April 4, 2024 – On a night with the weather saying ‘it would be best to stay home’ you did the opposite. You came out to the Gatehouse experience of the premiere of 5 Steps Film on April 4, 2024 at Creeds and with your energy generated a beautiful evening -Thank You. You can now view the full documentary online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBe5jbzKreQ In a world that seems to be fractured and fracturing more and more, it is people such as you, that continually provide ways that have the power to genuinely transform traumas into triumph. It is your Intentional kindness that provides the space, the way for people to truly transform their lives-what a wondrous gift you are giving-truly magical. Your presence last evening has a way of reaching people whom you may never ever meet, but because you support The Gatehouse, people will be able to walk up those 5 steps and reclaim their lives. And, in such a magical turn, their courage creates the way for others to engage in moving forward in powerful ways in their own unique journey. As I was listening to the stories offered in the two films I was reminded of the statement: “Stories are the reflection of the human soul. They remind us of our potential, of the driving possibilities of our existence.” S. Spencer Everyone in those films-reflecting the power of the human soul. Not a bad event to partake in, on a cold, wet, windy, dark evening. I am including a little poem that I saw reflected in all the stories on April 4. And I hope you might also want to share a poem on the global poetry movement website www.globalpoetrymovement.com. Thank all of you for being on the planet. We look forward to seeing you at our next event, the 14th Annual Transforming Trauma Conference taking place on Wednesday, May 15th 9:30am to 4:00pm at Humber College – full details here. Why Support “5 Steps” Film? Please share the link far and wide to help us raise awareness of the prevalence, impact and work of The Gatehouse – 5 Steps Film Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBe5jbzKreQ
Inner Child: A Visitor From the Past
Hello, fellow survivors!! I am a survivor and am taking part in the phase one peer support program at The Gatehouse. Since we began, we’ve discussed topics such as anger, addiction, and triggers. This week: the sixth session, was the first of three sessions that focus entirely on our “Inner Child.” I looked over the entire program when we first received it, but I had forgotten about this part of it, and it caused just a wee bit of anxiety…was I going to be able to connect with her, or would she be evasive like she’s been with some of my memories? We were asked to bring a photo of ourselves, one that had been taken during our childhood. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with this photo, but I had no doubt which one I was going to choose; it had been given to me by my mother decades earlier. I never understood why she gave me something that I thought should have been a keepsake for her, but I put it in one of the middle drawers of my dresser, and pretty much forgot about it. When I went to get the photo in question, I realized there were some class photos, as well as a six-inch lock of my hair in the same envelope. I looked through the photos and then held up the lock of hair, remembering that it had been mine. The tears started rolling down my cheeks because it reminded me of a traumatic incident that happened to me when I was quite young – maybe five? My mother had gotten angry with me for going outside and messing up my hair. It had gotten tangled while I was outside playing and when I whined while she was trying to brush it, she took a pair of scissors and cut off one of my pigtails just above my left ear. I was devastated because I had just started kindergarten and here, I was looking like a little boy with a really bad haircut, instead of a little girl. I looked at the picture of me at least 10 times in the five days before this week’s group, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized how little I was. I was so young and vulnerable, and I didn’t deserve to be treated like I was less than human. The guilt and shame that I’d been living with for decades, should never have been directed at me – ever. As I mentioned earlier, I’d already read part of this week’s material, so I was nervous when Monday came, and the group started. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hiding from my inner child; for decades, and I knew that trying to connect with her might not be easy. Not only that, but survivors also don’t always connect the first time and I was afraid that would be me. At the start of the meditation, the facilitator that was leading us through it told us to get comfortable, close our eyes and concentrate on the sound of her voice, and what she was saying. If you’ve never meditated before, you might find this difficult in the beginning, but I’ve been meditating for close to two years and I was able to open my mind completely. I listened to the facilitator’s voice gently guiding me towards my inner child: …breathe in and out, slowly and deep into your belly. …relax all the way down your back. …allow your thoughts to become peaceful. …go to a place where you felt safe as a child. …when you have something make the image as clear as you can. …now imagine your child self, coming towards you… I was getting to my safe place when I heard her say those last seven words, and as I heard them, my breathe caught in my throat. I could see her; me and as she walked towards me, I couldn’t hear the facilitator anymore, all I could hear was myself saying, you’re so small; you’re just a small child. It was bright; so incredibly bright, almost like the little child walking towards me was an angel and the light was shining out of her. She slowly walked towards me and as she took my hand in hers, I could see that her face was beaming with joy. I asked her what she wanted from me and she told me that she just wanted to walk with me. There was this bright light all around us, and it felt so good to be walking alongside her. We walked quietly, relishing in each other’s company, and when I asked her if she was tired from walking, she said yes. I then asked her if she wanted me to pick her up, and she nodded her head yes. I reached down and as I lifted her little body into my arms, I was reminded of how tiny she was. She reached up with both hands and stroked my hair before tucking her head under my chin and wrapping her arms around my neck. It felt so comforting to hold her, so I just stood there and rocked with her, telling her how much I loved her. We cried, but they were happy tears because we were so happy that we had finally reunited with one another. When I put her down, she held her hands out to me and when I reached out to see what she was giving to me, she very gently put a frog in my hand; smiled at me and skipped away. The meditation was so profound, especially the frog because I’ve always loved frogs and I believe it was a way for my inner child to show me that she wants me to get in touch with that little girl and show her how to play and be happy. She also wants me to stop blaming myself because she said that it never
Andrea: To Heal Is Truth & Peace
Andrea: To Heal Is Truth & Peace By Andrea Robin Skinner ***Trigger warning*** The sexual abuse of a child is a rape of the mind, in which any fledgling tools for healing are stolen. Without intervention, deep shame fills up the child’s life, and continues into adulthood. This is my story… I was nine years old when my stepfather climbed into my bed and sexually assaulted me. My mother was away, and I’d asked if I could sleep in the spare bed near him. To understand how young nine is, I had only just realized I couldn’t grow up to be a sheep herding dog, a great disappointment, as I loved dogs and sheep. The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d woken up with my first migraine, which developed into a chronic, debilitating condition that continues to this day. Later that summer, on the way to the airport where I was flying home to my father and stepmother, my stepfather asked me to play a game called “Show me.” I said no, so he made me tell him about my “sex life”–the usual innocent explorations with other children–and he told me about his sex life. Back at my father’s house, I told my stepmother what had happened. She told my father, and he decided to say nothing to my mother. I was terrified she would blame me anyway, as she seemed jealous of the attention I got. I continued to go back to my stepfather’s home every summer for the next several years. When I was alone with my stepfather, he would make lewd jokes, expose himself during car rides, tell me about the little girls in the neighborhood he liked, and describe my mother’s sexual needs. When I was 11, former friends of my stepfather told my mother he’d exposed himself to their 14-year-old daughter. He denied it and when my mother asked about me, he made a “joke” that I was “not his type” (I learned this much later.) In front of my mother, he told me that many cultures in the past weren’t as “prudish” as ours, and it used to be considered normal for children to learn about sex by engaging in sex with adults. By the time I was a teenager, I was at war with myself, suffering from bulimia, insomnia and migraines. By the age of 25, I was so sick and empty, I couldn’t properly start my adult life. Realizing I would never heal if I couldn’t tell the truth, I wrote a letter to my mother, and told her everything, explaining that I didn’t want to hurt anybody, but just needed to connect with her. Things got worse after that. My mother reacted as if she had learned of an infidelity. I had a sense that she was working hard to forgive me. Meanwhile, my stepfather wrote letters to my family describing my nine-year-old self as a “homewrecker,” and noted that my family’s lack of intervention suggested they agreed with him. He also threatened retribution: “Andrea invaded my bedroom for sexual adventure… for Andrea to say she was ‘scared’ is simply a lie… Andrea has brought ruin to two people who love each other… If the worst comes to worst I intend to go public. I will make available for publication a number of photographs, notably some taken at my cabin near Ottawa which are extremely eloquent, one taken in Australia with Andrea posing as a Lolita-like character in a crib, one of Andrea in my underwear shorts…” Again, there was no evidence of outrage from my family, no gathering around me to help or heal me. My mother stayed with my stepfather, and my father continued to have lunches with her, never mentioning me (I asked my father about these lunches before he died. With regret, he told me I just didn’t “come up” in conversation.) My siblings and parents carried on with their busy lives. I was left alone with this thing, this ugliness. Me. But I was learning through therapy that healing is real, wants to happen, is happening all the time. I was beginning to understand that it wasn’t my fault. I got married, had children, and poured myself into making my children’s lives magical and safe, and into growing their confident, exploring, adventurous selves. Meanwhile, I distanced myself from my family of origin. A turning point came when I read an interview with my mother, Alice Munro, in The New York Times, in which she described my stepfather as a gallant figure in her life. For three weeks I was too sick to move, and hardly left my bed. I had long felt inconsequential to my mother, but now she seemed to be erasing me. I wanted to speak out for the truth. I went to the police and told them of my “historical” abuse, and showed them my stepfather’s letters. They pressed charges. I’d had to confront my shame (and other people’s), which was telling me I was being vindictive, destructive, cruel. For so long I’d been telling myself that holding my pain alone had at least helped other family members in important ways, and that the greatest good for the greatest number was, after all, the greatest good. Now, I was claiming my right to a full life, taking the burden of abuse and handing it back to my stepfather. Was I worth it? Was I even capable of a “full life”? How could I knowingly make any other human suffer only to maybe feel better? I answered these questions by imagining one of my children in this situation. Wow, that was easy. I was able to go ahead with it. My stepfather was convicted of sexual assault, and got two years’ probation. I was satisfied. I hadn’t wanted to punish him, and I believed he was too old to hurt anyone else. What I wanted was some record of the truth, in a context that asserted I had not deserved
The Gatehouse: Transformation or Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse
The Gatehouse: Transformation for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse By Stefan Horodeckyj, former group facilitator and former Director at The Gatehouse What is The Gatehouse? The Gatehouse, founded in 1998 by Professor Arthur Lockhart, is a unique community-based centre in Toronto that provides supports, resources, and advocacy on behalf of those impacted by childhood sexual abuse. It offers, among other things, three types of adult peer – support group programs: a phase1 peer- support group program for male survivors, and a phase 1 peer – support group program for female survivors; a co-educational phase 2 peer- support group program and an advanced co-educational phase 3 peer- support group program. The goal of these programs is to provide a forum where survivors can heal from the devastating trauma of childhood sexual abuse. In this article, I will focus on Phase 1, adult peer-support group programs. What is Childhood Sexual Abuse? Childhood sexual abuse “is the misuse of power by someone who is in authority over a child for the purpose of exploiting a child for sexual gratification. It includes incest, sexual molestation, sexual assault, and the exploitation of the child for pornography or prostitution”. (Rogers, 1990) The Gatehouse adult peer-support group program The seven principles of The Gatehouse adult peer-support group program are resilience, self-care, mutuality, encouragement, respect, safety, and responsibility. And, the topics discussed in Phase 1 peer-support group program include: from isolation to belonging; triggers; dissociation; flashbacks to grounding; anger and emotional regulation; addictions and relationship to abuse; the ‘inner child’; loss and grief; positive boundaries; shame and guilt; resiliency and the sacred path; and sexuality. Benefits of The Gatehouse Peer-Support Group Program At The Gatehouse, healing through the Phase 1 peer-support group occurs in three major ways: by addressing the emotional needs of the survivors; by teaching survivors important social skills, relaxation, and self-care coping techniques/tips; and by providing survivors with important information about childhood sexual abuse and support services contacts. The Gatehouse addresses the emotional needs of survivors The survivor has a need to feel empathy from others. Empathy means that other members, including the facilitators, show respect, caring, and compassion for you, as they walk with you on your healing journey. Empathy also comes from feeling safe in the presence of the other group members and by trusting them with your life story and feelings. The survivor has a need for empathic listening from others in the group. This means that others should: give their undivided attention; be non-judgmental; read the speaker (ie: observe the emotions behind the words); and not feel that they should have an immediate reply to questions and comments presented. The survivor has a need to have their “voice” heard. This is paramount since the voice is one of the first things that a child sexually abused is deprived of by the perpetrator. A survivor finding their voice means no more silence, secrecy, shame, and self-blame. This is the power of one’s voice! Finding one’s voice means that the survivor can express their feeling of anger, grief, shame, guilt, fears, and hopes. The survivor has a need to trust others. This is vital since trust is what the survivor had violently breached by the perpetrator, who is often someone they know. The survivor has a need to be connected. This is one of the basic human needs. Healthy connections with others define who we are, and provide us with emotional sustenance. The survivor has a need to feel safe. Peer-support groups that are experienced by participants as being emotionally non-threatening, provide the basis for developing trust and empathy, and a venue where survivors can find their voice. The survivor has a need to connect to the “inner child”. The inner child is the authentic or real self. In order to heal from childhood sexual abuse, the grownup adult must connect with the inner child’s fears, anger, pain, and sadness, and then to provide love and understanding to the inner child. The survivor has a need to feel self-empowered. This can occur when the survivor has positive self-esteem. When survivors realize that they are the best ones to ascertain their own needs and that they are not responsible for, or defined by their childhood sexual abuse, then they can bolster their self-esteem and become more self-empowered. Some survivors have a need to forgive the perpetrator. By doing so, they release negative feelings and energy that can impede their emotional healing. The survivor has a need to feel hope. Hope is achieved by realizing that healing from childhood sexual abuse is possible. Healing is a process that evolves in the group and continues outside of the group setting. The Gatehouse teaches survivors important social skills, relaxation techniques, and self-care coping skills/tips The Gatehouse provides a forum where survivors can learn and practice effective communication skills with other group members. As well, it provides a place where survivors can practice healthy personal boundaries with the other group members. Also, it provides a venue where the survivor can establish and practice respect and empathy for other group members. The Gatehouse teaches relaxation techniques such as grounding and breathing exercises and mindful meditation. Also, The Gatehouse teaches self-care coping skills/tips including ways of dealing with triggers/anger/grief/forgiving and personal boundaries. The Gatehouse provides survivors with important information about childhood sexual abuse and support services contacts Some of the information shared with participants by the facilitators during the group sessions includes stages of recovery; myths and facts about sexual abuse; common symptoms of sexual abuse; the relationship between anger, grieving, shame and guilt, addictions and childhood sexual abuse; suggestions for dealing with one’s sexuality; and instructions and suggestions on how to create a suicide safety plan. The facilitators provide participants with a list of addiction services available and a list of emotional/psychological support services available in the GTA. By way of a summary, the transformative nature of The Gatehouse Phase1, adult peer-support group program is succinctly captured in the testimony of a survivor who completed this program:
My Inner Child Helped Me Heal
*Trigger Warning My Inner Child Helped Me To Heal The memories of my abuse are fractured, like a mirror shattered into a billion pieces. How many times did it happen? I don’t know. How old was I when it started? I don’t remember. But my most vivid memory is when I am nine, I think. I am in my cousin’s bedroom and my uncle is in the bed. I have no idea why I am even in the room or how I got there. I have spent years ruminating and wondering about this. Did I follow him? Did he tell me to come? My brain will not answer this question. I am staring out the window watching my parents laugh with my aunt. They are completely unaware of what is about to happen to their daughter. My sisters and my cousin are swimming in the pool. My uncle tells me to come over to the bed and I do. The abuse begins just as a train whistles in the distance. To this day, train whistles always remind me of him. When the abuse is over, I am not terrified. I am not sad. In fact, I feel special. I feel like what has happened is completely normal. I am too young to even comprehend what has happened was abuse. And finally. Tragically for years afterward, I will unknowingly and innocently seek this feeling out, however, and whenever I can. My first flashback occurred when I was 19. I was flipping through a bible and came across a verse that said anyone who engages in perverse sexual acts is condemned to hell. At that moment, everything comes rushing back to me. Emotions, visions, thoughts, memories. I am terrified. I begin to panic and have what I now know was the first of many emotional flashbacks. I stop eating. I stop sleeping. My mom asks me what is wrong. I don’t tell her. She takes me to the doctor. I don’t tell him. Instead, I will keep these memories locked deep inside of me where no one will ever find them. I will become a perfectionist because this is my way of controlling the soul-crushing shame that threatens to destroy me every day. I go to university. Get a job. Get married. The memories haunt me but this only makes me push them further away. When I am 35, I discover alcohol. At first, I have a couple of glasses of wine after the kids go to bed. Soon my drinking escalates. Within a two-year period, I am a full-blown (functioning) alcoholic. I work during the day, come home, and start drinking while making dinner. Rye, wine, vodka……it doesn’t matter…..anything to obliterate the self-hatred and memories. One night as I sleep on the couch, my then 7-year-old daughter gently shakes me and asks me if I am okay. I am confused so I ask her why. She tells me that I had fallen down the stairs that night and is afraid I might be hurt. I don’t remember falling. My 7-year-old daughter is checking on her mother in the middle of the night. My life is spinning out of control. I want to die. I have finally hit my bottom. I check myself into rehab where I am introduced to A.A. I cling to this program because I know my life depends on it. To this day, I am almost nine years clean. When I am about a year sober, I meet a psychiatrist who will become one of the greatest teachers in my life. He is not your typical shrink….he does talk therapy and just happens to specialize in childhood trauma. I am diagnosed with Complex-PTSD. ( In addition to my sexual abuse, I was also physically abused and emotionally neglected as a child). Huh. So I am not crazy after all. I don’t have various forms of mental illness. Instead, I was abused and the fallout was developing C-PTSD. This man gently takes my hand and every single week we examine my abuse. My NORMAL reactions to it. How the brain responds to abuse. He is the first person to teach me about inner child work and he challenges me to face the younger parts of myself that I think are “bad” and that I despise. Slowly, as I peel the back the layers I find that kid that I buried so long ago. Guess what? She is lovely. Innocent. Pure. The fractured parts of my soul begin to come together and they form the most beautiful mosaic. In psychiatric terms, this is called integration. Although I am somewhat healed, I tell my doctor that I wish I could meet other survivors and this is how I find The Gatehouse. It is at The Gatehouse that I find a tribe of women who finally speak the same language I do, who have felt the same feelings, and who are on the same healing journey. To this day, they are still my people. I now facilitate groups at The Gatehouse, which I absolutely love. I am still, and always will be, learning and healing. Recently, I published my first book entitled Hiking The Mountain in Flip-Flops. It talks about my healing journey, including The Gatehouse, and focuses on inner child work. It was written in the hopes that it will help someone who is suffering the soul torturing pain we all endure as survivors of childhood sexual trauma. Now, when I look back on my life, I don’t think I would change anything. Too much good has come out of something so horrible. I am unbelievably grateful that the universe gave me the strength to uncover and meet that little shame-filled, terrified child within me…..because strangely, it was HER who ended up being the one to heal ME.
Trauma Impacts The Body & Mind
Trauma Impacts The Body & Mind I had unusual physical symptoms for more than a decade that no medical professional was able to diagnose. In 2005 when my first son was born I started to experience unusual symptoms such as intense, unusual fatigue, left-sided headaches, tingling in my left hand and foot, mild balance and perceptual difficulties, attention, and memory problems to name a few. For years I saw specialists, had MRIs and follow-ups all to be told: “there’s nothing wrong with you”. I came to believe that this was simply the exhaustion from motherhood. In 2012 the fatigue was worsening, so started working with a biofeedback specialist/practitioner and began a regular meditation and tai chi practice. 2013 was probably the best year I’d had in years! I felt calmer, had more energy, felt mentally more clear, more present, and connected to my sons – I had another son in 2008! I was enjoying my work at a local hospital too and appreciating social connections. However, symptoms started to worsen again making it difficult to do day to day activities such as housework, parenting, and work. Yet I continued to struggle in silence and alone, not telling anyone how difficult things were. In 2014 after more than a year of working with my practitioner and doing my daily practices, images of an uncle started to appear. At first, they felt pleasant and welcoming. However, as the months continued these feelings would switch to feelings of confusion and discomfort. I started to wonder if something inappropriate had happened with him when I was a child growing up in Kenya, East Africa. But it made no sense to me – how could I completely have forgotten something like that? “This art at Gatehouse caught my eye many years ago and now it makes so much sense. I suffered alone and in silence for way too long – I do not want others to ever suffer alone or in silence.” (Left) Yet in hindsight, I also see I have very little memories of my childhood and that it is very normal to forget. It’s a survival response. It took a full year to say to someone close to me that I trusted, “I think my uncle sexually abused me”. And then I shut down again. I couldn’t believe I’d said it out loud and in fact, didn’t want to talk about it anymore as it all felt so confusing and unclear. I came across a Gatehouse and registered for the Phase 1 Women’s Group, however dropped out even before it started. In my mind, I thought, “I’m ok, nothing wrong”. This belief was so deeply ingrained from my upbringing. This included growing up being constantly told not to allow or feel my feelings. Anger for sure was never ever allowed in my home. I plodded along on a journey that felt very lonely. I understand now that feeling alone and lonely is in fact a hallmark of trauma. I recall attending the Partners Program by Gatehouse in 2016 and watching a TED Talk by Brene Brown. It hit me so deeply how lonely I had been ALL my life. In the fall of 2016, my body finally said NO. No more avoiding, no more brushing it under the rug, no more resistance – you have to heal. The leg pain had worsened, the fatigue had worsened – to the point that as I worked with my stroke patients, I would have to sit down even before they needed to. When I made meals or washed dishes in my kitchen, my legs felt like they could only support me for 10 to 15 minutes before I needed to sit down. When my children wanted to play, I only had the endurance for short periods. They came to learn – mommy gets tired and once my younger son said, “mommy come outside and play with me, I’ll get a chair for you because I know you get tired”. This broke my heart. There was no way these health issues were going to rob me from being the mother I wanted to be. My sons were my driving force to get better and to understand what was going on with me. In December 2015 I finally ended up going on medical leave from my job and this was the second last straw that made me see I had to face childhood sexual trauma. The last straw was a concussion in April 2018! I attended Gatehouses Phase 1 and 2 programs in 2016 – they were a gift in helping me see that I am not alone. It brought awareness to how childhood sexual trauma affects us in both subtle and profound ways. Especially our sense of worth, body image, confidence, ability to speak up, have boundaries, relationships, physical health. I really started to understand why my physical symptoms started with the birth of my son. I also worked with my body through nutrition, herbal medicine, tai chi, and bodywork to process all the trauma, much of which I still did not remember in my mind. But my body did. I am currently enrolled in the Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Training program as this too was a gift in uncovering all the emotions buried deep in my body that were also causing physical symptoms as I was so unaware of them. I now live a full life, where I feel healthier, more present, happier, and more connected to others. I am the amazing mom I want to be with my sons! Many of those symptoms I struggled with for years have now lifted. I continue to listen to my body though as it often tells me when I need to slow down or look at something I may be avoiding. Gatehouse helped me become aware of how much childhood sexual trauma had affected me all my life – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It provided a safe place in which I felt heard and understood, and
Marks Remarkable Story
Marks Remarkable Story *Trigger Warning I remember watching a little boy open his garage door to get his bicycle out. As he pulled up the heavy door he watched himself opening it, narrating the events in his head as if he was a voice-over in a movie: Mark is now opening the garage door to get his bike, but first he’ll have to move the red wagon out of the way… I remember watching a little boy sit in the hall beside his bedroom. He would sit there until the sun came up because monsters don’t like light. In one memory the boy could extend his legs completely without touching the wall on the other side of the hall, in another memory he could almost touch the wall, and in yet another memory his legs were too long to extend completely without hitting the opposite wall. Most nights the little boy would stay in his room and watch himself from just above the doorway, like a fly, while the sledgehammer men came to visit. Time takes a time-out while Soundlessness, not silence Tenders a darkness That is no barrier To the witnessing fly. On some weekend days there were parties, sometimes with movie cameras. The little boy, not so little anymore, would use tricks to avoid feeling what his, rather, the body felt. He created friends in his head, friends who could play with the sledgehammer men and not feel bad or sad. And friends who could feel bad or sad. And friends who could feel angry, or innocent, or thoughtful, or just watch from an immeasurable distance. Okay, that’s enough, you get the idea. There is no particular feeling of order to these memories, though logic imposes a crude chronology. Experiencing elapsed time as a largely linear phenomenon is a privilege, you see, because trauma can change your relationship to the order in which bad things happen. As a child I had a painfully simple daily goal: to prevent my soul—my capacity to love—from being pulverized. I buried my awareness and memories of the rapes in a black box at the bottom of the sea until I was in my thirties, when my first daughter was born. He has a little secret Tucked away Which he dare not glimpse. A silent ball of hell fire That burns inside him Like a jar of angry bumblebees. No one, not even he, can surpass the bees. They surfaced like a skin infection emerging as a painful boil and erupted as psychological black puss that continues to ooze and spurt to this day. My life is divided into three phases: abuse, post-abuse repression, and post-repression, and until the last phase I had no awareness of being abused. But the signs were there. Because this is a short article, I’m going to focus on the trauma symptom most relevant to The Gatehouse: disconnection. Naturally, the (non-)feeling of disconnection affects all areas of my life, but here I want to focus on the role of The Gatehouse in helping me heal. Disconnection—technically, dissociation—allowed me to keep my soul intact while I was being traumatised as a child. But like many early survival techniques, it has outlived its usefulness. It is a knee-jerk reaction to internal and external events that resemble, even remotely, anything associated with the abuse, such as objects, sounds, smells, facial expressions, and aspects of relationships with others. And I wonder What is it like to kiss someone Without looking? What is it like to look someone in the eye Without wondering what it’s like To look someone in the eye? Articulating the experience of disconnection is a bit like describing the flavour of something to someone who has never tasted that thing. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that disconnection is not a feeling, it is a non-feeling, the absence of experience, the absence of flavour. Similar to the feeling of holding someone’s hand while wearing a glove or leaving the dentist with a frozen mouth, I experience the emotional world from a distance as if it is happening on the other side of the subway door. I watch, as Camera Because lenses see But we do not feel. Dissociation during trauma is Novocain for the soul, and it blocks out painful and pleasurable feelings equally. As an adult, however, it dulls the flavour of intimacy, the fragrance of friendship, and the sensuality of connection generally. The loneliness of trauma survival is as deep as a quarry abandoned, as long as an outstretched ball of string. I followed that line of string and it ended at the steps to The Gatehouse. I did Phase One and Two, and now I volunteer as a facilitator and a Board member. As individuals, we exist on a variety of levels, from the personas we wear in the world to the softness of our hidden vulnerabilities. When I’m at The Gatehouse, I feel less alone. It’s that simple, and it’s that powerful. At the end of the Phase One facilitator training with Arthur Lockhart I left before the workshop ended. I went into the hallway and wept more than I had ever cried in my entire life. It was the first time I didn’t feel alone. Being with others who understood intimately and experientially what I have lived with unbuckled me like never before. It felt open, easy, and peaceful because I didn’t have to apologize or explain my silence. I started this article with a comment about the purpose of dissociation being to save my spirit, which I understand to be the capacity to love others. The French philosopher Michel Foucault said that the purpose of the modern criminal justice system is not to control the body but to regulate the soul. I believe that the sexual abuse of children has a similar aim—to destroy the beauty that exists in the child. Those of us who survived these attempts to destroy our souls come together at The Gatehouse to create an environment