Trauma recovery – Page 7 – Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Faith, Grief, Healing, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Anchoring

June 15, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

From my collection of unpublished pieces circa early 2018.

When it came time for our oldest son to attend Sunday School, I balked. My late husband was no help because the concept of Sunday School was completely foreign to him. Tony was a product of parochial school. In his mind, we simply attended worship on Sunday. Religious education was taken care by the nuns during the week. Except in Ricky’s case there were no nuns at the private Montessori school he attended.

My own reservations were two-fold. So many things about God, Christianity, Jesus, and what seemed to me the veneration of Jesus’ violent death made me uncomfortable. My mother calmly clarified things for me one day when she stated, “All young children need is to know that God is love. The rest can come later.”

Her seemingly simple statement centered me through more years of questioning my own faith, changing congregations twice, parenting my children through much turbulence, and beginning seminary.

I think a lot about life, faith, and God since Tony died. Sudden death forces the living to recalibrate every moment of every day. Yet in the beginning, I lived in trauma’s shock. My mind struggled to think. My body shook from any number of reasons. Left-over adrenalin, fatigue, and lack of food being the most common. My sons felt in losing their dad they had also lost the me they had once known.

But early one morning in the pit of this mess I had a brief wave of clarity. My job was to love. Love my sons, Love myself. And in loving the three of us through this unbelievable time, love God as well (Matthew 25).

Something opened within. Allowing the wonderful work of child development theorists to creep back into my brain. Combine with this quirky need to read Tony’s professional library, particularly the texts on love, relationships, and trauma. Discovering once again how human development theory and research mirrors God’s message through scripture. Even though I couldn’t really read scripture again yet. Only that funny line Job utters in chapter seven which now made complete sense to me: “Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle?“

And eventually the book of Ruth because, let’s face it, three strong widows in one story is wildly amazing and attractive to someone yearning to be a strong widow full of self-agency.

Now after twenty-one years of marriage, twenty years of parenting, and fifteen months into grief and trauma recovery, I know this about my life: I want to center in love. And if nothing else makes sense (which it doesn’t right now) somehow the greatest commandment does in its “all you need to know is that God is love and the rest will come later” kind-of-a-way.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 NRSV

Words I see interpreted every time I drive north on Interstate 35 near Lakeville, Minnesota. There on the West side of the road a billboard reading “Love God. Love Others,” catching both eye and heart. Adding two more words: “Love God. Love Others. Love Self.”

Love anchoring me like a plumb line.

Image by M. Maggs from Pixabay

Grief, Hope, Newsletter, Trauma recovery, Writing

NEWSLETTER (MAY, 2022)

May 26, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Photo Captions:

Discovering my book on the shelf at Prairie Lights (Iowa City), Barnes & Noble (Coralville, Iowa), and an upcoming event with Faith + Lead.

RECENT & UPCOMING HAPPENINGS

New article with Faith & Lead: “Heal Self, Love Others.”

“Childcare in Iowa,” on Ethical Perspectives in the News. Sponsored by the Inter-Religious Council of Linn County.

Saturday, June 4th at 5:30 pm: Preaching at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

Sunday, June 5th at 9:30 am: Preaching at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

“Beyond Job’s Friends: Accompanying Those in Trauma’s Pits.” Thursday, June 16th, 2022 at 2:00 pm: Faith+Lead Online Book Hub event.

“Beyond Talking About Trauma.” July 14-17: Wild Goose Festival in Union Grove, North Carolina. Stay tuned for more information.

INVITE JENNIFER TO SPEAK

If your organization, church, podcast, conference, library, or literary festival is interested in inviting me to speak, preach, or lead a workshop, please click here: Invite Jennifer to Speak.

THOUGHT

Pray for compassion, for just mercy, for our culture prone to carry unhealed pain buried within its layers of controversy until it explodes into others–so often and again innocents. Then get off your knees advocating with every word, deed, action, courageous works of self-healing, and posture for God’s love, compassion, and justice to rule our world. Not those humans whose pain permeates their stolen power. Prayer is like empathy, only the beginning. The first step. Stagnant unless it leads to compassionate action.

BONUS SECTION

I journal a lot, daily. Or I have in past years. Right now, I’m slowing down. In part because journaling for a writer also includes returning to finished journals. Rereading them. Looking for themes, recurring questions, poetry fragments, hints of unhealed pain, and the next piece or book asking to be written.

My current confession is I do not like rereading my journals. At all. Feels like work done begrudgingly. Like I know its good for me and that feeling never really works with its shift into shame’s posture. So I often avoid rereading my journals. But recently five tattered notebooks created a pile in my office. Greeting me each morning with a whined, “Hey, remember us!”

Until one morning I muttered, “Fine! But I’m not going to add to this pile by continuing to journal until I’ve read all five of you!”

So I haven’t, much. Journaled. Although occasionally something flows into my heart and head which begs to be written down. Then, I scribble away again. Or in reading yet another trauma recovery book I do some sort of suggested exercise. Because nothing short of dutiful am I in investigating these small moments of healing. Which often fill up many pages!

Much of what I reread in my journals is repetitive, boring, and often depressing. The gems, the possible sprouts of something bigger, are rare. Making the discovery of something moving me to write are longed for gifts. And these gifts do appear! Here’s one from the height of the pandemic, before the vaccine.

November 6, 2021

Quiet morning of shiny sadness felt in cheeks. Turning down toward the earth. Maybe in sadness we return to creation waiting to be made anew like a seed. Irony: This thought makes me smile…

WHAT I’M READING

Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN by Tara Brach.

My primary therapist often talks about Tara Brach’s work. Post seminary, I have time to read outside the Christian theological canon. Which I love doing because I believe that when we are curious about God, when we believe we can never fully grasp the immensity of God and are humbled because of it, we become curious about other faith traditions’ thinking about and relationship with God.

According to her website, “Tara Brach’s teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world. The result is a distinctive voice in Western Buddhism, one that offers a wise and caring approach to freeing ourselves and society from suffering.”

THE VALUE OF REVIEWS

Whether we like it or not, there is a business side to writing. Every author relies on readers to write online reviews. Please, please, please consider reviewing my book on Goodreads and at my Amazon author’s page. You have my gratitude!

BUY MY BOOK

Put A Time to Mourn & a Time to Dance on your bookshelf! My book is currently available (on sale!) at Chalice Press. Also available at Prairie Lights, Barnes & Noble, Coralville, Iowa, Barnes & Noble Online, Books-a-Million, Target, Bookshop.org, and Amazon.

Healing, Hope, Prayer, Trauma, Trauma recovery, Violence

Prayer is Only the Beginning

May 25, 2022May 25, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Pray for compassion, for just mercy, for our culture prone to carry unhealed pain buried within its layers of lies and controversy until it explodes into others–so often and again our innocents. Then get off your knees advocating with every word, deed, action, courageous works of self-healing, and posture for God’s love, compassion, and justice to rule our world. Not those humans whose pain permeates their stolen power. Prayer is like empathy, only the beginning. The first step. Stagnant unless it leads to compassionate action.

Grief, Healing, Newsletter, Trauma, Trauma recovery

April Newsletter, 2022

April 20, 2022April 27, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

CURRENT REALITY

It’s April. My youngest son left to explore Europe. My oldest son winds his way toward home for work, doctors’ appointments, and visa renewal. Forrest and I passed the first round of applications to adopt a doodle dog. The house is up for sale. I’m interviewing for congregational ministry, wondering and worrying about finances, marketing the book, writing an article, and working on a second book. Oh! And it’s Easter. Still. For the next 40 plus days.

Yet I breathe in all the goodness this whirlwind of words embraces. Because without all the healing work we as a family did and continue to do the list of our lives would read very differently. This possible reality, of what could have been, always lives in my heart and mind. Not as pain but as truth laced with gratitude. Thankful I pushed us to do the work, the healing work, as an act of love. Healing giving us balm and leading us to live fully in love, purpose, and joy each hour of each night and day now and in all the days to come.

May you find a way to “do the work” as well.

~Jennifer

HAPPENINGS

In-Person

Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 7:00 pm: In-person book talk at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Iowa City, Iowa. Prairie Lights Bookstore will be there selling my book at the event. You may attend virtually or watch at a later date at Gloria Dei Live.

Saturday, June 4th at 5:30 pm: Preaching at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

Sunday, June 5th at 9:30 am: Preaching at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

July 14-17: Wild Goose Festival in Union Grove, North Carolina. Stay tuned for more information.

Podcasts

Tues. May 3 – Ep. 52: Grief + Healing Author Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez on Untrained Wisdom.

Thursday, June 16th, 2022 at 2:00 pm: Faith+Lead Book Hub event.

Articles

“Where Faith and Trauma Recovery Meet,” at Bearings Online.

“Small, simple self-care” in the January/February 2020 edition of Gather Magazine.

In the News

Coming up! Ethical Perspectives on the News sponsored by the Inter-Religious Council of Linn County.

Gazette interview with Rob Cline.

Read why Chalice Press decided to publish A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance.

November 4, 2021: A Time to Mourn & A Time to Dance is in the Southeastern Iowa Synod of the ELCA eNews.

Interviews

Q & A with Chalice Press President, Brad Lyons.

Book launch interview with Brian Allain of Writing for Your Life and Compassionate Christianity.

This is Life and the Living of It: Steven D. Lee and I talk about faith and trauma recovery.

If your organization, church, podcast, conference, library, or literary festival is interested in inviting me to speak, preach, or lead a workshop, please click here: Invite Jennifer to Speak.

BONUS SECTION

Each month I share part of my process of writing A Time to Dance & A Time to Mourn. This month’s offering is a blog post from May 4, 2018 that did not find a home in my memoir.

Easter Understanding

Sitting in a church pew Easter Sunday. Seats at a premium this morning. Finding space third row from the Baptismal font. On the right almost under the organ pipes.

Swarms surround us. Decked out in Spring’s cold glory. Small limbs buzzing from early morning chocolate bunnies. Syrupy smells poured over church-basement pancakes wafting up sanctuary stairwell. Scents floating off potted lilies celebrating this day, distracting our noses.

Me, quietly book-ended by sons. Lanky height towering over shrinking self. Our hearts cradling family variants. Arriving on time for once. Not participating in today’s service. Missing one person in body, spirit, love. Forced imbalances creating new holiday traditions. Because of loss. Because of illness. Because human essence demands continual, dynamic change. Life ever flowing somewhere. Living in all directions. Forward, one of many routes. Options include straight back, down, and up above. Existence also following verticals and sub-verticals like feeds and streams.

During Lent this year understanding the movement of Lot’s wife. Looking back froze her future. Into crumbling salt. Comprehending this can happen to us. So far doesn’t. Ongoing therapy eradicates salt. Revisiting the past orients us into living. Discovering alternatives. Lot’s wife perhaps wanting choice too. Beginning with resisting orders. Ones requiring forced obligation in ancient womanhood. A constricted soul experiencing momentary freedom. Salt worth its weight. Me, not so interested in salt. Embracing all directions.

WHAT I’M READING

My latest? Homecoming by Thema Bryant, PhD. Also check out her podcast by the same name.

THE VALUE OF REVIEWS

BUY MY BOOK

Put A Time to Mourn & a Time to Dance on your bookshelf! My book is currently available (on sale!) at Chalice Press. Or support your local, independent bookstore.

Faith, Grief, Healing, Trauma recovery

Easter Early in Grief

April 12, 2022April 13, 2022 Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Every Lent a simple wreath hangs on our door. It’s a peace sign woven from vines by a third world woman. Someone trying to better her life and therefore the lives of her family by fingers practicing hope.

This sign also hung on our door from the first August morning of our grief. I took down our summer garland of blue and yellow flowers and hung this one up instead. Attempting to mark us as a home experiencing a different time than everyone else’s. Wanting to wrap the wreath in black ribbon but could not find the energy for it. So the peace sign hung as is for months, actually until Thanksgiving or Advent, I don’t remember which. Longer however than I lasted in my all black widow’s wardrobe hanging heavy on my shoulders.

This morning checking the mailbox I looked at our wreath of peace, the same color as the dead foliage falling against our home. Realized I was done with long dreary Iowa springs, grief, and Lent. Decided to find our flowered Eastertide wreath waiting for its turn on the door. It’s blooms signaling something good, something looked forward to and now here. Thinking its flowers, bouncing off the budding daffodils along our front walk, create a cacophony of color celebrating the return of something deemed beautiful.

So days before Palm Sunday, the day marking the beginning of what comes next in the Christian story, I took down our peace wreath. Not because I have fully found peace, but maybe because I haven’t. Not yet. Not quite yet. Maybe I trust, because Tony taught me this and Aunt Linda keeps reminding me, that I can and will heal and will come to some sort of peace with what happened. Knowing a one time trauma is not comparable to perpetuated trauma, not as complicated. More of a clean break in trauma speak, no emotional pins or surgery escalating matters even more. Yet still full of sorrow. Occasional panic attacks creeping in from out of nowhere except now I know how to appease this pain.

Breath in for five. No hold. Breath out for five.Repeat.

Breath in for five. No hold. Breath out for five. Repeat.

On and on in a circle of breath, maybe five minutes or so, until the agitated sensations running through my body pass away returning me to my now normal. Finding Easter in my breath. Life, resurrected from grief’s anguish. Again and again. Breath after breath. Blooming even in my muck.

A version of this piece was first posted on April 8, 2017.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.