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Dissolving the Effects of Abuse
Evalena Rose


For many of us wounded sexually as children, intimacy and
sexuality are a struggle between trying to consistenly feel our
sexual feelings or give up caring about relationships. Incest and
centuries of repressing the feminine and truncating the masculine
(in us all) make intimacy difficult for many, often hard work,
and sometimes frought with triggers. I feel healing such
pervasive effects requires we come to live in our deeper
feminine, the true nature that lies beneath the wounds. At our
core we must be whole and I want us to find our way back to that
wholeness and original innocence.

I love doing therapy with the heroic people who've not only
survived incest and childhood horrors, but manage to have a life
while freeing themselves of being ruled by the past. My guides
have joined me in committing to find faster, kinder ways for
survivors to heal than reliving memories and being victim to the
pain again and again. I studied soul retrieval as done in
shamanic traditions and found Spirit and I developing many ways
to retrieve and nurture fragmented parts of the soul. In bringing
all of the person into current time, the memories recede into
another time and the person's Essence separates from their
experience.

Betrayal by one’s closest loved ones shatters the psyche, which
cannot hold both a child’s need to love and trust its caretakers,
and their violent intrusion of boundaries, without splitting
apart. Many of us with multiple abusers split into myriad pieces,
all containing some part of the radiance of our self, each
playing some role in the complex adaptive scheme we needed to
survive. Some handle anger, some fear, some get invisible, some
present a good face to the world.

I find survivors amazingly inventive of ways to cope with the
unacceptable and live with the unforgivable. The more vicious the
abuse, the more parts the child may develop to handle it. The
more they loved the abuser, the more separate the splinters must
be to hold both love and hate. There are many levels of
dissociation before that called "multiple", which is only the end
of a very long continuum.

Once splits are brought back, the task is to love them, learn
about them and nurture them so they can trust life enough to come
live in the present. The present is the safest place to be,
especially if you do spiritual practices to be with Presence.

You'll often hear someone saying they've been "triggered,"
which I feel means they've contacted a place inside "caught in
the past." A younger self is still at the moment of the abuse
because they could not process it, which is how one closes the
door on the past. I've learned to use the trigger as a signal a
younger self needs my attention and has something old to release.

Because sexual invasions are so incomprehensible and splinter the
psyche so deeply, one’s sexuality becomes scattered and
disorganized and one develops strange coping mechanisms not so
adaptive in adult love. This shows up in various ways:
promiscuity or being shut down sexually, being able to flirt and
seduce but not sustain intimacy, objectifying self and other in
an attempt to get sex over with and return to safer ground.
Others lose themselves in addictions, obsessively having sex or
compulsively running fantasies to avoid feeling. Therapy can help
clear some of these patterns, energetic healing can release them
from the cells, but one must also learn new, effective behaviors
and have support in replacing the old ways of avoiding pain with
adult ways of making love.

Experiencing years of sharing Tantra in circles of loving people
taught me how important it is to have an on-going support system
for exploring your sexuality and learning healthy skills. I offer
tantra in on-going women’s groups because I know it takes
continual use of spiritual practices to release the old coping
mechanisms and enter into a sacred and positive relationship with
one’s sexuality.

In ancient times, upon adolescence, we would be taken to temples
of love and be initiated in the arts of love-making and honoring
spirit in each other. At each new stage of relationship, we would
return and be guided by high priestesses and dakinis (trained
sexual healers) in developing knowledge of love that allowed us
to be fulfilled in our relationships and kind to our loved ones.
If sexual violence were ever to happen (unlikely in a society
where sexual needs are met), the child or adult would be taken
into the loving arms of those who serve the Goddess to be
restored to love and trust.

Its time to re-create those temples and be sexual healers for
each other. We've been forced to hide our sexuality, not talk
about it, make love only in private, and often with closed eyes,
when we ought to celebrate our sexuality and exhalt it as the
bridge from soul to soul it is meant to be.

I recently guided a three day retreat with a highly dissociated
survivor, a successful corporate trainer, who's found
relationship elusive and sexuality difficult. My task was to
remain a clear vessel through which Spirit could direct the
re-coalescing of her parts: over 30 splintered sub-personalities
we've come to know over a decade of healing memories and
reclaiming her splits. As she integrates her soul energy back
into the body, and lives from her wholeness, she finds life
rearranging itself to be more what she wants, and gains the
courage and wisdom to study relationships and learn new skills.

Reclaiming sexuality this damaged involves removing all that
blocks you from you. I exchange with a healer who teaches me
about realigning one’s energy fields with those of one’s soul,
one’s Highest Intention, one’s Essence, the Heart of Source.
One’s own light is the organizing force that will bring order
again into the shattered places.

I do this practice often for I must reclaim my wholeness
regularly or I slip into feeling shattered by life and
disorganized. I find as I call in these higher levels of
alignment, I become the purity before the wounds. In this
woman's retreat, I got to witness recovered splits and
fragments become, once again, the Divine Child. What an honor and
a validation of our right to believe in and approach complete
restoration. Blessed Be.


Evalena Rose, M. A, MetaTherapist, supports emotional processing
and spiritual healing clears issues all the way to core. She does
therapy with couples and individuals, and facilitates LoveJourney
workshops on the Healing Path of Tantra for Women Evalena also
provides multi-dimensional bodywork and does channeled readings.

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