By Sarah Shoemaker
I began to understand love during the month of September two years ago. Bon Iver was the soundtrack.
I had been separated from my partner and husband of fourteen years for about fourteen months at that point, and I went to visit an old friend in my home state of Pennsylvania. I was weaving this short visit with him into a trip with family, and my son stayed with my mother so that I could talk as late as I wanted, and likely even spend the night. As we were planning this visit, two days prior to the first evening we’d spend together, it hit me: oh. It was that kind of visit. We didn’t talk about it beforehand. We were intrigued to reunite in these first years after our divorces, ten years since I’d lived and worked in this area, after we saw on Facebook that our inquiries into the topics of true femininity and masculinity were crossing paths.
I have a trauma history. My body remembered abuse and manipulation of the young female body that my mind can only ever remember in snippets of detail. The emotional abuse has been discovered through years of intentional exploration in therapists offices, with energy work and somatic investigation. My family was ripe with attachment issues and emotional control. When I was eighteen, I became pregnant, and it was determined, by the family, that I would place the child for adoption. At nineteen, I birthed my first child, a daughter. I birthed her naturally and reverently. I gave her the middle name of Faith and chose her parents a few months prior to her birth. Along with my family, I blocked her birth father from the entire experience, and I set about following the prescription of success that was laid in front of me. Work hard, and one day, you can have a baby again, and do it right the next time. Continue Reading…