Transcript: Episode 320
320. Break
Welcome to the System Speak podcast. If you would like to support our efforts at sharing our story, fighting stigma about Dissociative Identity Disorder, and educating the community and the world about trauma and dissociation, please go to our website at www.systemspeak.org, where there is a button for donations and you can offer a one time donation to support the podcast or become an ongoing subscriber. You can also support us on Patreon for early access to updates and what’s unfolding for us. Simply search for Emma Sunshaw on Patreon. We appreciate the support, the positive feedback, and you sharing our podcast with others. We are also super excited to announce the release of our new online community - a safe place for listeners to connect about the podcast. It feels like any other social media platform where you can share, respond, join groups, and even attend events with us, including the new monthly meetups that start this month. Go to our web page at www.systemspeak.org to join the community. We're excited to see you there.
[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I'm going to try and do this in one shot. I can't edit it at all. You probably noticed on your phones, or whatever device you use to listen to the podcast, that 25 episodes got published all at once. We got lots of emails about it. But it wasn't actually an accident. We did it on purpose. I know it was kind of wild and a silly thing to do, maybe. But there's lots of layers to it. Let me try to explain really quickly if I'm able to while the children are distracted.
First, our cochlear implants have broken. They're working enough that we can use part of one during the day, but we don't have the Bluetooth, and it's not going to work for very long. And it makes me entirely unable to edit podcasts. So that's the first problem.
The other problem is really just more of a challenge in that the children are returning to school. But because of this surge of the delta variant, they can't go back to public school. Which means at least another semester of homeschool, if not a whole year. And to do that well, and kindly, and to really truly be present with them, I needed to let go of as many things as I could to be able to be present with them and support them in their learning. So it wasn't just the podcast. We let go of some committees and work groups, and all of the work that we could afford to let go of. Which is really scary as well. But homeschooling six children is a lot. It's hard, really hard. But they're trying hard. And we're trying hard.
It seems though, if I were going to be wise and good, much like it was right to leave therapy that was happening for hours away because it left us too far from home for too much when we were already working away from home. In the same way, letting go of the podcast for just a season while they need our attention seems the right thing to do, the attuned thing to do, the self-care thing to do. Because they matter more than any projects we have. Even this one, which is obviously important to us. You are important to us. But we've got to focus on them why they need us. And so we decided to take a break.
We tried to take a break over the summer, having podcast scheduled all the way through February of next year so that we wouldn't have to do very much besides post them. But even just that is a lot of work on the website, and then getting the community going, and the resource list, and really focusing on transcripts, has taken a lot more time and energy than what we had was school starting. And every week, Mondays and Thursdays, releasing an episode meant one of the weeks we had scheduled in advance was used up. And there was this ongoing anxiety to keep it scheduled out in case we couldn't. But then we were still always working on it, even when it was scheduled six months out ahead. That's all internal. That's all our stuff. No one was putting that pressure on us. But we decided to let go of it. And even though we had it scheduled in advance, we still had to pay attention to it to get the website updated, or for editing, which takes hours.
So we decided to just let it go for a season, the husband told us that there are lots of other podcasts that have seasons with breaks in between. I don't know, we don't listen to a lot of podcasts. Because children, really. But we just needed to take a break and decided the only way to do it was just to release ourselves from the burden of it altogether.
So we didn't delete it. We weren't running away. But we weren't going to fight any more either—fight ourselves, I mean—or deal with that inner critic. And so we just let it go. We pushed one button. And just like that all the episodes were scheduled through February went all out at once.
I'm sorry about those notifications. But also it felt kind of freeing for me. We didn't mean to spam your phones. But the good news is you got to binge if you wanted to. Because all those episodes came out at once. The bad news is there are several weeks now, maybe months, I don't even know yet, where there's not any episodes at all. So I apologize, I don't need to disappoint anyone. But I'm also okay with our decision.
I do think that it would have been more helpful if we had planned it ahead of time and let people know. And I am sorry about that. But also, we're just on a learning curve too. And it felt right. And we had to go with it in the moment.
It was scary for us too and unsettling. I tried to wait several hours or a day. I don't remember, it's all blurred together, to make sure it's really what we wanted to do. And then just like that, we hit the button, and we were free. A vacation from our own job that we created for ourselves and all that pressure we put on ourselves. We just let go, put it on pause.
The other reason that a break was really important is that we had sorted through a lot of our own issues from the last two years, and we needed the space and the time and therapy to really wrap those things up. And I feel like we've done it really well. I'm really proud of us. I feel like we have finally made it to the other side. All of us, together. No one left behind. No one abandoned. Everyone listened to. All of the feelings honored. And that's a lot of work. It's been a two year journey of pain and grief that's been awful. It's been hellish and highly unpleasant. We have not enjoyed any of it. It's been really hard and exhausting and lonely work. But also we did it. And I'm proud of us. I'm proud of me for doing it. For seeing what there was to see, feeling what there was to feel, and knowing what there was to know.
We do miss it already. There have been things we wanted to share. And sharing this way is such an accessible and easy way for us when we have the time and space with the children busy on other things or playing outside. But it's been too hot even for them to be outside. So maybe this winter, we can start recording again. Maybe even this episode we'll schedule for January and just sort of start fresh. Maybe we won't at all. I don't even know yet. It's all unfolding in respectful and compassionate ways to myself, which is kind of a big deal for us.
It won't ever be like before, intense and twice a week, or as dark as it was last year. But that's okay too. And pacing is okay. And respecting our need for a break is okay. I'm kind of proud of us actually. And we're feeling a lot better after some rest and more balance in our lives. It's really helped a lot, actually.
The other thing that happened about the same time the community has been going for three months now. It's been amazing. People are being kind and good and supportive and sharing in healthy and functional ways that have really been helpful to us and to each other. It's not been a place for trauma bonding or trauma dumping or struggling in those kind of ways. And I'm really grateful that entirely depends on everyone's commitment to keeping the group a safe place. And they've blown me away in how well they've done it. You all have truly created a beautiful space and I'm grateful for you. And we've loved getting to know people and see their faces and meet them in meetups or groups or classes. But also, at the same time it's been really overwhelming. Not just the sheer number of people participating, which is fantastic. But, but also adjusting to relationships. We even left our peer support about the same time as we let go of the podcast, just for time and energy, and needing to learn how to do relationships first.
It's a really tricksy thing because you can't learn to do relationships without being in relationships. But it's okay to pace them. And it's okay to take it a step at a time. And it's okay to count your spoons and see how far they go.
We're learning. There's a lot to learn. But things are going really well and I feel better than I felt in years, maybe ever. Not that therapy is always easy, and not that it's without incident or without struggle. Therapy is still hard. I still hate therapy. And I think that's okay, too. It's rough, it's painful. But there's also times that we see the light or have a breakthrough or come up for air. And it's going okay.
We even had our own challenges with that. As we found out, our therapist was pregnant and going to be off work for a bit and had to deal with the layers of triggers that that brought up. But we did that too. Because she was present with us, because she was responsive to us, because we discussed it as we went and we always check in about our transference and how we're feeling. Every single week she checks in and lets me know how she's feeling and what her thoughts or feelings are about our therapy and our work together. And every single week she asked me how I'm feeling about our therapy together and our work together. Because relational trauma, and it's been really hard to re-engage in therapy when we have grieved so much the loss of so many.
But as it turns out, that's exactly what the last two years have been about: grief. We've had so much to grief. We've had so much happen. There's been so much loss. And we were struggling to find our way. And in wrestling with it, more and more layers were brought up. So that what we thought we were grieving wasn't even really what was going on. It was always deeper, and then deeper, and then deeper. And there was so much to learn. But we did it. It was messy. There are things we wish that we had done differently, or that we had listened to each other sooner, or that we used our voice differently.
But we held on in the ways that we could. We reached out where we thought we could. We shared what we thought was best to share. We shared in the ways that we could. And really, messy or not, it was our best. And messy or not, we're still alive.
We've learned to feel our feelings. Even things like anger and disappointment and hurt. We've learned to stand up for ourselves when someone, when someone harms us, even if it wasn't malicious. To acknowledge the wound, and stay and tend to it instead of dissociating from it, or pretending it's not there, or moving on. Our therapist says that you can't spiritually bypass that work. That being angry is okay, and a part of the process, and we have a lot to be angry about. And that those feelings in me, or parts of me, know what they're doing when they're trying to protect us, when they're trying to keep us safe, when they're trying to warn us of danger, or when they're saying and declaring to the world, “It's not okay that you treated me this way. It's not okay that you didn't hear me. It's not okay that I was silenced.”
So good for them, and good for me, and good for all of us together for learning how to do these things, to navigate these waters, to swim so deeply, and come to the surface again.
It feels good to breathe. It feels good to have the sun on my skin. It feels good to float on the water in this long hot summer that stretches on just like quarantine has.
There's so much we have to share. But to just say it without getting to edit it at all feels like too much and makes me anxious. And if we make a mistake, we can't go back and fix it right now. So I have to just let this go and share more later if we can, when we can. But I did want to clarify that we're not disappearing, we're not running away, and we are safe and okay. We just released all the episodes at once so that we could care for ourselves and our children. There had still been some hope that maybe if they were vaccinated, they would be able to return to school with masking. But they're not going to mask here and the little ones still aren't vaccinated. And now with delta they have to stay home. The hospital has called for our daughter and put us on shelter in place orders. Because it's so bad here. The numbers are skyrocketing. And people are getting so so sick, even children. So we have to wait it out, they said. Again, I don't mean to disrespect anyone's politics. For us, it's just about our daughter. And that's where we are. And that's where we still are, really, here in quarantine 19 months later.
But we're doing okay. And starting our homeschool schedule actually helps a lot with our stress. Because everyone knows where to go and what to do, and we have a routine that works for us. So even though things are more intense, and in some ways more difficult, they're easier and better in others.
For self-care, I'm eating every day. And for self-care, I made sure that one of the meals I actually make myself and cook from scratch just for fun for time alone without the children, but doing something functional and something creative all at once to care for me directly, to feel myself and observe myself caring for me. I'm getting enough sleep. I'm journaling. I'm painting. Painting so much. We share a lot of those in the community. We're going to groups when we can. When we have internet. When we have courage. Sometimes both are buffering. I take a nap every afternoon, sometimes in the morning. Just short, just a little while. But that intentionally and that intensively caring for myself. It's been a long hard two years, and I need to physically recover from it. And I'm understanding that differently. I'm learning to listen to my body differently. My body as a part of me, almost like an alter with its own world and its own voice that needs to be respected and heard and tended to. It's a lot to learn, and a lot to practice. But we're trying. And it's been really good for us.
But I wanted to explain. And if you're in the community, I'll see you there in the meantime.
Thank you for continuing to support the podcast, as we cannot keep the files online and stored to keep the entire podcast going even while we have a break. So thank you for continuing to help support the transcriptions, getting the book to those who need them, and keeping the podcast on the air even while we're on break so those just now finding it can still listen. So those of you have listened to episodes over and over and over again can still listen. We are so grateful for you and for your continued support. And we'll share more later after our break.
Thank you so much really, I mean it. It has been a pure joy and a delight to get to know you in the community, to match your faces with your names from emails, and to get to know you better. Thank you so much.
[Break]
Thank you for listening. Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together. Maybe it will help you in some ways too. You can connect with us on Patreon. And join us for free in our new online community by going to our website at www.systemspeak.org. If there's anything we've learned in the last four years of this podcast, it's that connection brings healing. We look forward to connecting with you.