasing. And there are folks for whom that really works and I do not deny them that place of ease. I do not forgive and I am okay with that. I’ve had to have different right and there are also different experiences around this with different people. It’s more complicated with my mother and my biological father than it is with my stepfather. I just feel very– So easy. Like, “Nope. I don’t forgive you. That’s fine.” It doesn’t feel like it’s taking up a lot of psychic space for me around that. 

I think sometimes folks feel more comfortable if we are saying, “Right here was this terrible thing that happened to me and it was really hard for a while. But I have found my piece of it and I forgive them.” And then I can move on. They can– I think sometimes for other folks it can help them to feel less like they have to take care of us or we’re still really hurting. It sort of goes along with a particular Christian narrative as well. But it can… 

Jen Cross: I think it can be really harmful also to ask or suddenly demand or insist or to convey the idea, even that part of the survivor trajectory is to heal enough. Once you’re healed enough, then you will feel ready to forgive. That will mean that you’ve evolved or you’re mature, whatever. I think that that can be really. I think that that can be really harmful because folks are… We can get to a very healed place or a sense of wellness and ease in ourselves that maybe we thought we’d never be able to get to before and still be very clear that, “Nope. That’s not a step that I feel like I need to take a minute. I’m going to take lots of other steps.

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Jen Cross: How about for you?

Dawn Serra: Yeah. In my experience, a lot of the discussion around forgiveness has come from a mixed place of, “I want you to be better because I don’t like seeing you hurt, but also because I’m uncomfortable with this messy place.” If things are forgiven, then they’re not messy anymore. I experienced a lot of anger around the forgiveness narrative because, I agree with you, that I’ve met a number of survivors who are very clear, “F that person. I am not ever going to forgive them.” But you know what? I am leading a pretty awesome life. I’ve done a lot of work and healing on myself. They don’t get to be forgiven by me.

And so I think forgiveness often too is tied to that good survivor narrative and how so many of us are so terrified of being the bad version of the survivor – the messy one, the one that’s hard to be around, the one that people are scared to set off. All of the scary stuff that comes with being a survivor that’s not palatable for others. I so wish more of us could just be in the messy and not feel like we had to control that part of ourselves because often that’s so silencing.

Jen Cross: Absolutely. I think… I was thinking as you were speaking about that good survivor narrative, I think that another thing that folks who are not survivors or maybe are and are figuring out how they want to process their own experience is they want to be inspired. There’s kind of a mythology about when you heal enough, then you’re going to have this terrible story, but it’s going to have a triumphant end. You’ve come to the other side and you have this big mountaintop moment and other people can look to us for inspiration. I think that that’s true for many, many survivors. You can look to us for inspiration on how to be messy and how to be complicated and how to be conflicting. Just like all kinds of humans get to be. But to put that expectation on survivors. “I want you to be better, so that I can feel triumphant. I can hear your story and it can be the feel-good, human interest thing that I send to all of my friends,” is not… It does a disservice. It’s harmful.

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Jen Cross: It’s harmful. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I agree. In your experience, what can people who are in the lives of survivors do to be better support systems? If someone’s listening in and their partner or their sister or a co-worker has experienced some kind of trauma? How can we be better support systems for survivors?

Jen Cross: I always think the asking of that question and being in that place of reaching and curiosity is a huge first step. It’s such a big deal to know, “Okay. There are things that– There’s resources that I need, so that I can show up better.” Just knowing we want to be able to show up better for the people we love is massive. I think that we devalue the power of listening without trying to fix anything. This is an ongoing practice for me. I’ve known for many, many years how important it is to listen and be listened to. And yet, I still can struggle with – I’m hearing this person say something that’s really painful and I want to jump in with a good idea. Because I want them to be better because I love them. And yet, when I am on the other side of that and really struggling, really having a hard time, often, what I need is to know that the other person is listening to me, is holding what I’m saying, is not going to ask me to help them to feel better about what I’m saying. Which isn’t that we don’t– 

We care for each other, of course, in relationship. So I don’t mean that we just dumped everything, and then walk away and don’t expect that the other person is going to have an emotional response. Of course, that’s true. But I think sometimes it’s very helpful as a partner or support person of someone who’s struggling with trauma, to have your own support network, to have people you can talk to, to have both other partners of survivors to talk to. Maybe you have friends who are survivors who you can talk with about what you’re struggling with without asking your partner or your loved one to help you do that work. You were talking earlier about the labor of education. I think that I’m always willing to talk to my partner about ways that I would like her to show up a little bit differently. It’s easier for me to do that when I’m not in the throes of a big depression than it is when I’m really hurting.

Jen Cross: I think that there are– I think that getting support for yourself is huge. I think that I’ve had this experience with partners in the past where they will believe or behave as though they believe that their needs are not as important as mine because I’m hurting so much and so visibly. But that’s not true. That’s not true. One thing that can happen, I know in my own relationship – so just speaking about romantic or intimate relationships – is when our needs really conflict, that can be very painful. It’s a thing that happens over and over and over again. There’s these rhythms and patterns that come up in relationships that we, over time, learn how to deal with because they’re not necessarily going to go away. This is always going to be a struggle. There are times when she really would like me to be more emotionally available and her reaching for my emotional connection feels triggering when I’m in this deeply vulnerable place. And so my safety thing is to pull away and it just escalate. We have learned how to find language for those things. That’s not blaming and that’s not shaming. That is still honest. And being able to communicate directly is– I don’t even– I want a better word than important. It just feels so incredible to me to be in a place right now where I’m even able to do that.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Jen Cross: Also, know that sometimes it’s not… Sometimes I’m not going to be able to have a rational conversation about it. It’s going to come next week. I’ll be able to have a different kind of conversation.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Jen Cross: Does that make sense? 

Dawn Serra: Totally. Yeah. I love the recommendation of getting support as a partner or a friend or a family member. I think that’s something that we… That’s easy to overlook in a society that values hyperindividualism. Like, “I should be able to just tough it out and fix this or make it better or XYZ.” And being able to just say, “Wow. This is hard. Let me be in community with other people who know how hard it is. That way, I’m feeling more resourced and I can tend to my person that I care about.” That, I think, is just a much better situation for all involved than to just try and take the burden and shoulder and muscle through it. 

Jen Cross: Right. I think it– There can be a kind of pleasure in being the rescuer or the savior, but it’s not sustainable. It’s not really what the… In my experience, it’s not what folks need.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. For people who are listening and they’re thinking, “Writing sounds really important,” what is that writing practice for survivors that you would like to share or invite people to just consider and sit with? For people who are like, “Maybe this is a path for me to explore.”

Jen Cross: Hooray! You’re welcome! That’s my first thought. Come on down. My initial response to that question is always to invite us to be really gentle and patient with ourselves. I think going out and getting a beautiful journal and having a beautiful pen and having those resources around us is great. And sitting… It’s easy then to sit down with a notebook and feel blank, not sure what it is I should do. Or, to feel like “Okay. Now I’m here and I’m going to use writing to help me heal. So I should write about all of the terrible things.” Which this is a space to write about terrible things. But we don’t have to start there. We don’t have to always go there. When we sit down to the page. I think if we always go to trauma or violence or harm, when we sit down to the notebook, then the notebook begins to, eventually, feel like a place we don’t want to go. It begins to feel less inviting. 

I’d like to encourage folks to start by writing something else altogether. Start by writing what you can see outside your window. Start by writing a conversation that you had. Or, about your pet when you were a child or about one of the best days you can remember or a good smell. There’s something you baked recently. Just to start the pen moving with something that’s not harmful. Would that make sense?

Dawn Serra: Yes. And go ahead and get comfortable with this. Get comfortable with free writing. Sometimes it takes a while to get comfortable with just going ahead and writing whatever comes without stopping or censoring or editing ourselves or trying to… Like, “I forgot a period. I got to go back.” Just keep going. Don’t worry about the period. Just keep going and keep going. You can set a timer. I think that can be very helpful when folks are just getting started in this practice, to know there’s some containment around this. I don’t have to write for five hours. I can just write for seven minutes or I can write for 15 minutes. And begin to build that connection with that creative voice inside. That will then begin to offer up the next piece or “I feel like I’m ready to explore this part right now. I feel like I’m ready to explore this.” We start to listen to that voice inside that maybe we’ll read a prompt from this book or another that invites us into maybe a particular part of our story and we can hear something in us that says, “That feels okay. I can do some of that now.” And then we also can hear – listen – to our bodies. If we start to feel really tense or the word starts coming really stuttery, we might want to shift away and write about something else. And that’s okay. This is about building a practice and not about getting it done.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that the permission is so important. Because I know in the past I have said, “I am going to write these things.” And then the goal is lofty and difficult to maintain. After two days, I’m like, “Oh. I haven’t touched that notebook in a year.”

Jen Cross: That’s right. Exactly.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I also appreciate the invitation to not start with the pain. Because I think often when we’re like, “Okay. I’m going to do the healing thing. I got to go here. I got to name a thing and feel the feels.” I think sometimes it’s that, “no pain, no gain” mentality, which sure doesn’t always serve us when we’re talking about healing. So yeah. Starting with your dog or a fun story. That feels a lot more like, “Oh. I could do that.” 

Jen Cross: And any kind of writing, any kind of creative expression can still be really emotional and is still risky and can make us feel vulnerable, even if we’re not showing it to anybody. Even if it’s just here in our own notebook. So being gentle with ourselves and tender with ourselves and it’s okay if we are– It’s okay to cry. It’s okay not to cry. Sometimes we’re writing about something that’s really painful and we’re not crying, we think something’s wrong. Just trusting ourselves. Trusting that process – which is such an annoying phrase. But it helps. It helps.

Dawn Serra: A couple of the things that you’ve mentioned over the past couple of minutes, including trusting yourself and also, listening to your body. I think, as survivors, our bodies can be very foreign. They can be places we have not spent a lot of time and we are not very familiar with. Sometimes listening to our bodies has yielded lots of pain and shame and other feelings. And so I’ve been doing a lot of learning and exploring and researching around embodiment and somatic work for the past couple of years. Because I think it’s really interesting to start waking up to the fact that my body is foreign to me. I’d love to know what are some ways that, for people who feel ready to maybe spend just a little more time in their bodies and maybe want to start a little bit of that dialogue, “Maybe I can trust what you’re telling me,” what are some ways that we can use writing or creative wordsmithing or whatever it is to help us find some of those words around our body story?

Jen Cross: I like to offer prompts that invite us to think about our bodies, even if we don’t choose to write into our bodies directly. But poems or videos or songs that evoke our bodies or specific parts of our bodies. I did a prompt with some writers last night, a poem called “This Part of Your Body” by Lynn Max. It’s talking about she’s writing to her 12 year old daughter about her vagina. But it’s never mentioned. It’s about this part of your body and it’s a very gentle invitation to think about that part of our body. And then choose to write about our relationship with that part of our body or not. We can write in the first person. We can write in the second person using you. We can write a direct address, like a letter to a part of our body. We can write in the third person. Sometimes that is super helpful to have a little distance to write, “She’s writing about her body,” instead of, “I’m writing about my body,” “I’m writing about her body,” – this other body. That can give us the distance we need or a distance that feels more accurate in the moment as opposed to trying to force a relationship that doesn’t quite feel like it’s there yet. 

I also invite folks, in the book, to write about what it feels to be disembodied. What it feels like not to, maybe, be as aware of this various parts of our body or “The middle of my body doesn’t really feel like it’s here. What is that like?” There is very little literature or language around what it’s like to feel disconnected from our bodies. And we need that. We need that. This is all about getting a comprehensive and whole language for this experience of living in the aftermath of violence. The reality is that very often, we don’t feel connected to our bodies. Sometimes it helps to start there. This is what it’s like not to feel connected to my body. And then, this is what I want to say to my foot or this is what I want to say to my thighs or this is a letter from my belly. Kind of gently thinking about that. 

Jen Cross: The other way that I believe writing can be an embodying practice is that when we are writing sensory detail in our stories, we are drawing on our physical experience. We’re drawing on our memory of touch and of smell and of sight and of sound and taste. We need to draw on those associations just to bring that authentic detail to the page. In that way, we’re gently invoking those parts of our body as we are writing. It can be a really kind of a more gentle, organic re-embodiment. Piece of our re-embodiment, I should say.

Dawn Serra: I have this really funny experience the other day where I personally write with my favorite pen and my notebook all day about every thought that I’m having. It’s just the way that… I have a terrible memory in a lot of ways. And so every meeting I’m in, I’m taking notes. Everything that I’m creating, I’m writing it out before I type it. I just had this moment when I was sitting on the couch with my husband. It was two nights ago. I was writing these really deep questions for Explore More about identity and the politics of gender. I was watching the thing in my head appear on the paper in front of me. I just had this funny… I mean, I’m turning 40 this year and it was the first time I’d ever had this, which is delightful. But I was like the ink that’s coming out of this device that I’m holding is making visible something that is in me that no one else can experience. It’s not the exact experience as a version of the experience, but these things that are inside my head, I’m making visible for other people to consume and there’s magic in that.

Jen Cross: It is. It’s such a pleasure.

Dawn Serra: That in itself is sensual.

Jen Cross: It is. There are many folks who are quite comfortable generating new writing on the computer. I myself have to do it by hand. I have to do it by hand. There’s a different neural pathway that gets sparked up for writing by hand or for writing than it does when we’re writing on the keyboard. I find there’s– I like that connection of the pen on the page. It feels much more central. It feels much more embodying and connected with you.

Dawn Serra: Yes. You’re right. It’s just a way to kind of like… Even if it’s just my fingers or the sound of the pen on the paper, my senses are being engaged in a way that feels good for me. Yeah. 

Jen Cross: Yup. 

Dawn Serra: So I have a listener question that, if you’re up for it, I’d love to just get your input around being in a body with trauma. And then for everyone who’s listening, if you’re a Patreon supporter, the conversation that Jen and I are going to have in our bonus chat is all about writing the erotic and having an erotic writing practice, which I’m super excited about. Because that sounds yummy. But would you be up for just sitting in this question with me? 

Jen Cross: Yeah. Let’s do.

Dawn Serra: Okay. So Fearful wrote in with a subject line of, “Mind games.” It says, “I have a long sexual trauma history that started at 13. I denied these traumas for many years, which led to destructive relationships. I recently met someone who I felt safe enough to share those experiences with. Because of my past, I’ve never experienced pleasure during sex. I find my mind wanders from all topics, including my to do list. Since being in a trauma support for years, for the first time, I’m enjoying sex. But my mind still wanders and it totally kills the vibe for me. I’ve become very critical of my sexual abilities. I’m too ashamed to ask him if I’m okay in bed. How do you even start that conversation? I know that it’s me and my mind games. My partner has been so sweet and gentle, kind and listening. But how do you get out of your own way when you can’t get out of your head?”

Jen Cross: I hate that part. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Me too. 

Jen Cross: I can really relate to this question. I’m so grateful that they’re writing you in this process, in themselves, in this healing work and even engaging in relationships. Do you know what I mean?

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Jen Cross: It’s such a risky thing every single time we do it. It’s a big deal. It’s so huge. When I– I think about what it’s like for this person when they’re sexually active alone. You know what I mean? When they’re masturbating or when there’s any kind of physical, sensual stimulation and they’re alone. Do they have that same wandering feeling? That certainly was true for me and can still be true for me. There are times that I notice it. And it’s almost like a meditative practice. Like, “Okay. Look. Now I’m thinking about the, you know…” 

Do you remember that joke? There was an old joke that guys in my high school, I think, or college used to tell about the blonde. It was a blonde joke. And it was– I can’t think of the joke. But it had to do with her. She’s there. She’s on her back. She’s having sex, whatever. There’s all kinds of intensity happening and she’s looking at the ceiling going, “Beige. I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.” I remember a few years ago thinking, “That is a trauma survivor having sex right there.” That’s not a funny joke

Dawn Serra: Right.

Jen Cross: That’s a trauma survivor. You’re describing what’s happening for your partners who have been sexually violated. That’s absolutely my experience on a regular basis, even still. It’s rare that I will stop the action anymore, unless I’m having particularly strong flashback, which isn’t that common at this point. But if my mind is wandering, it does feel like getting to the place where I can notice that and come back to the present. Sometimes it means opening my eyes. It means focusing on her. It means grounding myself in the moment and getting present. And there are some times when it’s really okay to say, “I’m not really here right now. And let’s pause. Let’s take a break.” 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think we can be so hard on ourselves around the shoulds and the stories we hear about how we’re supposed to be. I think that’s so much of all the questions I get from all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. My body, or whatever, doesn’t measure up to what I think it’s supposed to be.

Jen Cross: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: I think there’s something really important that you’re naming of, if this is where you are and you can articulate that this is your experience, that’s pretty amazing. You can articulate, “Hey. I’ve noticed that my mind wanders during sex.” There’s a lot of people who aren’t there. They don’t even know that they’re not present. They just think– 

Jen Cross: That’s true. 

Dawn Serra: “Okay. Well, that’s how that was.” Just even having that language, I think, is really important and giving yourself credit, “Wow. I’ve got language for that experience.” I love how you’re offering this kind of mindfulness of, “Oh. Hey. I’ve kind of checked out. Can I come back?” Or, “Can I pay attention to the sensations that are happening?” Maybe you can and maybe you can’t, and then you decide whether or not you want to stop things or continue. But I think there’s something challenging, but beautiful in the simplicity of, “Well, maybe all I have to do is just notice and then decide, can I come back or not?” That’s a win to me. That’s wonderful to me to have the capacity to even notice that. Even if you notice it afterwards, it’s like, “Wow. I wasn’t really present for that.” That noticing is awesome.

Jen Cross: Yes.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Jen Cross: And like– Oh. Go ahead. 

Dawn Serra: Oh. No. I was just going to say I want to just congratulate Fearful. I know that it feels distressing. But I just want to say that’s a pretty amazing skill to even have that.

Jen Cross: Yup. I’m with you on that. Absolutely. I remember a few years ago, my partner telling me that sometimes her mind wandered during sex. And she’s not a trauma survivor. That was so helpful just to know that, also, this is not… There are pieces of this that have to do with our experiences of violence and there are pieces of this that are human. That it’s normal. It’s normal, sometimes, for our minds to wander. That it doesn’t… There’s nothing wrong with us. There’s nothing wrong. I understand, of course, also wanting to be there. Not be checked out and wanting to be more present. This practice that she’s already in, that they’re already in, of noticing. That feels like the noticing is a kind of presencing. It’s huge.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I just want to name too, something that you just were sharing, in that so many people that write in and that I’ve worked with are not trauma survivors and they’re like, “Oh. I just can’t stop thinking about – I got to go pick up the kids. I got to do the dishes, the whole laundry,” whatever. I mean, we have a lot going on in our lives. 

Jen Cross: Yes. 

Dawn Serra: If we don’t have already, outside of the bedroom, a meditative mindfulness practice happening, then to expect ourselves to stay present and to be embodied for long periods of time is a tall order. 

Jen Cross: Yes.

Dawn Serra: I mean, it’s if I can’t sit on my meditation cushion and really be present and embodied for an hour with all my clothes on, then why would I expect that of myself when I’m naked and the stakes are higher?

Jen Cross: Exactly. Right. It’s asking a lot. 

Dawn Serra: It is asking a lot. We have very high expectations of ourselves and it’s not fair. We are doing the best we can. If mindfulness is something and embodiment is something that you want more of, then I think one of the best places to start is outside of those higher stakes situations of maybe, intimacy and being with someone else. I mean, if you can find ways to be embodied and present and aware of body and self in sensation for a five-minute walk or a ten-minute lay down session or while you’re on your yoga mat, that to me feels like a much kinder place to start. And then maybe you can start bringing it gradually into other places. But, maybe all of us. I just want to offer the invitation to all of us. If it’s difficult to be present and to slow down in your life, then it’s going to be really hard to be present and slow down during sex.

Jen Cross: Yes.

Dawn Serra: So for people who are interested in getting the book and staying in touch with you, how can they find you?

Jen Cross: They can find me at writingourselveswhole.org. That’s my website and my blog is there. Folks can connect with me through that page as well. The book is available. It’s published by Mango. And so folks can go, I think it’s mango.bz. It’s the website and folks can go there. It’s also available on Barnes and Noble and at independent bookstores and on Amazon. It’s available around that way.

Dawn Serra: Well, support your independent publishers and bookstores. Spend your money there, if you are able. I want to just start by thanking Fearful for writing in with that question. Also, I want to thank you Jen for being here and sharing your story and your wisdom and your thoughts so generously with us. This felt really nourishing. 

Jen Cross: Thank you so much, Dawn. It’s really a pleasure to get to talk with you. I’m so grateful for this work that you’re doing.

Dawn Serra: Thank you I’m so grateful for yours, too. I can’t wait to roll around in it 20 more times. To everybody listening, if you’re a Patreon supporter, be sure to head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to check out not only the bonus for this episode, but all of the other episodes. You can also head to dawnserra.com, if you ever want to share a story or a question with me. You know I love hearing from you. It’s like a little present every time I get one of those emails. If you have anything else that you want to check out about this episode or if you want links to grab Jen’s book, then you can head to the show notes for this. Of course, until next time. I’m Dawn Serra with Jen Cross. Bye. 

Jen Cross: Bye bye.