Crushed Spirits Still Rise

She spoke with clarity and focused attention.  While her voice was soft-spoken, her words conveyed a potency born from deep conviction. With care, she related the experiences of her childhood, at ages 8, 9, and 10, when she was sexually abused by her father.  She described the conflicting emotions and thoughts including confusion, hope for intimacy, pain, horror, and the desire to be loved.  All these and more were mixed together in experience of ritual abuse.  The experienced shattered her to the core.  It’s something that psychoanalysts call a soul wound.  Perhaps a crushed spirit is also an apt description.

She spoke of her recovery, which came in various stages.  Along with therapy, a variety of spiritual practices including meditation and yoga helped to heal her body, mind, and spirit.  After years in a recovery process, the conclusion she made was that the sexual abuse, the childhood rape, was a gift.  Yes, over time, she came to name the experience of spirit crushing horror as a gift that enabled her to live more fully.

After many years of working with others, I’ve met people who had similar experiences to this woman’s childhood abuse as well as other spirit crushing experiences.  I’ve known people who were born into satanic cults, people brutally attacked and beaten to near death because of their race or sexual orientation, and people tortured in their home countries as political prisoners who now live as refugees.  I’ve sat with survivors of the holocaust and those who still suffer from trauma inflicted in boarding schools established for Native American children.  In sum, I have borne witness to the results of many ways in which human beings attempt to crush the spirit of others.

While I respect the journey of the woman who shared her story of childhood sexual abuse, in the end, I must disagree with her:  abuse, torture, and trauma are never gifts in themselves.  They are tragic events that happen far too often.  Yet, I do agree that there is a gift.  That gift is the resiliency of the human spirit.  Though beaten down and pummeled, the human spirit has the capacity to rise up again.

For a number of years, I was able to lead groups on meditation and other spiritual practices for people who were in recovery from childhood trauma.  Many of the people who would attend were in a very fragile state.  Many things could easily trigger traumatic memories.  Sitting in silence was often difficult because the memories of abuse would surface.  Background music helped for some, but not for others.  Similarly, incense or scented candles were useful for some but the fragrances triggered traumatic memories for others.  It was challenging for me because many of these people were not yet in a place of having enough self-confidence to make decisions for themselves about what they needed in life.  I was aware that they were encountering others who told them to view their traumatic experiences “as a gift.”  Perhaps this is a useful metaphor for some.  But often, I have found that this metaphor is a source of anger and more pain for others in recovery from trauma.  After all, how could childhood horror or soul shattering trauma be a gift?

I believe that the gift we do have is something we each carry within us:  the uniquely human spirit.  It is a spark of light that can’t be extinguished.  Despite life’s many difficulties and horribly tragic events, that spark can be nurtured and brought back to a flame.  The process of recovery from trauma can be more than just psychological healing.  It can also be a kind of spiritual healing that enables the spark to illuminate a person’s life once again.  The resilience of the human spirit, nurtured through spiritual practice, is a gift that enables people to move beyond seriously traumatic events in life that inflict deep wounds to the soul.

This resiliency of the human spirit, once crushed, but now strong again, is eloquently captured in the words of the famous poem by Maya Angeleou, Still I Rise.  I share the poem with you here to allow you to consider how the gift of your spirit can still rise, providing illumination for your life even in the midst of soul crushing experiences.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.