Reclaiming Her Story

By Alecs Kakon

*Trigger Warning*

You can never be prepared for that moment when unwanted memories come flooding back. The effect on the body, the weight on the mind, the fog created that seems impossible to clear. It comes on seemingly out of nowhere and takes you hostage. A completely disorienting physiological and psychological experience, unresolved trauma comes on fast and strong as it unearths the ground you stand on destabilizing your world as you know it. This feeling, this murkiness, will be your reality until your conscious mind makes the active decision to participate in your recovery, take hold of those memories and try to reconstruct the path from the past to present. It’s called the healing journey, and at the end of this idyllic pilgrimage, your complete self awaits. In recent conversations with friends, this concept of “a complete person” has come up. From my own experience, I can contend that at various points in my life, I’ve picked up pieces and discarded others—behaviours, beliefs, character traits that have served me and others that have hurt me—choosing which fragments to carry and which to leave behind. Only in the last couple years, the proverbial dust has settled. The sum of all my parts—all experiences, all lessons, all feelings and memories—have amalgamated and I finally feel like a complete being. Of course I’m still figuring things out and still dealing with residual pain and issues, but I have a newfound awareness I’ve grown into, and for the first time, I can finally say that I am truly living. Sitting down with Meaghan, a part of me felt like I was listening to myself speak. I heard my words from someone else’s mouth. There were points of commonality that allowed the conversation to flow, but it wasn’t about shared experiences, it was more what wasn’t said. The thoughts that floated between us that created this safe bubble for our conversation to take place. We discussed consent, gender relations and the forging of one’s identity. We talked about the shedding of the protective tissue we wrap ourselves in, and the undeniable effects that find their way in regardless of how thick and mighty that tissue may be. But at the end of it all, Meaghan and I came full circle and unpacked the enormous task of self-acceptance, self-love and gratitude.

Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Although this resonates with me on many levels, Meaghan brought new perspective to this quote I’ve been carrying around, because yet another way to experience trauma is by having someone deny your story once it’s been told. In her teenage years, Meaghan underwent a traumatic event that would set her off course for several years. “I was 17 and my boyfriend’s friends crashed my after prom. I had quite a bit to drink and passed out. When I woke up, one of his friends was having sex with me. I was drunk, which was a new feeling for me, so parts of the memory are blurry. I also blocked a lot of this out, but I remember that I didn’t shout. I didn’t fight. I think I just shut down. I tried to tell some friends what had happened, but these kinds of experiences were so normalized within my circle of friends at the time. I called my boyfriend to tell him what had happened, but he was upset with me. His friend had called him to tell him his version of what had happened. The narrative quickly shifted. My boyfriend felt that I’d cheated on him.” That became the story: Meaghan had cheated on her boyfriend with his friend. “I can honestly say that I spent nearly a decade after that trying to regain control over that narrative through all kinds of unconscious behaviours, especially with regards to my relationship to sex. There was so much guilt and so much shame and I didn’t understand what I was feeling until years later, but I remember thinking everything felt impossibly heavy and difficult for so long.”  For ten years, Meaghan felt like most of her sexual experiences – even the good and safe ones - were strangely traumatic. She wondered why.

A body always remembers. 

“When I was about 27 I remember following the Jian Ghomeshi case in the media and feeling so attached to the outcome. It was the first time I learned that there were different definitions of consent. I had always thought of terms like rape and assault in these really sensationalized ways. I had had conversations with friends about experiences that landed in some sort of grey area, but none of us felt comfortable using those terms. I started to think back. I started getting these panic attacks and started seeing a therapist for anxiety. She asked me a lot of questions that eventually led to the experience from ten years prior. She was the first person to use the word rape when talking about what had happened to me that night.” A year later, Meaghan entered into a 16-week rehabilitation program in Toronto for women who experienced residual anxiety and depression as a result of trauma in their youth, which had tremendously positive effects on her mental health and wellness. “For me, learning to believe my own version of the story was intensely healing. Like a big weight being lifted. There was so much relief; so much forgiveness for behaviours I had hated myself for. I had so much optimism about the future for the first time in so long.”

Upon completing the program, Meaghan – with a newfound confidence and lightness – proposed to her partner of many years. The year that followed turned into an adventure she’d never forget, and an experience that would change the shape of her life in ways she could never have expected. They decided to buy a camper van, sell all of their belongings and head out the road. “We had already been on a 5-week trip where we had a private, unofficial elopement ceremony. We loosely planned to have papers signed with our families present at some point when we could all get together, but that never ended up happening.” About 4 months into travelling in the van, her partner admitted to struggling with the lifestyle. He decided he wanted to go home to his family to regroup. “We said we would meet up again in a month’s time. I kept travelling, but when I’d reach out, he was less and less responsive. I was out in California in the middle of nowhere by myself when the camper van broke down. She scrapped the van, rented a U-Haul for her stuff, and drove toward Montreal to her family with her two little dogs curled up beside her. A last phone call made it official: her relationship was over. “It was cruel that he just left me like that, but I’m not angry. We would’ve broken up eventually anyway, and in a way I’m grateful that he disappeared. His voice doesn’t have a platform in this story. In a weird way, he gave me permission to own this story. I control this narrative. Looking back at my assault and how that aspect was stolen from me, this ending is kind of like a gift.”

Meaghan arrived back to Montreal hoping it would feel like a soft place to land, but she felt lost and untethered. All her anchor points were gone – no partner, no job, no apartment, far from her friends and the city she’d called home for the last eight years. Her dogs and her family were the only stable things that remained within her reach. “I was so shaken. At the same time, though, there was so much freedom in this blank slate. I had this opportunity to look closely at my life and decide what I wanted to do with it. I found ELMNT studio through a friend’s recommendation and through a whole lot of good timing ended up assistant managing the studio while I completed a teacher training that would allow me to return to teaching movement. That’s where I met the founders of ELMNT and so many of the people I now consider my closest friends. “A lot of people around me were so gentle with me at that time, like Meaghan’s broken, be careful. But not Natalie,” Meaghan remembers. “We were in the loft one day and I was so shy. She turned on the music and we started to sing and dance. She made me sing, and then sing louder, then louder, and then, she just made me scream. It’s exactly what I needed. She freed me from the straight jacket I had put myself in.”

“It’s been strange coming back to where I began after having been through all of these things. I spent so many years hiding my real self from everyone, including my family – maybe even especially my family. I had all this shame and this internalized belief that they wouldn’t like the real me, but I never really gave them a chance to show up for me as the amazing open people they are.”  As a kid, Meaghan remembers having this yearning for connection with her family, but she grew up feeling like she should suppress a lot of her feelings. “It’s funny though, because this last year and a half has been a bit of a coming out for me both literally and metaphorically. After my split with my ex, my mom came to meet me in Colorado to drive part-way back with me, it became so clear that there was a wall up between us. Being back in the same city as my family during this huge transition in my life, where it was impossible for me to really hide behind a wall because I was just so raw and open, it created this space where they could show up for me, and in turn, I got to see how amazing they are. A few months ago I met my amazing girlfriend and while I’ve known for years that I’m queer, it wasn’t something I’d ever put out there publicly because I was in a monogamous relationship with a man for so long. It just didn’t feel like information that anyone needed. Introducing her to my family, to my friends and to the world in general was my version of coming out. Now I realize that coming out is so much more than just sharing your sexual identity with the world. I’ve started being more honest about who I am in general and showing my parents who I am. The more open I am with them, the more open they are with me. I hid who I was in my teenage years, because thought I had to hold back and be how they wanted me to be. In doing that, I alienated them, but I see now that they are more open with me than I thought they would be. It all comes back to that Angelou quote about bearing an untold story inside you. Now that I’m telling my stories, I feel so free.”

All photos by Jenni Fellegi