When I was a teenager, shortly before my dad was arrested and sent to prison, my dad, my sister, and I were in a car accident. (I’ve mentioned this before, here.) It was awful. My sister was driving our Honda Accord (she was just learning), Dad was sitting in the seat next to her, and I was in the back, behind Dad. We’d just left one of Dee-Anne’s friend’s houses and were getting ready to pull out (left) onto Rogers Avenue, the main drag in Fort Smith. I remember Dad telling Dee-Anne to GO NOW. And I don’t know, I guess she waited a moment and then went. It all happened so fast. The next thing I knew someone had broadsided my sister’s side of the car, we’d flipped two-and-a-half times, and we’d landed wrong-side up on the avenue. In terms of physics, it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever be on the receiving end of.

I remember yelling, “Shit!”

When everything came to a halt, I was hanging upside down, absolutely terrified the car was going to catch on fire or blow up. I mean, that’s what happens on television. So there I was scrambling, trying to get out of my seatbelt, desperate to get the backdoor open. And whereas I got my seatbelt off, the door was stuck. I was petrified. Finally, I thought to UNLOCK the door, THEN try to open it. This worked.

From this point on, the memories come in pieces. First, we all made it to the side of the road. A hot boy (my sister says) took off his shirt so she could wrap her bleeding arm in it. By the time the ambulance came, my body was too stiff to walk. Someone had to help me in. I remember sitting in the back and seeing the man (boy) who hit us on a stretcher, his neck braced so it couldn’t move. Why do they let children see these things? Later, at the hospital, I remember being wheeled down the hallway and being left in a room alone. Looking back, I was confused and terrified, but all I could think about at the time was how bad it hurt to stand up when they asked me to pee in a jar.

Thankfully, all three of us came away that night basically unscathed. My dad and I were bruised–the next day it took me thirty minutes to work my way out of my bed, ten feet down the hall to the bathroom, and back–and my sister (I think) had a few stitches.

When I blogged about this incident before, I talked about how I’ve always thought the on-and-off problems I have with my right hip started with that accident. Ugh. Think of a car going–I don’t know–45 to 60 miles an hour then broadsiding you so hard that you literally roll down the road like a Slinky. BA-BUM-BA-BUM-BUM. I mean, all that force has to go somewhere, like into your body. For me, that’s what it’s felt like. Like my entire structure was permanently change that night in the blink of an eye.

Shit!

Recently I blogged about Judith Blackstone’s book Trauma and the Unbound Body. The (very) basic idea is that our bodies will often constrict or tense up in response to stress or trauma. A car accident, for example. This is a protective mechanism and happens in an instant. Your psoas shortens, your head and shoulders cave inward, and your body curls into a ball, thus keeping your vital organs safe. Ideally, after the trauma is over, your body unfurls and resets itself. However, if it hasn’t gotten the message that the threat is over, it can stay stuck in “tensed up” positions, which are held in place by connective tissue called fascia. And here’s what’s really fascinating (I think)–our fascia apparently not only holds our bodies “in place,” whatever that place may be, but also holds any unprocessed or “unfelt” emotions associated with our lives/traumas.

I think lives/traumas should be a new entry in the dictionary. Because–true.

So get this. Last night, at two in the morning, I sat down to meditate and go through Blackstone’s “release” process. This involves, after first “centering yourself,” focusing on a area of tension in your body. Because my right shoulder/neck has been spasming for the last two days, I picked that area. Now, I did this exercise recently and had several memories from both my childhood and adult years arise–times I would have tensed up or frozen. However, I didn’t have any emotional responses. But last night while focusing on my shoulder, images of that car accident began to come up, and it was like, rather than just THINKING about the event like I have a hundred times since it happened, I was actually FEELING it.

This process took a while, but during it I realized (for the first time in the twenty-four years since the car accident happened), how unsettling it was to hear my dad yell GO NOW to my sister. I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned it here, but I HATE yelling. I hate doing it, and I hate having it done to me. (Like, please don’t even raise your voice.) Recently I was thinking about confronting someone, and my therapist asked, “What are you afraid of?” and I said, “I’m afraid they’re going to yell at me.” She said, “Have they ever yelled at you before?”

“No,” I said.

Still, it’s this thing with me. And what I realized last night is my deal with yelling goes back to that car accident. While meditating on my shoulder, I could hear my dad’s voice, and I actually said, out loud, “Stop yelling.” And then I remembered being broadsided and it was like I could hear my fourteen-year-old self telling me what he logically concluded that evening–Terrible things happen when you yell.

This is the point at which I started sobbing uncontrollably.

This went on for a while. Even after I calmed down, my body continued to react. For example, my shoulder tensed, then released. My torso contorted like I imagine it did that night. First (in slow motion) it caved in to the left, then snapped back to the right, which is where I feel like it’s been stuck ever since. It was like my body was saying, “This is what happened to us. This is what we went through.” Finally I remembered several specific times it would have been handy to yell or at least raise my voice but when I couldn’t, and this gave me compassion for myself. Because I finally understood WHY.

Terrible things happen when you yell.

I’d like to be clear that although my dad was (and is) far from a perfect dad, I’m sure he wasn’t YELLING at my sister that night. Obviously, a lot of things got exaggerated for me in the backseat of that car. My point in telling this story isn’t to highlight THE TRUTH of what happened, but rather to highlight my mental and emotional PERCEPTION of what happened. Because as far as I can tell, perception is everything. That is, if you’re terrified of something, it doesn’t matter if it’s logical or rational, you are (and your body is) going to respond as if it were gospel.

Just ask your tight shoulders.

My other point in telling this story is that, more and more, I truly believe every significant (stressful, traumatic, climatic) event in our lives is not simply a piece of mental data, but also a fully embodied and emotional experience. What I mean is that I’ve THOUGHT about that car accident more times than I can count. But last night was the first time that I FELT what occurred. It was the first time I didn’t try to tell my body what happened, but rather let my body tell me what happened. And this is the body’s wisdom, that it remembers EVERYTHING, and that it’s willing to hold on to our experiences and emotions until we are ready to acknowledge, listen to, and feel them. Until we’re finally willing to say, Sweetheart, I’m here for us.

I’m beginning to trust this mind-body mystery more and more. Not just as a concept, but as a lived fact. I don’t care if anyone else understands, or if anyone else thinks it’s weird. What I know is that for months (years) my shoulders and neck have bothered me, and today they’re noticeably better. Not perfect by any means (healing longstanding trauma rarely happens in a flash), but better. My arms, which often go numb, and my hands, which often get cold, feel like they’re getting more blood. My chest feels like it has more room in it for breathing, or hell, even yelling. (I can see this, feel this, now–terrible things don’t HAVE to happen when you yell.) It’s like I’m less–what’s the word?–petrified. Freer than I was before.