Browsing Tag

guilt

healing, Owning It!, The Hard Stuff, Video, Vulnerability

A Video About Guilt Wherein I Tell It To F*ck Off.

May 19, 2014

[youtube=https://youtu.be/Ig2zAEgjkxg]

Eff Guilt. With my dirty hair, bad lighting, no makeup, and a big ass glass of wine, I send you a video I did on one take. Because that’s how I’m rolling right now. Free. Or, as my friend Kathleen Emmets would say, “F*ck it.”

Here is the blurb I wrote on guilt:

Sitting here with my broken foot has allowed me a lot of time to think. I’ve been thinking about guilt and how so much of my life has been swaddled in guilt. The last words I said to my dad when I was 8, and he was 38 were: I hate you. Then he died. Just like that. I mean, there were a few hours in between where I jumped on a bed and my aunt babysat while paramedics tried to revive the life back into him but basically the time between those words and his death was minimal. I felt guilty. All my life, my “go to” emotion is guilt. I take off work, I feel guilty the whole night. I feel guilty for this or that. It’s work for me to let go of guilt. It’s an old old deeply imbedded seed.
So, I’m laying around, pretty much immobilized because of my foot. And I’m bummed. I won’t lie to you. Why would I? I’m a truth teller. I’m bummed, but get this- I feel oddly calm and present. You know why? For the first time, in a long time, I don’t feel like I SHOULD be doing something else, I SHOULD be somewhere else, that I have to go, go, go. Because I can’t. I truly cannot move right now so I have to be still. Normally, if I lay around with pajamas on, I feel guilty. I do it but I feel guilty about it. But right now I am freed of any guilt and I feel good about that. I have space to write and create, even though I am a little sad. What I realize, even though I already knew this obviously, is that guilt is a trap. It immobilized me way more than any broken foot could.
I am so tired of it. It keeps you from being here. It keeps us locked in a land of SHOULDS, and I SUCK.
When my foot heals, I will remember this moment of absolute freedom- this moment of knowing that the only possible place I can be is right here. Yes, I am forced (literally forced) to learn this knowledge the hard way but you reading this? You don’t have to break your foot to release yourself from the prison of guilt.
If you f*cking like something, like it. And be done with it.
The prisons we build for ourselves are far stronger than any casts on our feet.
So, I don’t feel guilty that I should be out enjoying this gorgeous sunny day.
I don’t feel guilty that I am not out exercising.
I don’t feel guilty that my hair is ten days unwashed.
I don’t feel guilty that I feel frustrated.
I don’t feel guilty that I am sitting all day.
I don’t fel guilty that I took a week off of work.
I hope you understand the freedom I am talking about here.
It took a broken foot for me. For you? Just do what you’re gonna do. And let that, be that.

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xo Jen. ps, I am only doing ONE workshop in LA. June 7th. I have only a couple spots left so book asap here or email barbara at jenniferpastiloff.com to sign up. 

Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer living on an airplane. Her work has been featured on The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, Jezebel, Salon, among others. She’s the founder of The Manifest-Station. Jen’s leading a long weekend retreat to Ojai, Calif over Labor Day in Ojai, Calif. She and bestselling author Emily Rapp will be leading another writing retreat to Vermont in October. Check out her site jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up:  Los Angeles, SeattleLondon, Atlanta, South Dakota, Dallas.

Grief, Guest Posts, healing, Inspiration

You Did Not Cause Your Rape.

February 3, 2014

Note from Jen: Trigger Warning within this post. This post is not written by me. There is graphic mention of rape and sexual assault! I am posting this anonymously, per the author’s request. I think this is such an important step in her healing, but also, this needs to be talked about. This is not your fault, whoever you are. In light of so many recent discussions about the rape culture we live in, I wanted to share this powerful post with you all. Please do not stay silent. Please find what you need, even if you start here with this post and this community on this anonymous blog post. You are NOT alone or at fault. I have been in contact with the author for many months now and this is the first time she has talked about this, let alone written about it. It is beautiful and brave and I bow to her. May you all find the healing you need and the community you need. I hope this is a start. Please post comments to the author as she will read them all. 

***

I never knew going for a run was something I could regret so much.  That I could regret for so long.  That one choice, one night would change the way I look at myself, the way I interact with people – my basic identity and self-esteem so much.  But it did.

I wasn’t even a runner; I was a soccer player.  I played soccer almost every night of the week, year round.  Once every couple months, each team had to take a hit and play in the latest time-slot – kick off didn’t begin until eleven o’clock.  It was a brutal time-slot for most; the moms who would have to get up with their kids in the morning, the twenty-somethings who had to go to work – but I’m a nighthawk and I was a student, so it didn’t matter to me.

My week had been particularly stressful and I was gearing up for a stressful weekend.  It was a long-weekend and all my local family was heading out of town to be with the rest of my family.  I wasn’t able to attend because I was shooting a wedding that weekend and hosting about six people at my place who were coming to the wedding from out of town.  I’m not a great host, I didn’t know the people very well and the wedding was going to be widely attended by guests from a part of my life I was trying to disengage from.

So when I got home from soccer late that night, I was totally wired.  I decided I needed to run off some more anxiety and frustration, so I took off in my soccer gear straight from my driveway and headed to the trails near my house.

The neighborhood I live in is safe.  It is one of the safest in my state.  There’s not a lot of crime here – and the crime that is here is usually frauds and domestics.  Needless to say, crime was never really at the forefront of my mind when I was trying to make choices or discern whether I should do something.  That was probably another mistake.

There’s a half-mile stretch of well-lit sidewalk on a main road when you leave my driveway.  Then you have to go through a parking lot and through a clearing in the woods and down a dirt path to get to the hiking trails of the local nature park.  Once you hit the parking lot, that half mile separates you from the nearest houses.  Once you’re through the clearing, the trees shield your visibility from any passing traffic.  Really, it’s the perfect place to hide.  Or to commit a crime.  But again, that wasn’t on my mind at the time.

Now, I could launch into an explanation about why those things should have been on my mind.  I could talk about my background, my education, the fact that my best friend is a decorated police officer – all the things that should have made me stop and think.  But I wasn’t thinking about those things; I was thinking about other things.  I was thinking about how great the soccer game I’d just played was.  I was thinking about how much cleaning I had to do to prepare for the wedding guests.  I was thinking about how screwed I’d be if it rained that weekend and how that would screw up my photo ideas.  I was thinking about how I wouldn’t get to see my two baby nieces that weekend because I was stuck doing this wedding on a long weekend.

So while I was totally wrapped up in all that, I forgot to be smart.  I forgot to think about myself.  And I made a stupid choice.  Like I said, it’s a choice I am always going to remember.  And it’s a choice that some part of me, even if it is the smallest part possible, is going to blame myself for for the rest of my life.

Because I was raped that night.  Twice.  All those specifics about what would make the area an excellent spot for a crime that I wasn’t thinking about – someone else was thinking about.  And they were waiting.

Which is crazy.  Because… I mean, it was the middle of the night.  And who goes on trails in a park in the middle of the night?  Trails with no houses around?  So who would wait there in the off chance that someone does?  But they did.  And I did.  So it happened.

I think I would have been able to get away if there had been one guy.  My high school made all the girls take self-defense every year in P.E.  I was the most fit I’ve ever been.  I’m strong.  I’m resourceful.  So, if there was just one, I think I would have gotten away.  But there were two.  And I couldn’t get away no matter how hard I tried.

The thing that surprised me the most – and still surprises me today – was how not violent it was.  It was sexually violent, but it wasn’t violent; they didn’t beat the shit out of me, they didn’t try to kill me.  They just restrained me and took turns with me; I had a few bruises from their grasp and a few scrapes from when they pushed me up against a tree or forced me to my knees; one of them hit me once, not even very hard, when I bit him from said position.  But my face showed no signs of violence.  And no one I knew would even bat an eye at scrapes because of my intense soccer schedule.  It’s like they knew exactly what to do to keep me quiet.

If my face had had a bruise on it and someone would have asked me what happened, I probably wouldn’t have been able to hold it in.  Not in the few days following the attack, not while I was still grieving and processing.  If my best friend, the police officer – or my mom – or my sisters, had asked what was wrong, or what happened, I wouldn’t have been able to keep it to myself.  But my family was already gone for the weekend, my best friend didn’t see my until after the wedding and… even looking at photos from the wedding now, I don’t know that I can even tell something terrible had just happened.  So no one asked.

They didn’t ask and I didn’t feel like I could tell them.  Because my best friend is a cop, I know exactly what “rape victims” go through when they report.  You go to a hospital where you strip all your clothes and let a stranger examine every inch of your body for evidence, do a full vaginal exam and give you a bunch of pills to fight unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.  Then you sit in a room with a cop, either male or female (who you already know because your best friend is a cop so you know all her co-workers), and answer questions, explain your story, say the same thing over and over again, so they can see whether you’re lying or not.

And then you try to explain to your cop best friend, who was told what happened by the cop who interviewed you, how you let yourself get raped.  And then no one… ever… looks at you the same way again.

Then they look for the guys but because they’re strangers and they wore condoms, odds aren’t good to begin with.  If they do find them, if they get charged, if they make it to court – everybody knows what happened.  Everybody knows what they did to you.  It becomes a completely public record and the proceedings are open to everyone.

And I cannot speak for other people who have gone through this, but when I was laying on the cold ground in the middle of the night after something like this happened to me, I was only thinking about what other people would think.  So knowing what I knew and knowing who I knew and not really yet understanding the gravity of what happened to me or how my choices following the attack could weigh just as heavy on me as the choices leading up to it, I got up off the ground, composed myself, walked home and sat in the shower in the hottest water I could bare for as long as I could bare and tried to get the feelings I was feeling to wash down the drain.  That may sound like such a clichéd “movie of the week” thing to do, but that was my experience; telling a rape victim not to shower until they’ve sought medical attention is ridiculous.  I understand why they tell you that, but come on; I’ve never felt so dirty and gross and disgusting.

I hadn’t had sex before that.  I was eighteen and “waiting” or whatever (I’d never even had a PAP).  Obviously, I knew what was happening to me; I didn’t grow up under a rock.  But there were so many things I didn’t understand – like whether all sex hurt like that, or whether they were making it hurt more because of what they were doing to me.  Personally, I think they were making it that way because it hurt significantly more after I bit the one guy and pissed him off than it did before.

Six months later, after I started having meaningless, random sex with a meaningless, random guy a bunch of times to just try to get these guys off me and out of my head, I felt guilted into getting my body checked out because “I could knowingly be giving someone something I caught from the rapists” and blah blah blah.  So I did.  And I’m healthy (and I went back for the appropriate follow-up blood tests, etc).  I also stopped having sex because it was hurting me in my current state way more than it was helping me.

Around the same time, I told a friend what was going on.  Coincidentally, it was the friend whose wedding I was at that weekend (a detail I left out when I told her).  She has since completely severed all contact with me.  Perhaps me telling her has nothing to do with that, but it seems like curious timing – so that experience hasn’t led me to open up to more people around me.  In fact, I am afraid that whoever if reading this right now, if they know me, will do the same thing.  I’m terrified of people not loving me.

Long term, I question every day whether I made the right choice after the attack.  I don’t really think I did, but I think it is much too late to change those choices now.  No one around me knows.  I went to see a counsellor once; I don’t plan on going back.  And everyday when I look at the people around me who I love and who I think love me, I always wonder if they know.  If they can tell by looking at me.  If there is some silent signal that this happened to me.  And I wonder if they’ll continue loving me if it was ever confirmed.  If they ever read this.

I’m sure I give off red flags; I’m sure there are things I do that have just become part of my personality that I do because of what happened; I hate being touched by most people and even my closest friends recognize that I want to initiate and be in control of any physical contact.  I am neurotic about locking doors and windows when I am in my house or any other.  I insist on the buddy system when walking anywhere after dark.  I had never really cared about these kinds of things before; I guess I thought I was invincible, and now I know I’m not.

And there’s always this internal battle going on.  Part of me just wants to be another statistic, because nobody notices a number; but if I am just another number, my experiences can never ensure that someone else doesn’t have to have the same experiences.

~Anonymous.

**Hateful, mean or snarky comments will not be approved.

Jennifer Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Her work has been featured on The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, Jezebel, Salon, and more. Jen leads her signature Manifestation Retreats & Workshops all over the world. The next retreat is to Ojai, Calif over Labor Day. Check out jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up: SeattleLondon, Atlanta, South Dakota, NYC, Dallas, Tucson & The Berkshires (guest speaker Canyon Ranch.) She tweets/instagrams at @jenpastiloff.

Next Manifestation workshop is London July 6. Book here.

Jen works with many young women like the brave author of this piece on her retreats and workshops.

Forgiveness, Travels

Guilt-Away.

July 11, 2012

Guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of remorse. 

That’s how Wikipedia defines Guilt.

I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris from Pisa to discover that of the two bottles I had (over)packed in my orange suitcase, the red one cracked and broke in my (over)packed luggage. Mind you, I had missed the actual wine tasting in Tuscany at the winery because I had been ill so someone got them for me per my request because of my FOMO, as my friend Sara Lieberman, author of The Handbags Tale,  calls it.

FOMO= Fear Of Missing Out. I just had to have Italian wine! I couldn’t possibly leave Tuscany without chianti, could I?

I sat on the floor of the airport in my long white dress and new Italian boots as I opened the case to check the damage. Immediately glass and red wine exploded everywhere. People stared. I didn’t care. My clothes were drenched in red wine!

My new clothes.

My white clothes.

My silk.

My gifts. 

My white bras.

I was upset, naturally, but I actually sort of laughed. My number one rule is: If you fall you must laugh.

Or tried to laugh, despite having no actual voice from being sick. At this point I had been sick ten days and I knew that I was being tested in some way.

Ok, I thought, it’s just stuff. Just stuff. Things and stuff. And broken glass.

Needless to say, I was frustrated because I hadn’t listened to my intuition which strongly whispered to me as I packed in Tuscany: Jen, give those bottles of wine away as a gift. You do not have room. Plus, it’s dangerous putting wine in your suitcase. Plus, if one was to break you know it will be the red one. 

I ignored my intuition and it came back laughing at me. Wearing a burgundy and chianti broken-glass colored shade, it snickered at me for being such a fool.

Arriving at the Le Bristol, the fanciest hotel I have ever set foot in, I immediately ask the concierge if they can take the clothes to their in-house dry cleaner. They assure me in lovely French accents that red wine is very hard to remove but they will do their best. 

Merci.

As a side note, I am traveling with my childhood babysitter who I was reunited with after her only son was killed at age 19 in a drunk driving accident in Northern California.

This put my dilemma in a file called IRRELEVANT very quickly.

I let it go.

It’s just stuff. Stuff and things. 

The dry cleaners got almost all the wine out for a small (big) fortune and I was happy. But non-attached. I had made peace with the wine and the wine debacle.

The few stains that remain will remind me of this trip, this moment in the not-so-straight line of my life.

As I was looking for ways to get red wine out I stumbled across Wine-Away. 

So I invented something called Guilt-Away.

Would you like a bottle? Or a case?

As I led my retreat in Italy with 25 people I got very ill. Sicker than I have been in years. So sick that I couldn’t speak. So sick that at one point I really thought I was dying. That kind of sick.

At first, the guilt I felt was insurmountable. How could I have brought all these people here and let them down? How could I let this happen?

My brain goes to the path of guilt because it is the path of least resistance. Just like our bodies take the path of least resistance, so do our brains. I have spent many years of my life felling guilty, which is a dirty broken thing that presses into the corners of your soul like a sky in December descending for the day. The last words I spoke to my father before he died where “I hate you” so naturally I have spent much of my life feeling as if I caused his death, or at the very least, should be punished.

So here I was in Italy with that same familiar pull of guilt. So heavy, it weighs down your boat and sinks you before you can even get out to sea and observe the horizon in the distance to allow you some clarity. Once you get to the bottom it is too late; you have sunk and everything looks cloudy and muddy and water gets in your eyes and up your nose and you can’t breathe.

You get the picture.

As I sat on the cold airport floor in Paris I realized that along with Wine-Away I would like to always carry Guilt-Away so whether wine spills or Guilt starts to call me, I have my defense. I will spray it away like it never existed. Maybe there will be a slight remnant but it will be so faint that it will just be a memory rather than a reality.

State the facts, speak the truth. 

(Iyanla Vanzant taught me that. Memorize it.)

Fact: I got very very sick. Very very very sick.

Truth: My retreat had an amazing time and Kylee Lehe (who I have been mentoring) taught 3 beautiful classes and was given an opportunity to really rise to the occasion. I had been overworking and was run down.

Story: I should feel bad because I got sick and let everyone down. They had a miserable time because I couldn’t babysit them. I was boring.

Things always go wrong.

I got sick because I was being punished.

Guilt-Away: I take my bottle of Guilt-Away and rid myself of any of the story. The story is what keeps us stuck in the dry Desert of Guilt with no water or air.

I can breathe again now.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Paris and using my Guilt-Away to clean up any remorse I have over not feeling 100% and being able to go out and explore. Any guilt I have at sitting here and staring out the French windows. Any guilt I have about doing anything other than what I am doing at this very moment.

What will you use your Guilt-Away for? Share below anything you need Guilt-Away to remove or clean up.