Get the Abuser’s Voice Out of Your Head
Put on your headphones, get comfy, and press the play arrow. You’ll be very happy that you did.
My sister, Erin Chavez, created this guided meditation for domestic abuse survivors, and it helped me the first time I used it. I don’t want to spoil the visualization for you, but part of it has been playing in my head for weeks.
Working on this website reminds me how hard it can be to write about abuse without getting pulled back into the feelings of it.
Most days, the memories of my abusive marriage don’t bother me. They happened a long time ago. I know that.
But when I work on these pages, I read things I wrote while the abuse was happening, or soon after. I remember what happened, where I was, what was said, what I was thinking, and what I felt when I sat down afterward and tried to make sense of it.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like remembering.
It feels like I’m there again.
That has surprised me. I thought I had enough distance from those years that I could work on this site without being affected by them. Apparently, remembering something and being finished with it are not exactly the same thing.
Erin’s meditation helps me step out of that feeling and come back to where I am now.
The abuse is over. The memory is not the event. I am sitting here, working on a website, remembering something that happened a long time ago.
That sounds simple, but lately I’ve needed the reminder.
This guided meditation is helping me stay mentally healthy while I do work that sometimes brings the past much closer than I expect.
Photo by Aaron Burden