Who knew a massage could close chapters so effectively?
- How my personal La Cerrada / Closing the Bones Ceremony helped me move on from my traumatic past, & why I trained in it straight afterwards.
Who Knew a Massage Could Close Chapters So Effectively?
- How my personal La Cerrada / Closing the Bones Ceremony helped me move on from my traumatic past, & why I trained in it straight afterwards.
"...My #healingjourney from #trauma & #ptsd began when my bones were closed & I stepped back into my personal power..." ACH 020124
🌸🌸🖤🖤TRIGGER WARNING - DOMESTIC ABUSE & DISCUSSION ABOUT TRAUMATIC EVENTS BELOW INCLUDING BIRTH TRAUMA, GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT🖤🖤🌸🌸
🌸INTRODUCTION:
When I first came across La Cerrada / Closing the Bones in December 2018, I hadn't thought of myself as having experienced trauma very much because in comparison to a lot of other people I'd met along the way, my life had been really very blessed. I came from a good family, with two loving parents (they celebrate 50yrs of marriage this coming August) & an older brother as well as a large supportive extended family & some wonderfully supportive friendship circles.
I had many beautiful experiences growing up, had birthed three healthy children & didn't really feel I'd been through traumatic events at all in my life, until I began talking & unravelling to my massage therapist / teacher / sister as part of my own Closing ceremony.
It turned out that I had been holding a lot of trauma I was unaware of for YEARS, & my 'ability to cope' bucket was drained completely dry. The reason I was in such a terrible state when La Cerrada came to me, was because I had been running away from my own grief, supporting everyone but myself, including my children & their dad in a roundabout way after we separated in March 2018. I literally had nothing more to give to anyone else, not even myself & I was having a nervous breakdown.
🌸POOR MENTAL HEALTH:
When I went to my teacher / therapist Japjeet in December 2018, I knew I was deeply unhappy in myself & in a very very dark, as well as dangerous place. I had been there before many times over & I knew the signs deep down. I was underweight, stressed, suffering with anxiety & depression, had considered ending it all on more than one occasion truly believing my kids would be better off without me. I had physically banged my head against the wall too many times, just to try & feel something, I had no belief in myself, was being tortured by my monkey mind daily & all through the night with night terrors, & so much more. I was a shell of the woman I once was, completely burnt out & later discovered I was suffering with c-ptsd from domestic violence & grief from multiple bereavements I had in a short space of time, amongst other things which I discuss in more detail below.
Despite the physical symptoms being obvious to the outside world, I personally could not grasp clearly why I felt this way having had such a generally blessed life. I felt so pathetic & selfish having the issues I had, when I knew so many more who had many more & much bigger problems.
🌸🖤MY PERSONAL TRAUMA🖤🌸
🌸MY BIRTH STORIES:
November 2008, I became a mama for the first time to my daughter, happiest, most calmest time of my life but emergency C-section due to exhaustion, which led to trauma feeling like a failure for not being able to get her out myself.
2009 was a very unhappy year, despite it being the year I had only my daughter, got married, moved house & I was happily pregnant with no 2. Sadly, the relationship was suffering from the huge changes of becoming parents for the first time, moving & the fallout after the financial crisis of 2008 & my depression began to creep in once more.
**TRIGGER WARNING - BIRTH TRAUMA**
March 2010 I became a mama for the second time to my first son, with another emergency C-section due to my son going into distress. He came out grey & lifeless & it was the longest 4 mins of my life, waiting to hear him cry. Thankfully he was ok but it didn't end there. He was a regular visitor to hospital with problems caused by his floppy larynx & it was a very difficult time for us all.
This experience was followed by 2.5yrs of deep depression due to the trauma of the birth but also the implanon contraceptive implant. I was already unhappy because I was incapable of birthing my children naturally, & I wasn't the perfect earth mother I expected I would be. The implant seemed to exacerbate the symptoms & the 2.5yrs following are a blur of inability to even take my kids to the park, or baby groups & isolating myself from the world.
All this isolation resulted in a lot more trauma & whilst on anti-depressants, I was an absent mother to my two very young babies because the medications I was on, completely numbed me out. After the implant was removed in late 2012, early 2013, I was told within a week, that it seemed like the old Anna was coming back. I came off the anti depressants soon after & life got reasonably good again despite the huge voids of memories from my children's baby & toddler years that are so vague it feels like I wasn't even there!
In 2013, I began my first journey into business, with my children's dad, & the years following were good until mid 2017.
January 2014, I became a mama for the third & last time to my second son & he was my tribal baby. I carried him in carriers until he was 4yrs old, breastfed him until 2yrs old & he was such a healer to the difficult journey of motherhood I had had prior to him.
🌸GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT:
As well as the birth trauma I was unknowingly carrying, prior to my La Cerrada Ceremony, I had lost four loved ones to different cancers from Feb 2017-Feb 2018. My Auntie - womb cancer, a Friend in the school community - breast cancer, another Auntie - breast cancer, & the last, a really close friend - Lymphoma. I had supported her through her journey to get clean from her alcoholism, before, whilst pregnant with my third child in 2012-2013 & afterwards too. I was holding so much guilt for not being able to do more for her in her hours of need.
All of my loved ones who passed over, were too young. All of them left friends, children & families behind & I felt every emotion the closer family would have been feeling being so close to a lot of them. I struggled to attend the third funeral out of the four because my grief was so deep from the bereavements, alongside my marriage falling apart in Nov 2017 & I didn't want to face it or people at all. I did go to the wake, but was very late & made some silly excuses for my lateness. Nobody knew of the personal battles I was facing at that time as I 'showed face' because as always, I masked it so well, just like I had for 10yrs previous.
In 2018, after my marriage separation (another huge loss for myself & my children, but a very necessary one), I had also supported the widower of my school community friend & his boys in their bereavement, for a short but incredibly intensive period of time. This was a welcome distraction from my own struggles through extreme grief & bereavement, but it was not healthy in a lot of ways. My friend supported me & my kids in return a lot, helping us make some really fun memories as a family, but it was a lot for me to be holding space for outside of the fun, & added to the excuses for me running away from facing my own grief head on, leading to more trauma being stored in my body & part of the cause of my near-breakdown.
🌸MY STORY OF DV:
The discovery that I had been a victim of domestic violence, on many occasions throughout my 11yr marriage (separated March 2018) as well as in previous relationships, came as such a shock to me, because I thought it was normal & OK.
I'd witnessed first hand, one set of my grandparents all though my childhood, in what I now see as a near-identical marriage to how mine was. At the time, I didn't think much of it, but I knew my grandmother wasn't treated as nicely as she deserved because my grandfather was dreadful to her most of the time. She however, just tolerated it, with the occasional firey bite-back as she got older & more fed up of it, which as an adolescent, I was very proud of her for & thought it was fabulous when she did stand up for herself!
I thought this domestic situation must have been 'normal for some couples' despite my own parents & other grandparents seemingly living in marital & domestic bliss because they hid any issues they had well, in order to preserve mine & my brother's innocence.
However, in the November 2018 when I had to go to a local children's centre because I recognised I needed support with the children, it came home to me big time. I arrived at the centre, was welcomed by lovely staff & asked "How can we help?" I must have looked a bit bewildered because then they asked "Are you OK sweetheart?"
I broke down in floods of tears in the middle of the reception & it came out of nowhere. I had just seen a poster about the FREEDOM project with an info graphic about domestic violence & I had no idea that what I had been experiencing throughout my whole marriage & some previous relationships, was classed as DV until that day. I did not want to believe it because I had been working so hard to maintain an amicable relationship between my ex & the children, despite everything, but there it was in black & white in front of my eyes & there was no denying it. It didn't stop me pushing for the relationship for my children with their dad, but it was such a dreadful shock to realise what I had been going through.
La Cerrada / Closing the Bones, came to me at the perfect time, through a pop up on my Facebook feed of all things, & I believe the whole ceremonial situation saved my life because it helped shift everything that needed to be shifted, & close the chapters that needed to be closed.
🌸TALKING THERAPY IN THE CEREMONY:
During the 3hr ceremony, a lot happens but the first step is talking over herbal tea, or in my case when I facilitate the ceremonies, I use ceremonial grade cacao. The talking can be anything from 5mins up to an hour depending on the client's wants & needs.
As safe space holders, we make our clients feel secure & held enough to express if they choose to, & we hold the space for them & whatever comes up in the 121 talking therapy session & throughout the following 3hrs as well. Physical massage of the hip bones releases trauma & sometimes brings up a whole load of unexpected things for people.
There is no pressure to share anything, just what you are comfortable enough sharing, & that in itself, tends to open the door for further sharing & healing, because of how the holding, unravelling & putting back together healing process works.
🌸MY PERSONAL CEREMONIAL SHARING:
In my own ceremony, this was the case. I hadn't realised I had experienced the trauma described above, but when asked about my life experiences, & I felt so safe with my therapist, everything came out.
I mean EVERYTHING! My bereavements, previous relationship experiences, my three birth stories - two emergency C-sections & one elective, my personal experience of parenting from my own parents, criticism I received over my life that became my monkey mind, bullying I had during my school years in Scotland for being English, stories of abuse of other people I loved that had been entrusted to me over the years being the empathic person I am, & the emotional abuse that I had unknowingly experienced myself, throughout my whole marriage, & in previous relationships ALL came out...
🌸CONCLUSION - WHY CLOSING THE BONES?
... And yet, although it was so much at once, my teacher, my therapist, my sister, held me safe through it all with patience, love, understanding & tissues, without a flinch.
Following the talking therapy, for two hours, she massaged me with hands & warming oils deep in my womb, abdomen & around my hips where a lot of my trauma had been held unknowingly for so many years. She used sacred shawls to sift me, hold me tight, swaddle me & release all the stress I was physically holding literally in my bones. She made me feel as safe as I once had felt as a babe in my own incredible mama's arms. She held space for me to unravel & let it all go.
"...Let it go, let it out, let it all unravel... Let it be so you can see, the path on which to travel..." CLOSING THE BONES SONG. 2018.
I came out of the 3hr ceremony, cried out, exhausted from the emotional unraveling but in equal measures, put back together again & feeling like I had been reborn. I felt clarity like I'd never felt before, confidence in myself, knowledge that I was a good enough mama, able to forgive myself for what I thought were failures in my parenting when it was just my soul crying out for love & support that sadly couldn't be there from the partner I chose to become mama with.
It was an incredibly humbling, & beautiful experience from an incredible soul & the reason I am so passionate about this craft & trained 2 months later.
This is my story. It is long, but this is it & I thank you for reading this far. I hope my sharing with you all, will help you understand why I am the way I am & maybe my story could help you or someone else you love break free & truly love the life they truly deserve.
Much love always,
💜 Anna Chantal - CEO
🌸CHERRY BLOSSOM THERAPIES. LEICESTER, UK.🌸