Sixty seconds passed – an eternity, and my page was still white and blank. There were several hundred women in the ballroom, writing in total silence into journals resting against their knees as they rested in various seated positions on the carpeted floor. I glanced at my mother-in-law, who was finishing up an entire page of prose in her floral journal, only taking breaks to sweep her long, silver hair behind her ears gently. How is this so easy for her?

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The exercise was to write the dark story that has defined your life, the secret that has been decaying inside you – the source of your fear. I felt like the only woman in the room, struggling to gather my thoughts and put them on paper. It seemed like the women surrounding me knew exactly what to write like they had been waiting their whole lives for this opportunity – the opportunity to face their demons in the safety of the sanctuary. I was scared and didn’t know where to begin, but I picked up my felt tip pen, closed my eyes, and glided it across the page in purple scribbled cursive.  

 

As much as I wanted to write perfect sentences, nothing about my life was perfect. Moments that seemed perfect were nothing more than a façade I painstakingly handcrafted, the rest were messy and broken. I had already exhausted two minutes trying to peel back the layers…

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I started writing down fragmented memories in single words like fireworks exploding on the page: a list of sensations, adjectives, locations, objects, names…

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   Rage                    Cop                 Fear              Violence               Pedophile 

 

Tyler                  Veteran              Texas                Edward                 Secret

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 Derrick                 Cold                Choke                  Justin                Special

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  Closet                  Naked               Michael             Gasoline               Punch

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  Burn                 Trenton              Control               “Whore”               Gun

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    Scars                  John                  “Stupid”                   Pain                 Speed

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 Robert               Isolation            Helpless                  Josh               Love…

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Each word related to a piece of my own personal trauma. I wasn’t strong enough to write out the details of my childhood abuse by the hand of my own father or lament my many sadistic relationships with boys and men who found every opportunity to take advantage of a troubled girl. Nevertheless, I was strong enough to recount various memories and make up a tumultuous list of bright purple scribbled cursive on the blank pages of a foil-embossed floral journal.

 

“Now find a woman to share this story with – a stranger,” the speaker said into her microphone, after ten minutes of silence. “Look into the eyes of your partner and release the pain you have been holding onto.”

 

Beneath the stage were women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages; I was one of them. I scanned the room, overwhelmed and terrified.

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I had traveled to Los Angeles to be a part of this movement. With this immersive and transformative experience, women are taught how to reclaim their bodies and awaken their erotic creatures through dance.  I wanted to be there, but I wasn’t prepared to open up about my experiences with somebody other than my appointed mental health treatment team back on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, where I was stationed.

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My brain was going through its own transformation – a medical cocktail of prazosin and venlafaxine for my post-traumatic stress disorder. Its chemistry was being manipulated by prescription drugs for the first time in ten years, not since I used to crush up opioids and amphetamines and snort them off my yearbook when I was a freshman in high school.

 

It had only been a week since I started taking the medications, and the side-effects were more severe during moments of crippling anxiety. I was nervously shaking, streams of tears running down my face for no reason. I glanced over at the people I came with, all paired up with a stranger and pouring their souls into them. How is it so easy for them? My pores started to open up, and I could feel my make-up struggling to stay matte. I turned my body around and locked eyes with a curvaceous woman with platinum bleached hair and snow-white skin. She smiled at me, and I made my way toward her hot pink yoga mat.

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She was wearing thick black leggings and a black t-shirt with two white skeleton hands cupping her breasts; it had been altered with scissors around the neckline to fall off one of her shoulders. Her eyes were truly spellbinding, nearly as blue as Robin’s egg. Something about her was familiar like we had met before. She reminded me of my former lover, Charlotte, a classically trained bassist whom I met at Florida State University during a residential music camp in the summer of 2007.

 

We didn’t exchange names, only our stories. I read from my journal, translating the explosion of nearly illegible words into verbal memories, taking brief pauses to maintain eye contact with her. I started choking on a combination of salty tears, nasal drainage, and violent shallow breaths. She listened to each word as I spoke them, and as the tears started to fall from the wells of her eyes, I knew she could relate to my pain. She wrapped her hands around my wrists and held on to them tightly. Her hands were soft and delicate, like a velvet petal from a rose, but her swaddling grip was strong and firm. I was comforted by her touch; when I closed my journal and looked up at her, she embraced me in her arms and pulled me against her soft breasts. I couldn’t remember the last time I was hugged like that.

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I tried to give her the same respect and attention she gave me while also wondering how my rough hands felt against her soft skin. She didn’t read from her journal, rather her haunting blue eyes locked onto my gaze the entire time she told her story. She walked me through the chain of events that led up to her kidnapping at the age of eleven outside of a dance studio in Salt Lake City. The trauma distorted her memory, but she shared what she could remember, like the physical attributes of her captor, the color of the van that drove away with her, her overwhelming fear of imminent death… I held her hands tighter. She shared that this event prompted a life-long search for safety, consequently suffocating those she cared for the most. She shared her struggles with eating disorders over the years and how much shame she had built up from being overweight, but she also shared with me how she conquered her shame.

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She told me she was once in my shoes, searching for a strong community of women to help facilitate her personal metamorphosis toward a stronger, more confident version of herself. She told me she found it through the women of S-Factor, the women who surrounded us.

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“These women brought me back to life,” she said, still holding onto my hands. “They rebuilt me from the ground up and helped me find my strength. They believed in me when I didn’t. They will do it for you, too, I promise. Thank you for sharing your story with me.”

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