Welcome to Through the Meat Grinder. This article is a part of a weekly guest series. You can find the other posts in the series here.
I can’t explain how I connect with people on Substack in ways that I almost never do out in the world. We like each other’s work and have a similar drive, compassion, and sense of humor. I dive deeper, and everyone I feel this way about is a little bit like me. They are not quite like me, as they come from different places and have different characteristics and wildly different stories. After 10 sentences of conversation with these new connections, I learn why we are drawn to each other. We’ve been through something. We have a depth that only comes from having lived through something that pushed us past our limit. We became something else to get through it. Our soul was scarred from keeping us together when all of our systems signaled alarm at the same time. We got through it. We learned more than we ever should have. We learned to make peace with this knowledge so we could sleep at night. Getting through that thing pushed us in different directions. Our lives were shattered, then pieced back together. We have this connection between us because we have been to the same place. Overload. And the only other thing we may have in common is that we are both still here, taking life one breath at a time.
Olivia Johnson is a visual Artist, craniosacral practitioner, somatic-based yoga instructor, author, and coach. She writes to uncover somatic wisdom and the connection of the body with the natural world. She has an upcoming book 🌞Sunlight and Storms ⛈️ ~ a memoir on trauma, relationships, and the path of healing.
Olivia’s writing combines emotional storytelling with natural experiences. She paints visceral scenes and allows her stories to take their time exploring the landscape while teaching the lessons of Olivia’s life experiences. She approaches the earth, as she approaches her body, as she approaches others, leading with curiosity and tenderness. Olivia’s posts are equal parts lovely and brutal. Olivia captures feelings. Hunger, guilt, shame, pain, and the kind of discomfort that drags you achingly around the hands of the clock, your fingernails helplessly scraping against the numbers. These feelings she captures, you will feel them too. She’ll hold you there, and at the end, you’ll be reaching for the book, which conveniently comes out soon.
Welcome to Through the Meat Grinder.
1. Describe a time that the world has ground you into pieces, and putting yourself back together helped you become who you are today?
That is a loaded question, because I honestly can’t think of a time that my life has felt like it hasn’t ground me to pieces, at least up until now, I suppose.
To describe all that happened would be a book. I have written a memoir that is nearly ready for publishing. For the sake of this answer, I will describe a particular pattern highlighted in the book that I eventually broke and changed.
My parents divorced when I was three, that was my first heartbreak. I was greeted by death very early on, as my childhood was filled with funerals for my grandparents and my father. He committed suicide when I was thirteen years old. This left a type of hole in me, a void that could never be filled. Grief-stricken, I was not able to enjoy a carefree childhood or engage with other kids my age. My mother moved us across the country when I was eleven, then back to Utah when I was sixteen. My life never felt stable, predictable, or easy. Lasting friendships were hard to come by.
To manage the chaos, grief, and gnawing emptiness— I distracted myself with boys, and obsessing over my image- body, hair, makeup, and clothes. So I could attract anyone I wanted. I fell in love with a boy at the age of thirteen. We had sex shortly after my father passed. This boy was my entire world. I felt I would crumble without him. I left him behind when I moved to Utah with my family at 16. My insatiable need for attention led me to cheat on him. I drowned myself in alcohol and drugs for my remaining high school years, satisfying my craving for attention with unfulfilling hookups.
Eventually when I was nineteen, I got clean off of that behavior after leaving a truly abusive relationship that completely destroyed me. Threatening to discard me for my weight, I found the greatest drug of all, Anorexia. I swore I would never let anyone else abuse me like that. I had that job handled.
Still seeking to fill the terrible emptiness with a person, I began a serial monogamy train of three different long-term partners. I would then leave one for the next. Each was a space holder or distraction for the pain, grief, and emptiness I could not consciously let myself feel. Alongside my Anorexia, my self-worth was low, I didn’t exactly choose “healthy” people.
The last partner was an alcoholic himself, and what was first gaslighting, word salad, and put-downs to degrade my character —eventually became sexual, physical, and extreme emotional abuse. This lasted six years. Eventually, I realized I was truly going to die if I stayed with this person. I also realized that he would never fill the emptiness I felt from losing my father, only I could do that. I finally left him, sober, no backup person, no place to run away to. I left for myself.
I met those wounds head-on, and let me tell you every day the pain was so significant I felt it might kill me. Cutting him off was like pulling a bullet out of a wound, but the bullet was the thing stopping you from bleeding to death. I didn’t know how I was going to survive, but I knew I had to.
Currently, my life certainly has its challenges, but for the first time in my life, I feel I am not just surviving. Even though I am in a state of burnout with the rat race of capitalism and the state of the country. For the first time, I feel truly hopeful and capable. My relationships and connections are healthy and thriving. After spending enough time single, and focusing on healing myself, I have found a truly healthy relationship that is not based in need, and is based in desire. Two whole people working together interdependently. A lot is breaking apart, as it always has, but I am focused more on what I am building. I feel I have come through the other side of what was a truly traumatic life.
2. What has helped?
Friendships.
Healthy connections with others who understand wounding and healing. Also being in the healing field of bodywork, and finding these connections to be plentiful. I am so happy I have met so many incredible individuals who helped me create the capacity to heal and make the changes I needed to make.
Creative outlets.
Finding and creating space to just express the pain, give it space to breathe, and just be what it is without rush or solution. Painting has always been my main go-to for creative expression, but writing, particularly my memoir, has been the most cathartic and powerful experience I have ever had with healing through creativity.
Spending time in Nature.
The trees, rocks, rivers, lakes, and oceans receive you in a way people cannot. There is a stillness and spaciousness when spending time alone in nature that allows the nervous system to reset totally. Whatever trauma you feel you can’t carry, ask the earth to take it for you. She is the greatest comfort and conduit for alchemy of heavy emotions.
Bodywork, yoga, and somatic practices.
Doing things that get me into the interoceptive experience of my body allows me to watch the oscillation and shifts of energy that feel stuck or like it will never change. Trauma paints the story that you’ll be stuck forever. These practices show you the reality that everything is always shifting.
Long-distance running. Although a tricky balance with the eating disorder, distance running has led me to places of resilience in myself that I have never felt I could attain. It’s proof I am still alive. Long-distance running has shown me my ability to move through hard things, to engage with focus or flow state, and to endure even the most uncomfortable sensations, watch them shift, and survive.
3. What hasn’t?
Addiction.
I still cling to my old patterns of thought. Although I have restored weight, I still frequently obsess and get stuck in body fixation loops of wishing I could freeze my body into what it was at twenty-five or even at thirty. There is still a bracing, a waiting for the next shoe to drop, a fear of death, change, and loss. This was my protection for years, and I only began healing it two years ago.
We all have our own addiction or ways that we abandon ourselves when life feels too overwhelming. Engaging or slipping back into your own version of this is not helpful.
Negative self-talk.
This is an aspect of wounding that does not, in most cases need to have the microphone very long. It’s a slippery slope and can quickly steal your energy and send you back into an addiction cycle. The way we talk to ourselves is everything. Trust me, I am learning this every day.
Isolation.
I am a major introvert, it is SO hard for me not to do this. But if you find yourself getting in a funk, the best thing you can do is start engaging with people. It is a fire extinguisher for depression. Even if it feels like lifting a thousand-pound weight, I promise this is the ticket to break a bad cycle.
4. What would you like everyone to know so they will be more prepared when the world grinds them into pieces?
Healing isn’t linear. You will come out the other side, but our wounds stay with us. They create us as much as they destroy us. Your scars are a part of you forever, and you will be changed in ways you never knew were possible. For what goes up must come down. However, if you can change your thinking around pain being something terrible, then you can understand its role. Every wound is an opening, an opportunity for alchemy and transformation. These experiences humble us, as they break us, but they can also break us open. In that space, something new can rise from the ashes, and our pain can be a bridge to others as we all inherently experience some form of suffering in life. Being ground to pieces inevitably creates a merging with the cycles of life.
Through The Meat Grinder Substack is the start of a new chapter for me. I want to build a community and create a podcast to share stories of combat veterans and trauma survivors. Someday soon, the podcast will follow the structure of this series. I want to share stories of those people we loved, told by the people who loved them. I want to talk to combat veterans and trauma survivors and share their stories of living and thriving to find out what helped them, and what didn’t. I want to probe neuroscientists about the changes that happen to our brains during trauma. I want to talk to psychologists and behavioral therapists who study PTSD every day. I want to make enough noise to make a difference. I want to change 22 veteran suicides per day to 0 per day. Nobody who has volunteered to devote their lives to our country deserves to end their lives alone. I want to give survivors hope, I want to give survivors options, and I want to give survivors real facts about what is happening inside their brains during the traumatic event and in the years after. I want to give combat veterans and other traumatized humans something to think about other than their pain and suffering. I want everyone to live meaningful lives, especially the broken souls. Through the wound is the only way to receive the gift. I want to give back to the world that has done so much for me. Thank you for being a part of this collaboration. Send me a direct message if you would like to contribute to the series.
Thank you for sharing! I relate to a lot of it sadly!
Such a moving piece. Thank you for sharing your story Olivia!