The Body Memory Method

finding forgiveness

As a survivor of an extremely abusive high school relationship, forgiveness found me by surprise. At one point, years after the relationship was over, years after my abuser went to and was released from prison, I reached for that familiar feeling of spite, anger, and fear, but came up empty. I found forgiveness in its place, and learned in that moment that forgiveness has nothing to do with those who’ve hurt me.

It was a gift to myself. It felt good.

I also found that I had forgiven my friends from high school - girls who, at age 15 and 16, didn’t understand any part of what I was going through and so they reacted by blaming me, bullying me, and belittling me. When I realized I had found forgiveness for all of them, I realized that my body felt different. During moments of recalling my experiences, I no longer felt that iron-hot grip on my esophagus, a sensation I had grown accustomed to as it arose every time I thought of or discussed what happened.

Forgiveness changed my body.

My memory is also something that has changed and been affected by forgiveness. Nothing has changed when it comes to the fundamental facts in my memory (which is, to begin with, riddled with missing and conflicting details) but the way I remember it has.

I’ve started to recall the events from my past with curiosity and empathy for everyone involved, not just myself.

I’ve learned that memory is subjective, and there is often no “right” or “wrong” when it comes to memory, because two people’s memories are rarely in agreement with each other. A year after I graduated high school, one of the friends who bullied me reached out unexpectedly. She wanted to catch up, said she missed me, mused as to how crazy it was that we had lost touch. Back then I was enraged. How could she possibly think we’d stay friends after all she did to me? I thought. But she didn’t remember much of what I told her when I angrily replied. She was stunned at my anger. It baffled me.

curiosity & empathy

reaching out

Now that I’ve found forgiveness, and have started to find empathy in my memories, I’ve grown almost unbearably curious as to what my old high school friends actually remember. I’ve had to confront the fact that, while they are the “bad guys” in my story, it’s totally possible that I am the “bad guy” in theirs.

Eventually my curiosity got the better of me. I reached out.

For the past few months, I’ve been interviewing old friends from high school who I haven’t spoken to in roughly six years. These are people who told me that it was my fault I was raped, or told me I was lying, or told me that it was “God’s way of punishing me”. They made my dark situation even more nightmarish. And they remember very different things than I do. These interviews have been fascinating, cathartic, and genuinely healing.

This project is still in the beginning phase, where I’m conducting this personal research through these interviews and exploring, through solo and communal movement practice, how memory and forgiveness affect my body. The audio from interviews are all recorded, and I’m working with a trusted collaborator to create mini soundscapes with the recordings.

I’m also researching the science and physiology of memory, trauma, and forgiveness, and learning how the body is affected by these experiences on a micro and macro level.

I’m hoping to create many “products” out of this process. You Live In My Spine is the first of many new works featuring this method. The audio will most likely become a podcast, to tell the fuller story. This method is also the basis of the curriculum of my survivor movement workshops. And finally, as finding forgiveness, reconciliation, and even re-connection with these old friends has been so immensely cathartic for everyone involved, I hope to develop a sort of curriculum or guided practice for others wishing to engage in a similar endeavor.

memory + creation