Tidbit to Threads No. 10

Religious Residue: When the Body Remembers

I took part in a writing class last week. It’s a small class by design, allowing each participant to verbally share what they write during class.

Something I realized a few months ago while preparing for a podcast was that I had written my story and published it, but I had not spent much time speaking in groups about my story.

Writing something and verbalizing something are two very different things.

When I wrote my manuscript, I handwrote first. Handwriting activates a different part of the brain. I wanted to fully process my experience. Then I sat at my computer and typed my story line by line, sometimes adding to it or purposely changing words, phrases, and thoughts.

In this writing class, I also choose handwriting as my medium.

In today's Tidbit to Thread, I thought I'd share a portion of what I wrote (see the italicized section below). I've titled it Religious Residue: When the Body Remembers because I've come to understand that the body often remembers what the mind cannot yet name.

Last week, the topic we were invited to write about was the idea of Residual Distress and how it can show up in our lives when we find ourselves in certain circumstances, environments or emotional atmospheres.

The topic resonated with many of us in the Zoom room.

We were given time to write, and then, when we returned to the screen, each of us took a turn sharing our work out loud. We listened deeply to one another’s writing and then offered reflections on what spoke to us. It’s a safe and encouraging place to be.

The host of the group is a cult survivor and educator. I’ll include her link at the end of this article if you’d like to join a class.

When I thought about Residual Distress, the idea of Religious Residue came to me.

I’m standing in a hotel room in Seattle. We just attended a full day of chiropractic conference. Almost the entire team made the trip as a team building event. It helps that the owners of the clinic are also chiropractors. I don’t recall how many times I was asked, ‘Are you a chiropractor’ by people. ‘No’ I would say each time. ‘I’m just a technician.’ I could feel the same in my body rising as I said those words.

Each presenter took the state, speaking, sharing, inspiring those of us listing, gleaning, absorbing both their words and the environment. It began to feel familiar. Throughout the breaks between sessions, we were encouraged to walk the foyer. Tables lined up with books, CD’s, information that would transform our lives if we let it. Again, I’m asked, ‘Are you a chiropractor?’ ‘No, I’m just a technician.’ Now adding to the same was a sadness that seemed to settle in my lungs making it harder to breathe.

Then came the session with Dr. Joe Dispenza. I had been waiting all day to hear him and absorb every word he said. After all, Dr. Joe is the thought guru.

“We think between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts in one day, and 90 percent are exactly the same ones we had the day before”

“Change your life…change your thoughts” it was to be as easy as that but it also took purchasing his books, CD’s, meditations and more. Practice, practice, practice.

I stood at this table. Dr. Joe was right there. Yet, I couldn’t get the words out. They were stuck in my throat. Shame, sadness, self-doubt caught my tongue.

This environment was all too familiar, but my mind couldn’t clock it. My body could, and it did. I returned that day to my hotel room in preparation for our team dinner out. Most people were getting ready, and I found myself at the window, staring out, my feet feeling like lead weights.

Then came the belly cry. The kind where tears, sound and sadness came together as unprocessed grief bellows its way outside of my body.

The day’s activities, environment, the speakers being platformed, the dancing at the beginning of each session to music as we were getting primed for the next presenter.

And then there was me – wanting, longing, desiring to become – yet never enough, never quite hitting the mark (whatever that mark was).

What was happening that day was enough environmental and situational boxes were getting checked off in my brain and it was retriggering all the trauma I had experienced in the church. I attended the conferences. Carrying the hope that I would be the one chosen for ministry. To receive a prophetic word. The worship and dancing…experiencing supernatural ministry as heaven encompassed us. It was to be Heaven on Earth, except it wasn’t.

So here I was in this chiropractic conference with enough similarities that my brain and body tracked it. Religious Residue.

I picture religious residue like the soot that is left after a fire has been stocked. It burns hot, almost as if it would consume me. It was called passion in our charismatic circles. But when that fire dies. The flames are gone; the wood is now ash. The residue remains, evidence not that the fire still burns but that it was real.

That is how I see religious residue now. Those hot ashes that if stocked by the right environment, circumstances or emotional overtone might ignite a spark – a trigger.

Acknowledgement, self-compassion, safe community, being seen, witnessed, supported are all the things that quickly dissolve the spark. It’s like a drink of refreshing, lifesaving water on a thirsty day.

We are born for connection. We are born for community, and healing begins when we can show up authentically as ourselves and be held and supported by those who know how to hold our tears.

Grief for me shows up in the strangest of times.

On a zoom call where I hear others talking about the careers they carved out when I had lived as though ‘the End’ was any day. A belief I was indoctrinated into as a child.

Grief shows up when people share their family experience when I, at times, still feel like an orphan hoping to ‘be chosen.’

And yet, the women in me today can return to those parts and say. ‘I’m here. I see you. I hear you and I choose you’. And then I picture myself taking her hand and together we find healing.

I was the last to share.

And what happened afterward made this writing not only a mirror, but also an experience of synchronicity—the kind I couldn’t make up.

Unknown to me, I later discovered that what I had just written and shared connected deeply with another person’s lived experience.

But that is their story to tell, and perhaps, with their permission, I will share more about it someday.

What I can say is this: when things like this happen in my life, I am reminded that Love is real and active in the world today.

Will you join me?

Thank you for reading Tidbit to Threads: were small moments, insights and deep threads become a return to self-trust, reflection and healing.

Small moments. Deep threads. A return to self-trust.

Author of Velcro Kisses: prophecy, trauma bonds and Reclaiming narrative.

Link for the writing class I took: Writing to Reckon