Holding Our Wordless Parts

I've been going to powwows with the Ocaneechi Sappony for a couple years now. I always learn a great deal simply by being there and paying attention.  One thing that's struck me is how I've noticed the infants are tended to--I've only observed native babies to be swaddled directly against their parents.  Babies slept nestled against their parents' chests while parents ate, walked and socialized. And while they danced!

This seemed lovely but unremarkable...until I saw a white parent bring an infant in a stroller. That infant cried. Like a lot. Inconsolably. It hurt to hear. 

It was then that I realized I hadn't heard any of the other infants crying.

Dominant culture--white supremacy--takes so much of our humanity. It's a very simple truth that infants, that people, thrive on human connection and suffer the lack of it.  That parent was only doing what the culture around us shows us to do--make things a little easier by toting the baby in a stroller.  There's nothing innately wrong with that choice.  What ails us, those of us suffering from not enough care in this world, is in the balance.  Trauma is anything which is too much, too fast, too soon--and with not enough of what we need to be well.

Touch is simple, and yet it's incredibly important. It's valuable for healing.

How many people go to therapy for years to talk out what we've been through--and wish in some wordless part of us to be held?

That's why there's a massage table in my office. That's why, as a bodyworker, I can reach people in a way many therapists can't.  When I work with clients who still suffer from the effects of early developmental trauma--I am holding those wordless parts.  We aren't working out the tragic story of what was too much, too fast, too soon--rather I'm holding space for repair with what was missing.

I'm here to hold those wordless suffering parts that are crying for connection.