What Happened When I Revealed Myself to 600 Strangers
For as long as I’ve been me, I’ve acknowledged the depth of my “feelings” which sometimes I move through physically: running, boxing, yoga, dancing. Sometimes I sit with in stillness: meditating. Sometimes I create with: cooking and sometimes I release —emotionally, laughing or crying. But writing, has been the most most integral tool in my “healing” journey, and each time I share it feels less scary. It’s taken me some time to admit that my dream is to write, professionally, because I have lots of dreams. But writing is unique. I wake up every morning and write, when I’m tired — I write. When I don’t want to, I write. I write by candlelight.
The page has always felt safe for me: no judgment, no filter, a place where I show up unapologetically. I’ve long hidden behind the page, writing stories that are gut wrenching and so telling, but after I press send its like they fly away and the emotion flies with them. Posted! Sure there is the bit of hangover following, the shame, guilt or questioning of why I would share so openly. After I write, I move my body, to shake off stagnant energy. Even Box + Flow started as words on paper. I wanted to help others’ heal as I’d been healing, for years through my body, physically releasing the fight in my mind I was facing, fear, inadequacy… The first “Box + Flow Plan” napkin scribble wasn’t “jab cross hook” but face your dark to free your light, to find your flow. I took these words and set to movement (boxing combinations) and music, on the bag to the yoga mat. But I was still hiding in a black leotard, and a box + flow hoodie because I wasn’t ready to face myself fully. I didn’t yet know my own story — cue psychedelic assisted therapy.
After two years of diving deep, facing my fight to find my flow—It’s clear that my dream is to keep writing: to publish a memoir, a cookbook, quotes, what I’ve learned from my journey.
“When you want something with all of your heart, the universe conspires to helping you achieve it."- The Alchemist
I want to write.
So last week, I took a writing course by Wild author, Cheryl Strayed alongside 600+ strangers and their stories. I contemplated for weeks before committing, typical for me to resist growth in honor of “staying,” and complaining. The whole weekend felt like a “big commitment.” My excuses are boring. I showed up via zoom void of expectation, and nonchalantly. Cheryl shared tools and lessons acquired along her journey— her memoir becoming a major motion film, how it looks glamorous but wasn’t easy, particularly because the story shares her unabashed truth, from her mother’s death to losing everything, including her self worth to heroine and promiscuity, before she embarked on a rigorous journey to find herself.
It felt eerily familiar, but drastically different: feelings, trauma, not belonging, realizing like Cheryl, I was never lost, just learning. And so was the point, that our stories, albeit different, are universal. Her truth opened up the willingness for others, to face and share their own. We gathered that weekend to write, listen, feel something— a part of something bigger than our stories, a collective longing. In between lectures, we were fed short prompts, 10 minutes to write before 10 minutes of sharing live or via zoom breakout rooms. It was powerful, cathartic, in person or in breakout rooms. The clarity of instruction was poignant, and the exercise thrilling: Pen up, write. Pen down, stop. No editing, second guessing, or erasing, just truth, ease, and much more, I’d learn, eventually.
“I write to find out what I didn’t know.” — Robert Frost said.
Same, I thought. Me too.
“WRITE ABOUT A TALISMAN,” Cheryl instructed, “an object that holds some sort of meaning to you.”
I picked up my pen. The clock ticked down from minute ten and I wrote. I put down my pen.
“Next we have Olivia.” Cheryl Strayed said. I looked up to see my face broadcast on the zoom onstage. With no time to think, fueled by adrenaline, “Hi! I’m Olivia” I said and I took a deep breath from my Austin desk, used my voice and read:
**trigger warning, my words as mentioned, are uncensored.
VALENTINE
He left me in the shower, lifeless, pants less, threw me over his shoulder and left me there.
Gumby, I felt nothing. My soul left my body temporarily to protect me.
I felt nothing but the shards of hot water hailing upon my lifeless body.
Breathing barely, my bare legs exposed to the water and the steam.
The underwear I put on earlier that evening, someone placed back on me. It didn’t matter.
I was frozen in memory. I woke up wearing the tank top I wore to the party. Soaked, the word Valentine spelled across it, barely legible, crumpled up, stretched out,
No ones Valentine, no ones anything, pants less, lifeless, no love left in that shower. No love left in me.
He took the light from me, the ability to love from me, My life from me, temporarily.
I didn’t yet know it had long been taken from me.
Valentine, dying,
Bleeding red heart fading to a light pink fading into nothing
as the water beat down on meLifeless, pants less body,
My hope, my confidence, my self love, my self trust, my individuality washed down the drain,
Life draining from me.
Valentine. No ones valentine
Who would love me after he raped me?
Left me there while my high school class drank Red Bull Vodka outside at the party.
A friend found me, later that evening in the shower where his father left me.
Valentine. No ones valentine.
I didn’t remember how I got there until seventeen years later when I began psychedelic assisted therapy.
When the plant medicine called me and I answered willingly, with intention to open my heart and reconnect to my body. My body. my body,
It never felt like my body. NoBody.
I arrived to the session wearing my Valentine tee but no memory of the night
he drugged me and raped me.
I wore the same shirt that I died in previously
To be reborn
To begin again
To face me.
I took the MDMA and my mind began opening. “It was XX. Age 17.”
Valentine. no ones Valentine.
But for the first time, I remembered why I always felt so alone,
Dissociated from my body, stuck in my mind.
Psychedelic assisted therapy helped me save my life,
So I could start loving me, So that I can be my Valentine.
One session turned into a two year journey,
Sessions monthly, and each session I prayed for lightness, an opening,
but the deeper I went, the darker the memories, even more frightening.
Valentine, reminded each time new trauma revealed from my mind,
No matter how painful the past — Stay here,
Love you here, You’re safe here,
Just breathe.
I still have the shirt, Valentine,
Because no matter how dark the night, my past may be,
The sun always rises: And so I keep rising.
I choose light, I choose love, Because now that I’ve found it,
No one can take my love from me,
All Mine Valentine.
…
And then I exhaled. Free. As my truth exited me, I stayed sturdy, my throat cleared, and the cage around my heart loosened, softly. The 600+ strangers supported me. They clapped, I teared. A moment in time — that felt like a series of forevers, that felt like all mine. I felt seen, accepted, my messy as sexy, wide open, received. The moment passed and Cheryl went onto the next thing. But that moment stayed with me.
The next morning we were prompted, “WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING THAT’S HAPPENED OVER THE COURSE OF THIS WEEKEND.”
Pen up. I wrote. Pen down. I stopped. No edits. I entered the zoom breakout room. Her camera was off. Mine too. I waited a beat before initiating, secretly hoping the other lady would leave because while Cheryl was lecturing I was also kettle bell swinging. Messy in sweatpants, sweaty, sometimes multi-tasking, distracted, Sunday morning. “Hi,” she said. “I have to admit I was going to leave the room quickly but then I saw your name and realized I was safe. I heard you read yesterday.”
My heart fluttered, “Thank you for listening! And zero pressure, if you’d like to leave, I understand and support your decision. But know that I’m open to listening, no judgement.”
“I’ll go first!” She said, confidently.
With her camera still off, mine too, she told me her story: Last night, how she let herself down again, didn’t deny the flurry of drinks again, told herself, “just one more,” again which turned into four again into she didn’t remember. And then she drove home after knowing that— if she doesn’t kill herself, she’ll kill someone else yet continues self sabotaging hoping she might one day find the courage to tell her family that she can’t keep up so she goes on, instead of just showing up with a case of LaCroix. She stays quiet and keeps risking her life and those innocent, on the road again…
And then I exhaled. So did she.
“Thank you,” I said. “Your truth is humbling.” I felt incredible privilege to receive her transparency and with it, I felt her shame, and her integrity, served honestly to a stranger. Pain. Shame. Pain. Shame. How many of us play this game? Passively waiting for change … And yet, how brave, that she was willing to face herself and share with me — I saw her bravery and she saw me. Different but the same, human beings with feelings … And still the coach in me, the victim and the survivor, wanted to ask her why, why she drinks. What’s underneath the numbing? Our answers are always underneath. We’re just asking the wrong questions,
Not, what’s wrong with you, but what happened? But I didn’t. It wasn’t mine for inquiry.
After I thanked her profusely I told her how much I love LaCroix too, limoncello and beach plum specifically, and how many people would benefit from hearing her story. I was proud of her and proud of me for slaying the big scary dragon by putting words and feelings to the stories we carry, no longer in hiding.
And then just as the timer ticked down to thirty seconds until our breakout session was ending, she turned on her camera screen. And I did too. We smiled and embraced energetically. Bruised, not broken. Strong, not weak: through our darkness we both found our courage to speak. Maybe our share was the start of her new beginning. Strangers but connected, in the human experiencing.
We are a culmination of our stories, but they don’t define us — more often they silence us. But by writing and sharing we bring them out of hiding. Writing allows us to feel what is, face what was, and by sharing, we can set ourselves free—
Everything WE need is inside.
Love always,
Olivia