Why tea is the answer.

How do we show up to life after uninvited trauma? My hope is that we will have compassion for our own and others' experiences. That we will open up to the pain, not requiring ourselves or others to be something else, to be good. ~  Robyn Walser

A few weeks ago, the crazy notion of pursuing a cuppa with mindfulness teachers to talk trauma over tea caught me. Pull up a seat and have a brew. I'd like to tell you a bit more about why this matters, as best I can.

In Autumn 2012, in the grip of  perinatal Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and depression I was having intensive therapy with a specialist perinatal mental health team in the UK, who suggested I begin using mindfulness to support my recovery.  I had meditated  a bit on and off for years with varying degrees of commitment, but doing it "therapeutically" was new to me, so on my therapist's recommendation, I picked up some books to help get me going: Mindful Motherhood by Cassandra Vieten, and Lisa Coyne and Amy Murrell's The Joy of Parenting: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Effective Parenting in the Early Years. 

Both were very different to many of the other mindfulness books I had accessed previously. At the time, I was struggling with concentrating on meditation, and these included lots of brief exercises I could do with my then two year old and his four month old baby brother. This was so encouraging and hopeful!

What stands out most in my memory still, were words from Lisa and Amy that told me the very thing I most needed to hear at that time: you don't need to feel better to do what matters to you. 

You can be just as you are, torn as you are, miserable as you are, obsessive and traumatised and sad and alone and clueless as you are, in whatever toxic mindstate you find yourself, and still move your feet towards what matters.

Willingness is having what you've got. It is giving yourself permission to think what you think and feel what you feel without trying to change or control it - no matter how good or bad it seems.. Willingness is usually done in the service of some important possibility. It is a choice, not a feeling. You may feel willing or unwilling. Either one is just fine - and yet neither has much bearing on what you choose to do.

This way of approaching both mindfulness practice and therapy were revelatory to me - and just the injection of hope I needed to open into doing what I  really needed to do to overcome Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - exposing myself to my worst fears in the service of being the mum I wanted to be.

It took a few weeks, including many chats with my therapy team, but with these words in my heart, I summoned all my courage to bring to mind all that had been precious of my own early days and found a way to stumble falteringly into the bright cold sunshine with my then two year old and his 16 week old brother.

We were living in a tiny two bed in Leeds at the time, on an old council estate next to one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city, where "weapon dogs" had increasingly become the fashion accessory of choice.

Just going outside evoked pretty excruciatingly high levels of anxiety: genuine fear I was taking unreasonable risks with my small ones' safety and constant graphic mental images of the most catastrophic possibilities - and yet, even still, I could see how my boys responded,  how much they loved it and all its many possibilities.

On that particular day, in a tiny patch of briars across the road, my son reached for blackberries - and while every fibre of my being screamed "No!!!!!!!", I took a breath, listened to the birds, felt my feet on the floor,  before collecting the berries into the top of the pram.

At home, I took the next bold, brave move and baked them  - beginning a tradition of tea and cake ("elevenses") that sustained us all through many hard days, ups and downs, the dance of forward and back, falling down and getting back up again.

Later I would come to understand these tea and trips as an important connection to my grandmother, who had come to live with us when I was a baby, escaping a brutally violent marriage that had nearly cost her her life.

My memory of her in those days was as ever solid, ever present, ever warm - and yet, years later, she would tell me that on our trips she would sometimes imagine she could see my grandfather everywhere, and would have to find herself a phonebox just to feel its walls, just to call one of my uncles to reassure her she was safe now. I have no memory of that, only of her warm hearty laugh and the tiny white teacup she kept aside only for me.

When she died in 2017, she was a handful of weeks shy of 94. My uncle, a priest, spoke at her funeral of how he felt he understood mindfulness best when with her, in the presence and steadiness she brought to the ordinary business of life, quoting John McGahern:

The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

My grandmother, who like many women of her time had endured extreme poverty and unimaginable violence, taught me that tea, too, can be the precious life that is everything.

For me, to seek to talk trauma over tea is just another simple, gentle act of the same willingness that directs me in wellness and wholeness, day in and day out. I often feel sad and fearful and ashamed about still feeling so very upset about the silence I met when I told my own stories of intimate and domestic violence during my mindfulness training. I still cry about it most days. What Acceptance and Commitment Therapy asks me to do with the grief I experience around this is, just as with any mindfulness practice, to welcome it, not to push it away, or hold it silently in some frozen place within myself - but instead, as Russ Harris advises, to drop anchor, hold myself kindly, take a stand and find the treasure.

The stand I am choosing to take is a gentle and loving protest against the silencing of survivors here and now, and there and then. It is a quiet and considered request for us all to pause and ask some serious, thoughtful questions around the typical stories we tell about trauma and women's trauma in particular - stories of individual brokenness, disintegration or fragmentation. Who can we not look at? Who can not be spoken to? Who must be turned away or included only if willing to stay silent, show no emotion, say nothing that brings discomfort in another, be eternally good?

I have sat in trainings with professionals where domestic and intimate trauma is only ever told as a story of broken lives,  explosive anger and permanent dysfunction - as them, not us. The laugh and heart of my grandmother and many more women like her are rendered invisible in these trainings.

She, like me, maybe like you, certainly like many women you love and respect,  like women the world over is so much more than the narrow stories that hide the integrity and dignity of the willingness not only to go on having endured wounding intimate and domestic violence, but to do so in a spirit of celebration and wonder at the wholeness and beauty of life.

In "Finding Life Beyond Trauma", Victoria Follette and Jacqueline Pistorello write:

We live in a society that has difficulty tolerating other people’s discomfort and actually promotes secrecy, thus reinforcing the idea that we should not talk about what we have experienced and perpetuating a society of avoidance... We believe this is a significant disservice to survivors of trauma.

I believe this too. I believe every time as individuals we fail to respond, look down, look away, walk past, change the subject, deny, minimise, shut down or ignore women's stories, we contribute to that disservice. I also believe that every moment offers an opportunity to choose a new direction towards a brighter future of safety, connection and care.

Communication is our cure.

The kettle is on. The treasure is in the teabag. Come join me.

You can now check out #OperationTeacosy on Twitter, and follow @operationteacosy on Instagram for daily quotes, resources and content related to trauma sensitive mindfulness -  and tea. 

If you like what you see, please consider making a donation to one of the following:

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre:
https://mysplink.com/drcc/

the Sexual Violence Centre in Cork: https://nfp.everydayhero.com/ie/sexualviolencecentrecork

Women's Aid: https://www.womensaid.ie/donate/


Read:

Robyn D. Walser's quote comes from this blog, which is really worth your time: https://www.praxiscet.com/blog/trauma-meeting-disorder-on-life-s-terms/


Coyne, L., & Murrell, A. (2009). The joy of parenting: An acceptance and commitment therapy guide to effective parenting in the early years. New Harbinger Publications.

Follette, V., & Pistorello, J. (2007). Finding life beyond trauma: using acceptance and commitment therapy to heal from post-traumatic stress and trauma-related problems. New HarbingerPublications.

Harris, R. (2012). The reality slap: Finding peace and fulfillment when life hurts. New Harbinger Publications.

Vieten, C. (2009). Mindful motherhood: Practical tools for staying sane during pregnancy and your child's first year. New Harbinger Publications.