By: Khawakibb ***
I often hear and read the term “self love” or “making peace with yourself” or at best it means “recover from your trauma”. But it just stops short of being logic-satisfying. I understand all those terms just as empty meanings.
It is very rare for someone to volunteer to provide information and also provide practical knowledge on how to practice loving yourself. How do you make peace with yourself? And, ultimately, how can we recover from our trauma?
Sometimes there are coaches who provide these facilities, but we have to dig deep into our pockets to take a transformational coaching class. Sudhamala School came as an answer to my doubts about finding space to learn to understand and know myself without being burdened financially.
The Sudhamala School held by Umah Ramah-NAPIESV not only provided knowledge about how to explore oneself more deeply, but in it I was invited to put this knowledge into practice by analyzing my past experiences. I was not alone, there were seven other classmates, so there were a total of 8 participants.
Through materials about sexuality, my friends and I were invited to explore our own body memory until we reached ‘dark spots’ that had never been touched before.
We share stories as a form of unraveling the trauma that we all harbor. It turns out that it is quite effective as an initial effort for making peace with yourself. We learn to accept all experiences that come into the body.
Asih Widiyowati, one of the Sudhamala School facilitators and founder of Umah Ramah, said that it is not only the brain that stores trauma and past experiences, but also our bodies. Our bodies also store memories and trauma. From Mrs. Asih’s statement, I came to understand that my body’s reactions and reflexes could be part of a trauma response from past memories.
Reactions of the soul and body do not only occur due to external stimuli, sometimes they appear without any direct stimulus, but they certainly don’t just happen without a reason.
Reflecting on my own experience, I often ask why am I always unlucky? For some reason, it seems like I’m always trapped in a toxic relationship. Whether it’s in the form of a partner who takes advantage of me financially, or a relationship which is only for satisfying their lust. It was as if the universe deliberately kept bringing me closer to the wrong partners.
For years I lived like a blind, until several times I had to crash and cause trauma. For years I lived lonely and felt unworthy of being loved by anyone. But tragically I never know where all these feelings come from? What is the root cause of me being trapped in an unhealthy relationship, either with a friend or partner?
After studying sexuality and the body at Sudhamala School, these questions were enlightened one by one.
Far from initial expectation. I thought studying sexuality is not far from the knowledge provided by social media and mainstream books, namely about reproductive health. Or at best, recognizing various gender identities, sexual orientations and sexual interests.
It turns out that aspects of sexuality are very complex, and intersect with many things such as religion, social & culture, psychology, geography, and so on. The impacts of sexual violence experienced are very diverse and not as trivial as what is reported on social media accounts.
I was initially sure that I had never experienced sexual violence, in fact it was an illusion. The pain I suppressed until the trauma made its way in went unnoticed.
Childhood experiences related to sexuality and family conditions that did not meet expectations turned out to harbor traumatic experiences. The dark memories that I kept suppressing ultimately unconsciously trapped me in a circle of unhealthy relationships.
I cannot do the unraveling process immediately. I only realized that I had experienced violence as a child because I studied the impact of sexual violence on children in one of the sessions at Sudhamala School. From there, I tried to identify some of these impacts myself, then I connected the dots.
Peeling and opening old wounds is never easy. However, I understand very well that in order to be healed and recover, sometimes we have to be willing to endure the bitterness of the medicine that we have to drink. That bitter taste is perhaps the price I have to pay for my peace of mind.
Sudhamala School, for me, is a safe and comfortable space. In it, we share stories with each other without judgment. We protect each other’s privacy after we leave the room.
We talked a lot about sexuality, existence, and self-worth. From this discussion we were then invited to understand our own human nature. One of the discourses is that we are all sexual creatures who cannot be separated from bodies, will and desires. In my opinion, this is the main basis and benchmark of the Sudhamala School.
From there we began to unravel and realize the preciousness of our body and soul as a whole. That we are God’s creatures who remain noble and valuable regardless of bad experiences in the past.
We are also invited and trained not to be imprisoned by stigma for too long, even though it is not an easy job. First, we must have the courage to open ourselves up and address the traumatic experiences one by one. Then we uncover and unravel them with awareness and acceptance.
Sometimes choosing trustworthy people to keep our secrets is very difficult, even the closest ones sometimes can be victim-blaming. Sudhamala School for me fulfills the needs of those who are less fortunate in finding trustworthy friends to share sad past stories.
The next big hope, after my friends and I finish attending the Sudhamala School, is to be able to continue studying sexuality by continuing to unravel ourselves. We hope that we can be more graceful in accepting all the bitter stories and not pass on trauma or violence to others.
No less important, I also hope that we all do not experience or commit sexual violence. And lastly, I hope all the knowledge from Sudhamala School can be a provision for us to become a safe space for ourselves. More gratefully, if we can also become a safe space for others. []
*** The author is a participant in the 2nd Cohort of Sudhamala School in 2023.
This article was translated by Napol Riel.