Marta Luzim, MS | CPTSDfoundation.org

Coming into the Body (Part 2 of 2)

Marta Luzim, MS — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:56:35 +0000

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1: https://cptsdfoundation.org/2025/03/20/coming-into-the-body-part-1-of-2/)

Eugene Gendlin’s Felt Sense Process

The practice of mindful felt sense is important for helping you come into your body.

A First Attempt: Find Out What Is Bothering You

Step One: Clearing a Space

Setting aside the jumble of thoughts, opinions, and analysis we all carry in our minds and making a clear, quiet space where something new can come.

First, just get yourself comfortable — feel the weight of your body — loosen any clothing that is too tight —
Spend a moment just noticing your breathing — don’t try to change it — just notice the breath going in — and out —
Now, notice where you have tension in your body (pause) —
Now, imagine the tension as a stream of water draining out of your body through your fingertips and feet (pause) —
Breathe into any tension and running thoughts. Pay attention to the shoulders, jaw, stomach, feet, hands, or chest. Now, see what comes when you ask, “What bothers me? What is the main thing for me right now?” Whatever emerges—an image, memory, sensation, or feeling—does not have to make sense.
When concern comes up, DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Breathe, slow down. Let there be a little space between you and the resistance. Wait again and sense. Breathe, allow, explore if you can.

Step Two: Getting A Felt Sense

Bring to mind an incident or a situation that was troublesome for you this week (pause as long as necessary) — think about it or get a mental image of it —
Bring back the feeling or sensation you had in that situation (pause) — not words, but the “intuitive feel” of yourself in that situation —

Sensations – Felt Sense

Goosebumps
Empty
Jumpy
Tingling
Tight-knotted/butterflies in the stomach
Choking
Dizzy
Nauseous
Palpitations
Shaky
Crunching teeth
Tight-fisted
Swinging foot
Pins and needles
Headaches
Sweaty, hot, then cold
Nail biting

Anxiety is a Sensation

Most people think anxiety is a feeling. It is a physical sensation in your body that protects an unexpressed terror, grief, hurt, or any unfelt feeling: numb.

It is tied to beliefs and thoughts that are chaotic, traumatized, dramatized, villainized, and shamed. It is the explosion of ego, control, power, and perfectionism to cover up the pain and shame.

Step Three: Finding A Handle

Carefully find words or an image for that experience. If you find the feeling in the felt sense from the incident or memory, fear, grief, rage, sadness, hurt, etc., then you can begin to paint, write, or sit and accept this feeling with love and understanding. Don’t try to fix it or analyze it. Feel compassion. The inner child only wants to be seen, heard, accepted, and loved.

Step Four: Resonating and Checking

Go carefully back and forth between any words and the “intuitive feel of the whole thing” until you find words or an image that are just right for it as you intuitively write, paint, or move in it.

Step Five: Asking

Ask yourself, “What is so hard about this situation for me? “and wait, at least a minute, to see what comes in your wordless intuition, your whole-body sense —
Ask yourself, “How old am I in this situation? What is the repetitive trauma that I hold and repeat to keep me safe by going numb?”
Again, carefully find words or an image that exactly fits that whole feeling — going back and forth until the symbols are “just right.”
Now, ask yourself, “What’s in the way of giving unconditional acceptance to my inner child?” and, again, don’t answer from your head what you already know, but wait, as long as a minute, for something new to come into the center of your body, more like a wordless intuition or whole-body sense —
Now, imagine what the situation is with total acceptance.
Again, carefully find words or an image for that, “whatever is in the way” — go back and forth until the symbols are “just right.”
Now, see if you can find some small step you might be able to take to move yourself with lovingkindness— again, don’t answer from your head, don’t fix it, or make a to-do list, but wait as much as a minute for the wordless, intuitive “feel,” the bodily felt sense of an answer to arise — go back and forth until the symbols are “just right.”
Check with your “intuitive feel,” “Is this right? Is this really something I could try doing?” — If your “intuitive feel” says, “Yes (some sense of release, relaxation), I could try that,” then you can stop here.
If your “felt sense” says, “No, I can’t do that” or “That won’t work,” then ask yourself again, “What small step would work-—-

Keep switching back and forth between the “intuitive feel” and possible words and images as long as you are comfortable. Finding a new experience might seem silly, frustrating, counterintuitive, or “insufficient.” Every small change builds and grows.

Step Six: Receiving

The crux of the change is spending quiet time paying attention to the “intuitive feel.”

Whether a “solution” has arisen or not, appreciate yourself and your body for taking time with this, trusting that pausing to take time is the important thing — solutions can then arise later.

Image provided by the author.

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Marta Luzim, MS

Marta Luzim, MS has worked with women, families, and couples for over forty years. She is a Psychospiritual Therapist with an MS in Counseling Psychology and a BS in Education. She is an expert in womens’ story-telling and a Next Level Practitioner in trauma. Marta holds certifications as a Kaizen creative coach and metaphysician; she is an intuitive intimacy trainer, mindfulness breath worker, and Kabbalah of Character expert. She is a self-published author, has published articles in Citysmart Magazine on creativity, healing, and women’s issues, is the third-place winner poet of Smell of Brooklyn Bricks through the Story Circle Network, and is an artist and playwright. Her novel, The Calling, and her book, Heart of A Woman, can be found on Amazon. In addition, Marta is the president of Give Her A Voice, Inc., a 501c3 organization that produced The Telling, a multi-media theatrical performance of women’s stories of recovery. www.giveheravoice.org She is currently working on her memoir on her soulful journey recovering from trauma. She can be reached at marta@womeswayin.com and her website is: www.womenswayin.com

Coming into the Body (Part 1 of 2)

Marta Luzim, MS — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:56:01 +0000

Trauma is an octopus.

L’dor vador. These Hebrew words, one of the most fundamental tenets of Judaism, translate to “Generation to generation”.

—You cannot rush the healing process—

“I wanted my mother to love me. Despite all the torture and brutality.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story about Criminal Mind Control

GLUTTON

A shamanic therapist once said to me, “You want to eat the whole meal simultaneously. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner– until you throw up.”

My insatiable gulping down of life, the need to know it all, live it all, be it all, was my fear and anxiety from childhood trauma. My running to “get it” was the compulsive desire to “get love” before I die. If I “get it,” The child who did not receive love will be whole and healed.

My unworthiness said, ‘You have to “get it,”’ and my soul said, ‘You don’t have to “get” anything; you just need to live and learn.’

The myth about healing trauma is thinking that we can “cure” it. The need to be perfect and “get it” is part of the trauma cycle: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. As humans, “perfectionism” is hypervigilant behavior that drives us to “GET” loved because we believe we are not lovable.

The truth is you can never “get it all.” Life is a cyclic and continuous learning experience of the SELF. As Epictetus put it, “It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

It is the conundrum of living. I will never know it all; I should know it all so no one will see the cracks and scabs that rub against my skin and bones, causing me fear, sadness, and loneliness.

Learning self-love is the most challenging, painful, and extensive aspect of trauma recovery. However, how can we love ourselves when we do not have models of unconditional love? Loving ourselves means loving it all—the good, bad, and ugly—the shadow parts.

The same therapist said, “You need to eat your mother to know yourself.”

I gagged when she said that. I thought I was well past my “mother work” because I was educated, creative, and independent; I believed I was nothing like my mother. My mother was an abuser and borderline personality, and my father, a male of his time who never protected me from my mother’s abuse, was sexist and told me I could not make it in the world without him.

I was over it!! And that was that.

What I didn’t WANT TO KNOW was how much of my mother’s rage, grief, and heartbreak I held unconsciously in my body with every slap, pinch, and kick she threw at me. My father’s words ran deep in my bones, “You can’t do it.” Unconscious behavior, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings acted out on everything and everyone.

HIPS AND HIDDEN TRAUMA

Many years ago, I worked with a client who felt hip pain. I guided her to travel inward, slowing down her breath so she could feel the discomfort. She experienced a heavy weight pulling her into the earth, burying her.

A deep sadness surfaced. “I don’t want to feel this sadness. It’s too much.” I urged her to receive her own experience gently.

As she moved into her hips, she felt rage and remembered her mother locking her in a closet when she was six when she tried to express her feelings. Because of that incident, she developed an unconscious pattern of shutting down and tightening her body when anyone got close physically or emotionally.

Layers of unexpressed fear and hurt emerged. “I hurt so much. Why would my mother do that?” she cried out.

Slowly, I guided her to move her hips side to side, slow, then fast, and encouraged her to “go out of control.”

At first, she was stiff and didn’t want to keep moving. “Stay with it. Accept your little girl’s feelings,” I said.

Finally, she touched into the pain and let out a short, loud scream. She felt exhausted, but she began to feel warmth opening up in her hips.

I asked her to keep practicing coming into the body.

THE METAPHYSICS OF CATHARSIS

Brain research and experiential, somatic, and creative approaches now inform us that trauma is in the body, not the head.

But what does that truly mean?

Your five senses and physical sensations are the door into your body. Emotions, intuitions, and instincts are energetically involved in trauma recovery.

Life is energy. Energy never dies; it changes through intent, effort, and focus. Your body, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, memories, and imagination are all energy. But they are all in your head. Bringing the felt emotional memory into the skin, bones, and organs takes an intentional pulling inward and downward.

Healing is not curing; feeling/intuition is healing—an ongoing process.

When individuals attempt to drop into their bodies, they will analyze a feeling from their head, tell a story, and repeat a memory of something that happened.

The energetics of trauma are non-verbal, irrational, and primal.

Your animal instincts sniff into your body. They guide you toward your authentic knowing and experience.

Many people are terrified to go there and believe it will re-traumatize them. It can. But if guided with acceptance, care, and pacing layer by layer, you will begin to release the pain and freeze with compassion.

To find THAT emotional voice takes a deep commitment to tolerate the pain. To melt unconscious defended patterns that, as children, kept you safe and frozen in survival. Holding pain and discomfort is a metaphysical, energetic, emotional healing of trauma.

Releasing, navigating, and transforming trauma is an intense cathartic experience.

“Catharsis provides a model of healing that deals with those things which most disturb us and we least wish to face. The model that catharsis offers and which the millennial vision communicates is that there is a practical way to accomplish the ancient spiritual goal of creating light out of the very substance of darkness. This process may be crucial to our physical and spiritual survival, for as the apocalypse myth keeps reminding us, the darkness will not just disappear. Instead, it must be transformed.” —A Work of Lamentation by Joshua Leavitt, Parabola, Spring 1988

Cathartic work is passion work, the portal into your body.

OCTOPUS TENTACLES AND THE PSYCHE

Dr. Schulman, my first therapist at age seventeen, said to me, “You have a symbiotic relationship with your parents.”

I had no clue what that meant at the time.

Through my inner travels and studies, I realized I was living off of their feelings, unresolved traumas, and unconscious beliefs, which they had hammered into me without awareness.

He continued, “You don’t know what your feelings are separate from your mother and father.”

These are the core symptoms of trauma–co-dependency and addiction. You feel “others” feelings, not your own. You have no SELF.

Trauma is an octopus—a long, twisted, winding road leading back to the beginning of time. Your body is the topography of your soul and its primal wisdom and voice.

GRANDMA’S LEGACY

Trauma is the universal story of your ancestors. There isn’t a culture, society, country, race, or nationality that didn’t walk through the fires of trauma. The fight for freedom, independence, and individuality— truth and intimacy. Family—unconditional love.

My grandmother, Sarah, brought a trail of blood that she dragged across the Atlantic Ocean from Russia/Poland—carrying generations of women’s silence.

My four-foot-four, husky, blonde, vodka-drinking, chain-smoking grandmother came to America and escaped the Russian pogroms. Nazi ovens murdered the rest of her eleven siblings, and she came alone, bringing with her the unfelt grief and rage that helped her survive loss after loss. She passed on her heartbreaking story to her children.

By the time she was twenty-five, her husband Charles died of pneumonia at thirty years old. Sarah was left with three children to feed and keep alive.

Like all good Jewish children, her children retired Sarah to the Burly House on Miami Beach.

I visited Sarah often, especially after I moved to Florida. One day, I asked her, “Grandma, how did you come to America?”

Sitting in her small blue and white kitchen, watching Sarah slap dough into thin wraps, shaping them into blintzes, she was too focused to answer.

One by one, she placed each blintz in a big frying pan, boiling hot with butter and oil, until crisp. The greasy smell of fried dough and hot, mushy potatoes has had my mouth watering since I was two.

I asked again, “Grandma, how did you come to America? Who were your mother, father, and siblings?”

“Oye”. My grandmother grunted. “I was smuggled in a pickle barrel.” She waved her hand, loose flesh wiggling from her underarm. “Stop asking such questions.”

“What?! A pickle barrel? Why don’t you talk about any of it?”

“Shush. No more talk.”

Her generational stories were buried in my grandmother and then my mother. Who was this woman? This Yiddish, sharp-tongued grandma?

The grievous wound of the mother is ancient. If I didn’t know her, how could I know myself?

GENERATIONAL REPAIR

Generational trauma is our personal trauma—the ongoing story of the repair of human life.

This is the meaning of the repair of the world— Tikkun Olam is the fragmentation of humankind scattered across the universe, and for us to repair the scattering of light into the darkness of the universe. Repairing the world and the human condition is eternal.

The way of the body is a path of diving, digging, curiosity, creativity, emotional expression, and self-inquiry

I had to learn to hold deep heartbreak to understand what Dr. Schulman attempted to teach me. I dug into profound, gut-wrenching family patterning work until I changed my experience with unhealthy relationship choices, unworthiness, shame, and blame.

Change and growth take time, commitment, intention, mindfulness, presence, self-responsibility, and the practice of coming into the body. It is a rebirthing of yourself.

Cathartic healing guides you toward writing and art, embodying the core emotional eye of your inner, deeper story.

Part 2 of this story will be posted on March 27, 2025

Image provided by the author.

Marta Luzim, MS

How Can I Live With So Much Sadness?

Marta Luzim, MS — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 13:12:48 +0000

How many heartbreaks does it take to heal a soul? I don’t know, lifetimes?

If I were to die and be reborn again
I would want to be your tear
To be born in your eye
To live on your cheek
To die upon your lips

– By Melinda Green, age 16

A client once asked: “How do I live with so much sadness? Do I go to work? Do I read a book? Do I exercise? I don’t know how to live.”

I answered: Do all of it. Do none of it. You don’t have to be fake or pretend. Be sad as you read, work, or go to work. Life is not an either/or. Stare at the trees, count the stars, binge on movies, eat popcorn and chocolate.

Feelings are messy. Life is an “and”. Embrace all of you, your story, and your healing.

Learning to hold and express your emotions is healing and a way of loving yourself. Life is for the living. To feel is to live.

“Trauma is incomprehensible and unbearable. It overwhelms the mind, body, and brain and shatters you to pieces. You cannot tell the trauma story — you live it out in your body.” – Dr. Bessell van der Kolk

It sits so deep in emotion, terror, and fear that no words can convey it. Trauma is lived out in heartbreak, gut-wrenching feelings, and intense reactions that hijack the body.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat, “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” – Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

When first opening to give and receive love, a confusing, messy roller coaster ride of emotional trauma bubbles up your nervous system, triggering buried memories and emotions that feel as if you are on the brink of madness. Lack of trust, unworthiness, guilt, and profound loss emerge from the shadows of your soul

Love is the healer, the elixir, the mystical potion of peeling the layers of generational heartbreak. Love will dig up every unhealed part of you.

Sadness and deep grief are the process of trauma recovery.

Embracing this emotional and physical intensity takes radical self-acceptance, loving-kindness, and a compassionate witness/adult who can guide you into the warmth of the light.

Being sad does not make you lose your intelligence, talents, or self-worth. Sadness teaches vulnerability and patience. Sadness allows your inner child to rest in your heart and find nourishment, warmth, and safety.

“For a woman, the greatest loss of all is herself.” Adrienne Rich

At one time, I hated my heartbreak, which meant I hated my inner child. It is the inner wounded child that is brokenhearted. She is the one who needs to heal and recover.

This memory is from a photo I still have: I am two, crying, sitting on my mom’s lap outside the apartment complex in Brooklyn, Clarendon Gardens. My face is red and wet from tears, and my nose is running. I am wearing a pink jumpsuit. My mother is talking nonstop to a neighbor, Lynn, ignoring me. All she does is brush my bangs away and keep talking.

I remember thinking that Lynn’s sweet face was lovely, framed by a soft chin-length bob, blue eyes, and rounded mouth. She always smiled at me. My mother, with cold, ice eyes and twisted blonde hair on her head, was mean. Why did Lynn want to talk to my mother? Doesn’t Lynn know how my mother’s screams hit?

I sob and sob; my stomach hurts bad. My mother looks at me with a grim, cold stare. Her eyes cut me like a knife. They stung like her slaps and pinches on my forearms and her punch down the steps. I had to go numb to tolerate the ice blue freeze of her touch.

No one ever picked me up or soothed me. Not my angry, violent mother, and not my self-absorbed father, who pushed me away when I sought his affection and never looked into my sad blue/green eyes or wondered why Marta cried so much. Aunts and uncles turned me away. My older sister, tormented by abuse as well, turned her abuse on me and treated me like an enemy. Told me she hated me forever. And she did.

Caught between these unavailable parents, I learned early that love is not to be trusted, that people will let me down, and that no matter how urgently I beg– nurture and satisfaction will always remain just out of reach–. The world is a tragic, depressing place where everyone I loved was in pain, and I never got what I needed. My dad never held me, comforted me, or saved me from my mother’s beatings and suicide attempts. My eyes saw it all.

By three, I was basked in sorrow, longing, and a broken heart. At 9, I felt a freeze in my body, and I developed a spastic colon. I hated myself and my family. My pediatrician prescribed me Darvon. He never questioned what was going on in my house. The wall was built… I believed that everyone hated me; I was ugly, stupid, and not good enough. I buried those beliefs so deep and built a wall of nails and broken glass so I wouldn’t dare to climb that wall.

I was first diagnosed with PTSD when I was fifty-four; after my sister committed suicide, my mother died in a psych ward, and I was in and out of hospitals with an unexplained illness and constant panic attacks.

The psychiatrist said, “You’ve had PTSD your whole life, and so did your family.”

I am now seventy-five. My road to sanity has felt like knives skinning me alive, pins and needles poking at me from the inside out, night terrors, Nazis hanging me from my limbs, fear of nameless faces stalking me, wanting to murder me in my sleep. Paranoia was my shadow. I thought every person I met hated me.

Addiction, co-dependency, and chronic illness were a tangled mess in my mind and body. The medical profession, the psychological profession, and spiritual gurus had no idea what PTSD is and still don’t. Approaches, brain research, and so-called “trauma-informed” strategies are band-aids that cover up the real and true “dark night” of the soul. I had to travel to reclaim my right to be alive, feel alive, and believe I deserved self-love.

There is a deep shame, guilt, and self-hatred that cuts deep into the skin, bone, and blood from PTSD. Recovery, finding peace and safety within, takes a lifetime. Finding the medicine bag that works is personal, generational, and unique for each person who suffers from trauma.

In our addictive society, we are brainwashed to believe that winning, being good, and looking good are the goals. Goodness, appropriateness, and niceness are societal definitions. Who sets those standards? At the same time, we are taught that emotions are weak and to be apologized for. We get hooked on perfectionism. It is all a cover-up—a lie.

The inner child yearns for truth and trust. She needs vulnerability, creativity, acceptance, inclusion, and compassion—not a taskmaster to achieve, to be good or nice. To express heartbreak is a foundation of safety, building boundaries, and empathy. Trust is a fragile part of ourselves and needs strength.

My greatest fear in surrendering to my heartbreak was that I would wind up like my mother in a psych ward or commit suicide like my sister. Neither, in reality, was true. My fear caused me to be dishonest with myself, judging and haunting myself with punitive thoughts and dreams, which limited my life and built a tough wall around my heart.

When I finally accepted the cycle of grief, terror, and heartbreak that comes and goes with trauma, my house of glass cracked and crumpled. I surrendered and waved a white flag.

My heartbreak slowed and humbled me and silenced my cyclic “I am not good enough” mantra. I connected my broken heart with the voice and emotions of my inner trembling child. Then, and only then, did she believe I would never abandon or judge her feelings and need to be loved.

The loss of the feminine is deeply rooted in universal generational, family, and biblical history. Heartbreak midwifed my empathic nature to emerge. It taught me how to love, not a happily after love, but a love that grew wisdom from my pain.

For a long time, I felt shame and judgment around heartbreak. Then, slowly, it all turned to a quiet sadness that guided me to my grief. Renewal, refuge, and radical self-acceptance emerged from my heartbreak. Then, I surrendered to humility, the ultimate equalizer of the heart.

To be in the world with heartbreak gives you the capacity to speak with truth, wisdom, and fierceness to be alive.

My writing, art, healing, inner life, and psyche expanded into a mad brilliance of uncensored expression. My tears nurtured my jumbled nerves, twisted thinking, and neglected feelings, which flourished into a rich, quaking, yelping, green forest of wild beauty.

There are wise and powerful ways to allow heartbreak to heal. They are simple to list but challenging to live. It takes daily practice—over and over and over.

Breathing and grounding your emotional chaos
Slowing down and talking to your body
Awakening your senses. All of them (noticing, receiving, and feeling)
Being present with what you are experiencing without judgment
Accepting imperfection and the pain of being invisible for so long
Understanding the story of your heartbreak
Having faith in your worthiness. Being curious about what faith means to you
Writing your story of heartbreak (or any creative outlet)
Practicing daily to feel, express and receive
Painting, writing, and collaging your sadness

Materials:
Oil Pastels, large sheet of white paper, drawing pad, acrylic or dry markers, magazines to paste images from magazines or the internet symbolizing sadness. Go to unsplash.com

Instructions:

Use lines, shapes, and colors to draw sadness, grief, loss
Go back to an event or time you experienced these emotions and check out how your body felt.
Come from your body. Beyond labels and definitions.
Post the images on a wall.
What was the process of drawing like?
What thoughts, feelings, and sensations came up for you during the art?
Observe the images for similarities and differences.
Describe the feeling with a memory, poem, photo, or metaphor.
Stay in the moment with the image’s detail, not what it looks or reminds you of.

A Woman’s Heartbreak, by Marta Luzim

When a woman’s heart is broken, her soul is lost, and her spirit is frozen. Her whole life becomes obsessed with finding her heart. When her heart has been broken, eaten by mad dogs and scientists, lost and confused, estranged from her soul to guide her, she becomes tired of searching for the pieces. Exhausted, in fact.

Exhaustion is not allowed for a woman. She must get up and do her work to care for everyone and everything.

Exhaustion is not something you cure or an illness written in medical journals. When a woman becomes exhausted, she becomes mean and hateful if she cannot find a hole to crawl up in and cry and scream.

Instead, she is sent to spas, retreats, or asylums to be told to have gratitude, smile, or whatever will numb her anger. Finally, her exhaustion is called depression. She is diagnosed as an inconvenience to the world. She becomes a pathology instead of a human being healing.

After all that, she is prescribed Prozac or any other anti-depressant to give her balance. The world pats itself on the back, believing its job is done. Now, she can fit in, be happy, and belong in society.

A society that feels disgusted when a woman mirrors everything dark, beautiful, and wounded—that reflects the cruel empty hole that lives in the heart of humankind—symbolizes all of the atrocities that man has to offer—rape, incest, war, abandonment, hunger, poverty, greed, betrayal, and abuse, will oppress, shun and punish the vulnerability, sensitivity, rawness, and madness she shows the world.

There is no greater cry than a woman lost and wandering about with a broken heart. She has no place to rest her weary head. It is a silent suffering cry. A cry other women hear only if they have awakened to their own heartbreak.

Once she starts to cry even Hell fears her wrath. No one wants to hear a woman moan, howl, and sob. They say she is being a victim, dependent, a child. So she holds it down, back, repressed.

Then she morphs into the warrior wolf, sniffing, hunting her prey, and howling, I am here. I dare you to touch my heart. I will eat you alive. One day, she explodes or becomes crazy with madness, hunger, and isolation and lays down and dies.

The only way a woman can find her broken heart is to know it is broken and feel its ancient pain. The only way to know she even has a heart is to feel the pain of her heartbreak.

Then she will know how lost she is, how forgotten she has become–to herself—a heart that loves with ferocity, vulnerability, and a soulful song that heals.

That is a woman’s story, her heroine’s journey: to first, with fierce devotion, love her broken heart with warmth, tenderness, and nourishment. Then, she offered her heart to the world with strength and vulnerability. Then, she could take a deep breath and know she had come home. Then, she would belong to herself.

The cry from a woman’s heart is a wild, fierce song of the feminine. It is the harmonic homecoming of the universe. Everything after that is grace.

What is your heartbreak saying to you? Invite your heart to speak its truth.

Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash

Marta Luzim, MS

Healing through Art, Love, and Remembering My Dog Rusty

Marta Luzim, MS — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 10:56:34 +0000

As a survivor and forty-year practitioner of trauma recovery, I guide individuals through cathartic, intuitive writing, visual art, dreams, and embodied approaches to recover from trauma.

Children are born primal and free

You are meant to be innocent, organic, and blossoming as children.

Yet people are often taught, ‘You should, you have to. ‘They walk straight, cross their legs, be polite, don’t make waves, and keep secrets. They minimize their sensitive nature, believing their feelings are weak. They hide their deepest needs in fear of punishment.

As a child, I loved flowers, climbing trees, playing in the mud, writing poems, and painting pictures.

My parents cut me off from my body through physical abuse and verbal shaming. I slowly froze into a false image of myself.

They dressed me with bows and patent leather shoes and shoved me out to play, warning me, “Don’t get dirty!” If I did, my gorgeous blonde mother hit me with belts and hangers and punished me with harsh words. I was called a stupid, dirty child. I was told that I was a mess—and sent to my room to cry alone.

My mother would threaten, “Wait until your father gets home.”

When my father did come home, my mother attacked him with complaints about my “bad, dirty” behavior.

Tired from his day, he’d enter my room, hovering over me with a frown, “Listen to your mother, or else.” The “or else” kept me quiet and terrified.

Love starts as a spark of life expands organically and swirls into the passionate fire of life. If ruptured, it smolders and turns to ash, kicked away like dust.

When I was six, my father brought home a puppy named Rusty because of her light, brownish-gold fur. She was an innocent pup, and because she did not know how to pee on the papers, my father hit her until she howled, yelping in pain.

I screamed, “Daddy, stop, stop!” My father, dark, hairy, and burly, suddenly stopped.

“Puppies don’t know how to pee in the right place,” I cried.

This is a painting of myself, based on a photo taken of me. I wanted to capture my loneliness and my sadness.

I rushed and picked her up, carried her into my bed, hid her under the covers, held her tight, and whispered, “I love you, Rusty.”

Rusty grew into a growling dog and showed her teeth when she was afraid. Rusty never lost her fierce growl.

In a childhood home film, I climb on my father’s lap as he sits on a beach chair by the pool on a Florida vacation. I climbed, and he pulled me off. I threw my arms around him, and he pried me away over and over.

Childhood pain branded itself into my skin and blood. I didn’t know I was traumatized. I blamed my parents and hated myself.

At sixteen, I constantly thought about killing myself, but then I was introduced to therapy by watching the film Splendor in the Grass, and I went to a Jungian therapist, Dr. Schulman, three times a week and paid for it myself.

He guided me to write my feelings, paint my dreams, and use my words and art to lead me into my psyche. It was the awakening of my primal source of ancient healing.

Art and Catharsis

When you experience the kind of trauma that I did, your emotions feel like these madly scribbled lines: they form a knot, a mess, and they’re so chaotic that they defy words that could possibly describe them.

What is the way to access feelings?

“Application of art, music, dance/movement, dramatic enactment, creative writing, and imaginative play–They tap into implicit, embodied experiences of trauma that can defy expression through verbal therapy or logic,” writes Cathy A. Malchiodi, author of Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy: Brain, Body, and Imagination in the Healing Process.

Art provides access to the trauma, a language that can lead to transformation.

Joshua Leavitt said, “Catharsis provides a model of healing that deals with those things that disturb us the most and that we wish to face the least. This is a practical way to accomplish the ancient spiritual goal of creating light out of the very substance of darkness. As the apocalypse myth keeps reminding us, the darkness will not just disappear. Instead, it must be transformed.”

Women’s connection to the body excavates cathartic emotions from the soul through art, such as in my painting below. It embodies my experience of the power to create a path of feminine strength and the power of the heart.

Fire of Remembrance by Marta Luzim

The Power of Energy and Creative Expression in Healing

Everything in Life is energy. Energy never dies; it transforms. Engaging in creative and cathartic movement connects your emotional, cathartic energy to tell your soul story.

Your core wounds are formed from the initial, primal, emotional, and metaphysical impacts on your body, brain, and nervous system. These experiences freeze within your psyche and re-emerge as daily thoughts and beliefs that shape self-esteem. That is why experiences beyond the thinking mind are necessary to release them.

These beliefs are personal and universal, affecting you multi-dimensionally. Most of the time, you are unaware of these core feelings/ beliefs. They are hidden in the subconscious and emerge when trauma is triggered.

Emotional energy is a powerful force that fuels creativity and connects us to deeper aspects of existence. It bridges the tangible and the metaphysical, allowing us to channel our feelings into creative expression.

When you harness this emotional energy, it becomes a life force that can inspire art, music, writing, and other forms of creativity. This expression helps you process your experiences and connects you profoundly to others, fostering empathy and understanding.

Recognizing emotional energy as creative and metaphysical invites you to explore your inner worlds and transform your experiences into something beautiful and meaningful.

Unpacking Your Story: Truth-telling through art, writing, and non-linear experiences allows you to explore what happened, how it happened, and its impact on you. This journey of self-discovery leads to greater self-knowledge and self-love.

The Language of the Soul: Within each of us lies a profound language of the soul expressed through imagery. Visual art, symbolic imagery, dreams, and intuitive writing serve as vehicles for recording the nuances of life experiences.

Rather than relying solely on words, these creative forms use your inner eye to convey feelings that may initially seem abstract or incomprehensible. This ancient and profound approach to healing transcends thought and belief.

How do you like to channel your emotional energy into creativity?

Here are some examples of exercises you might try:

Expressing emotions: First, take deep breaths into the belly, then access a sound as you release the breath. Do it three times before: Yelling, hitting a pillow, or venting can be cathartic. Primal screaming out bodily sensations that are stuck, such as tightness, numbness, tingling, shut-closed throat, feelings of suffocation, heart palpitations, gripping belly, sensations of fleeing, fighting, or collapsing, can move the energy of trauma.

Creating art: Painting, drawing, dreamwork, collaging, or other art forms release emotions.
Inner child work: journaling, dialoguing with the inner child, painting, drawing emotions to free frozen feelings
Talking with a friend can help you gain insight and feel better able to face it.
Listening to music: Music helps you release emotions through spontaneous movement
Writing: Writing in a journal, intuitive memoir, and art can effectively express emotions.
Psychodrama: Acting out past pain can help you reassess and let go of the pain.
Reliving traumatic events: a trained therapist guides you to talk about a traumatic event and reach catharsis.

Rusty in 1964

Dealing with the Trauma of Rusty

One day, after I was married, I returned to my parent’s home to visit Rusty. I yelled, “Rusty, Rusty, where are you?”

Behind me, I heard my mother. “Marta.” I turned. “We put Rusty to sleep.”

“How could you!? I didn’t say goodbye,” I cried.

As my mother walked away, she said, “It had to be done.” The back of her blonde hair ghosted me.

Love waits, calling to You. Life is a process of recovery, a remembrance of love.

I discovered that Rusty was buried in a pet cemetery. I visited her. Branchy trees shaded her gravestone. I apologized. I believed I had failed her. If I had gone to see her earlier, I could have cared for her, held her, and comforted her.

This piece is a love letter to Rusty. We were friends and confidantes. I created a safe space under my covers to heal throughout the trauma.

How do you and I/YOU tell this story—the paranormal, abnormal, and normal need to love—and allow the broken heart to have her voice without shame or judgment?

Start a journal, a paintbrush, a scream, a punch to a pillow, and a story that melts the heart. The creative is the language of the soul. The process of healing, truth, and self-love

Resources:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Visual Journaling by Barbara Ganim and Susan E. Fox
Life, Paint and Passion, by Michele Cassou and Steward Cubley
Relearning how to paint spontaneously:Most of us had our spontaneous creativity trained at an early age when we felt pressured to please others by striving for a “talented” end product in school. This documentary film by intuitive painting teacher Michele Cassou is well worth watching if you are having trouble accessing your spontaneous creativity. Watch here: A Conversation with Michele Cassou and The Flowering of Children’s Creativity
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, MD
Clips taken from Give Her A Voice’s The Telling, Women’s gutsy “real life” stories of abuse and recovery through film, dance, monologues and song
Mindful Madwoman Meditation by Marta Luzim (free download)

Marta Luzim, MS