Archives: The Darkest Day: Winter Solstice and Religious Trauma
- JoyClam
- Dec 11, 2023
- 7 min read
Note: This website was started in the early years of my Lyme journey, as a Christian's search for faith amidst chronic illness. While I have grown out of and beyond my beliefs in both the Chronic Lyme and Evangelical Christian spheres, I feel these old blogs are a testament to my journey, my growth, my healing, and my personhood. They are also part of my story which demands due respect, but I wanted to separate them from my current understanding of Self, Truth, and the message I want to endorse in the world. Please take this into consideration as you read, and a big grain of salt.
Why am I writing the same anti-Christmas rant every year, only to come back to my blog and read the same thing from last December, and realize that I have not changed and am repeating the same pattern of seasonal depression and anxiety as last year?
Because, like all things Christmas, my personal vendetta against holly-jolly is just a wrapping. A cover-up for the deeper issues. It's like those enormous prank presents that are unwrapped only to find ever smaller and smaller boxes matryoshka'd inside, until you get to the real present that fits in the palm of your hand. Let me tell ya, those presents are a LOT less funny when the gift is your life and every box is a layer of trauma.
I recently learned that January is “Spiritual Abuse / Religious Trauma Awareness Month.” And I want to appreciate that, but I also want to know who’s in charge, because I have a feeling I’m not the only one who desperately needs that month to be November or December, in preparation and support for one of the most spiritually abused and triggering times of the year. I want my safety net at the window, not 100 stories below on the ground. I want it wrapped around me like swaddling clothes as the chilly season approaches, not catching me after I’ve already fallen through two months of razor-sharp evergreen needles and glowing plastic shepherds.
My ankle would certainly appreciate it.
A little over a year ago, I got up from an intense draft-writing session at my desk; after a few steps, my left knee buckled, and I flailed out to catch myself on my right foot. It came down very wrong and very loud; I spent the night in the ER waiting for x-ray results and the next six months unable to walk or drive. A year later, my ankle has some new anatomical tricks with a hefty side of arthritic flares. But I’m finally walking without a cane. And dancing poorly in the kitchen. As it should be.
Sprained ankles (particularly completely snapped ligaments) aren’t known for healing well. It is expected I will have flare-ups for the rest of my life. But, as with everything else I was diagnosed with “for the rest of my life,” I called bullshit and forged ahead with healing myself on my own timeline on my own terms. No surgery. No American healthcare system. Acupuncture, meditation, and physical therapy have been in my routine. And psychology.
Psychology? Of course. It’s an integral part of the spiritmindbody I call my Self. Pain and malfunction of any physical tissue can be a manifestation of stored psycho-soma-neurological trauma (I made that term up just now) as well as structural damage. To heal an injury, the treatment must go to the autonomic nervous and psychological layers as well as any blood vessels, tissues, and organs. With our dire lack of a sane healthcare system, I have, as always, been forced to treat primarily with intense self-reflection.
I knew, as soon as I hit the ground, the message my body had for me: you’re staying home this Christmas. I have written about my ongoing struggles with holiday anxiety and depression, and though in my mind I am at peace with my shifting beliefs and faith journey, I still haven’t figured out what that looks like in practice. I don’t celebrate Christmas anymore. Not in the prescribed American way. Back to my original point: so why can't I just accept that? Why do I keep reliving this seasonal cycle of anxiety and relapse, why am I still triggered by a holiday I don't care about?
I like Jesus. I like to think that God came down to earth to teach us how to live and love, to know us, and save us from our amnesic shame and violence. I like thinking that we are all Jesus – by birthright or spirit, I know not – but all children of God, children of eternal love and light. And I like non-LED warm-toned twinkle lights, snow, sleigh bells, and giant plants in my house. I like the feeling that still lives in my body when I hear Time-Life’s Treasury of Christmas. And I really like cookies. But I also like hibernation. I also like being one with nature in the solstice, meaning surrendering to the natural order of sacred introspection and rest. I like not literally killing myself with stress. You know, pagan stuff like that. So why can't I just like the holiday, in my own way?
I do not like being an empath at this time of year, when society does the holiday in their way. I can see right through the ugly sweaters into an even uglier desperation to hide immense pain and fear. I do not like receiving gifts when I can feel the anxiety and stress radiating out from eyes or mouths of the givers, mumbling fears and excuses about not knowing what I liked or needed or wanted or what they could or could not afford. I do not like how unacceptable and complicated it becomes when I simply say “No thanks, I do not wish to participate in consumerism-based games and gift exchanges.” You’d think my personal choice to rein in materialism had cataclysmic and apocalyptic consequences. I do not like the shrill ear-piercing bell ringing outside the grocery store, when I’m already overwhelmed by lights and sounds and inflation. I do not like massive piles of garbage bags full of single-use wrapping paper and ribbons and plastic cups. And I really do not like the insanely full schedule of concerts and festivals and services and plays and parties and cookie-eating rituals that include almost ZERO time for actual meaningful conversation... and then being blamed for being the antisocial one.
But most of all [said the Grinch] I do not like birthday cakes for Jesus and inflatable manger scenes and fear-based abuse of religion that bribes or punishes children based on the environmentally-acquired adaptations of their nervous systems. I do not understand how the same people screaming that Christmas is not about packages, boxes, and bags are the same people tripping over each other to deliver the most Operation Shoeboxes, Toys for Toddlers, and Angel Shrub tags. (Names changed to protect identity.)
But we've already been through this. There's more to unwrap under all that righteous anti-capitalism and table-turning? More poop, Robin, besides the massive cultural shift of immigration and Lyme Disease and pharmacological harm and diversifying my beliefs? Of course. Rome wasn't built in a day and the "Holy" Roman Empire won't be deconstructed in a year. I'm a PK. What I really don't like at this "family is everything" time of year is being the black sheep. The lost sheep. The straying sheep.
Actually, that's kind of fun. I love finding myself (turns out, I'm really cool.) What I really really don't like is being herded back into the fold in the name of "love" that is actually control, manipulation, and coercion. What I really don't like is prank packages labeled "love" that actually contain obscene amounts of fear, denial, and spiritual bypassing. What I really don't like is people inviting me to church to save my sorry soul and having no means to tell them they're probably being abused and the ones who need saving.
So the ankle still speaks. What really happened a little over a year ago is that I was, at the exact moment my body literally split in two different directions, not just sizing up my energy levels for holiday RSVPs, but sketching out a rough draft of a messy new theology. My spirit was torn in two different directions. Fully convinced and convicted that I am in the right, I became fully cognizant that it is heretical to what I was raised in. And after all this time, I still cannot figure out how to reconcile what I believe about unconditional love and forgiveness with the lived experience of trauma and psychosomatic pain. The intersection of unconditional love and boundaries. The art of agreeing to disagree. The truth that sets free yet reveals past wrongs with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I don’t know how to live the life I believe and say “I don’t walk that way anymore” without literally breaking off my legs to prove that I literally can’t walk that way anymore.
Nope. Wrong again. I do know how to say it. I do know how to walk my way. I don't know how to walk away unharmed by carrying the pain and guilt of how other people hear it. I don't know how to let my body rise above lies like total depravity and sin nature and the inferiority of women. I don't know how to heal from "You'll be broken forever." I'm f*renching scared out of my wits to face my religious community.
Four years off antidepressants, I love the gift that is feeling, in and with my body for the first time in 20 years. And I also hate that those feelings are literally breaking my body. What alternative is there? What is my proxy, seeing as Jesus – surprise, surprise – has not magically solved all my problems with his magic tinsel wand? What else can break for my pain?
Silence, perhaps.
The pod of injustice, perhaps. Scattering its seeds to the wind, falling or being buried where they will. It matters not. The worthy tree will grow in spring.
Pictured above is a self-portrait I took recently while admiring the light coming through my window. I was stunned when I realized the brick house next door was being reflected in my glasses, a perfect metaphor for the walls of dissociation and armoring I have built in my mind and spirit to protect me from trauma, which continue to affect my world-view no matter how long I have worked to break them down. And I was overjoyed to see that there are yet two tiny windows in front of my eyes, always a light to shine into my darkness, always a ray of hope to keep me keep on breaking down the walls to my Self.
It is the first time I have revealed my face on my website.
Resources for Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma (no personal affiliation):
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