ptsd

Books That Helped After My Attack

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

So, October is domestic violence awareness month. And I’m a survivor. I want to spend the month telling you what worked for me. Today it’s all about the books.

I had a difficult time focusing after my attack while living with PTSD. Don’t get me wrong–it took a long time for me to get well enough to read anything. But here are the books that made an impact–both fiction and nonfiction.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. This was the first book I read after my attack. And I loved it. It described perfectly what was happening with my body. And the author has decades of experience treating trauma and discussed the nuances of which treatments offered what benefits. It made me feel like I was responding normally to what happened to me, when most of the people I was close to were treating me like I was crazy. It prompted me to seek trauma therapy that really helped me move forward.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I am lucky. I am not only an author. I have friends pushing me to succeed in every area of my life, and I have started back on the journey to med school. (Move over, Michael Crichton and Andy Weir.) Gladwell taught me that success is not only effort. It’s opportunity. Not succeeding immediately is normal. Tenacity and shining moments of dumb luck are what creates success. It’s a book that might help you reframe your journey and pick yourself up.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed. This one was a beautifully written memoir from a broken woman who dealt with her trauma as I wanted to. She hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and was candid about the moments that get one thinking, “I’d like to walk thousands of miles in the wilderness now. Solo.” I like people who are broken, beautiful, and remade.

The Alpha and Omega series by Patricia Briggs. It might be a trigger for some. The main character, Anna, is a survivor. And Briggs did an amazing job of capturing how trauma stays with us, while also showing Anna growing. I needed this urban fantasy tale of recovery. It gave me hope that someone could love the broken. And I met a man who loves me as I am, who didn’t bat an eyelash at my noise cancelling headphones on our first date. But I had to believe it was possible first.

Karen Marie Moning’s Kingdom of Shadow and Light. This is the end of the Fever series. And I adore Moning’s treatment of traumatized characters and her let’s-be-real author notes. I cried when I read the afterword. Honestly, it did more for me than the book, and I loved the book. Moning had major health issues that she thought might have impacted her ability to write at all. And she fought despair and stubbornly continued until she was able to finish the book. I worried I’d never write again after my attack. So, I know her despair. I’ve published two books in these two years, and I have two novels in the works now and a new poetry book awaiting my editing. I cried with her, and she didn’t know it. If you write (or wrote) and think someone might have beaten your art out of you, I think you should hang on and not let go of what you love without a fight.

I hope the books help you or your friends. As Moning would say, stay to the light.

What Domestic Violence Is

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

You think you know what domestic violence is. It’s a man beating his wife, right? You’ve seen it in Lifetime movies and mysteries and Nancy Grace yelling about which man has slaughtered a woman so normal that she’s practically a piece of salt in the ocean.

And you think you’ll know the warning signs. You’ll never let it happen to you. If a man hits you, you’re gone. If anyone hits you, they’ll never find you to do it again.

But what counts? When is the moment you leave? Is it when your partner loses his temper and throws a glass? Is it when he punches a wall? After all, none of that is punching you. Is it when you’re scared? (But you’re always scared.) Is it when he threatens you, but doesn’t really mean it? Is it when he shows up uninvited, when he’s keeping tabs on where you are? Is it when you start wondering how to leave without setting him off? How do you make him think it’s his idea to break up? How do you get out alive?

What if all of this happens without you ever actually being hit?

Domestic violence is violence directed at anyone by anyone they’ve dated in the last year. They don’t have to live with you. They don’t have to be currently dating you. You certainly don’t have to be married for it to count.

All of those things I listed above were things I recognized as blazing red flags after a lot of trauma therapy. I didn’t know I was experiencing daily abuse because I wasn’t beaten until the end. I was just terrified.

And I was so heart-breakingly selfless, small, and kind. And I didn’t want to bother anyone with my problems. Surely the police have better things to do, I told myself. And I wasn’t even sure when my door was in splinters and my blood was everywhere–is this the moment one calls the police? And I gathered my nerve as I wondered, “If not now, when is the moment one calls the police?”

I will be sharing my experience and things that helped me get through the aftermath of my attack for all of October. It’s Domestic Violence Awareness month. I want you to know it happens to people who look like pretty young, affluent, intelligent women–the best moms, the best first responders. It happens to damned good writers. It can happen to anyone.

Blogging for a Cause

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

Hello, everyone. In a couple of days, the usual poetry, writing, book preview, and life update posts will come to a screeching halt for a month to discuss a topic I know more about than I’d like to–domestic violence.

October is domestic violence awareness month, and I will be blogging on topics related to the aftermath I experienced in the hope that I can help other domestic violence survivors.

Thanks for hanging in here with me. I am putting the latest touches on my new poetry volume, Sunbathing in Cemeteries, and I’m looking forward to sharing the cover and previews after the October Domestic Violence Awareness series of posts. Please share these posts with anyone they might help.

In the meantime, keep swimming, keep running, keep breathing. And enjoy some of that obnoxiously glorious sunshine.

–Jessi

Poetry: Me Too

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I wrote this one for all of the women I know that no one believed, whose attackers are free. They privately and publicly fall apart, but I know why. Shattered women live in societies with little justice.

Me Too

I believe you

with your eyeliner cat’s eye,

wine bottle latched to your hand,

goblet neglect.

I trace your hothead Facebook rants,

launching insults with no guidance systems into screens like confetti.

Insanity isn’t a switch.

It’s a stone hitting a windshield and cracks that creep at every stress until the driver can’t see clearly through the shattering.

Words Cover Me Again

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

One of the major parts of being a writer is being a reader. I know that adoring books inspired me to write a few. But I ignored that part of me after my attack (almost two years ago now). One of the things people don’t tell you about PTSD is that it takes away your ability to focus for a while. I couldn’t believe that after devouring books by the thousands, I didn’t want to read anything. I realized that almost all entertainment is violent; TV, movies, books–they were all out of the question for me. I liked Neil Gaiman and thought I could watch American Gods. What a crazy mistake. I was having a panic attack within five minutes. I used to binge space operas and missed letting myself slide into a good story, but The Expanse was so loud and intense and terrifying.

For a time, I gave up. I threw myself into remodeling my house, knitting, and being the best biochemistry student. I continued to write poetry and other works prolifically, but I didn’t pick up a book. Can one have bibliophile dysfunction? I wondered. And no one could tell me when or if words would wrap themselves around me again.

I kept buying books, like a dragon hoarding gold. It’s ridiculous to know you’re not going to read a book, but to fill a shelf anyway. It was my small, stubborn act of faith. I piled poetry, nonfiction, and my favorites–Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Ransom Riggs, and Rick Riordan–all onto a shelf. And I moved those boxes, cherishing the To Be Read box above all others. I moved it in my van with the espresso machine, a place of honor. And I told myself, “I’m gonna need these.” And my husband didn’t say a word, and he held me when I cried about books. And he gave me a little smile when I piled more on the shelf.

Then, a wild thing happened–I bought a Patricia Briggs novel, and I read it. I did all of my classwork, got ahead in labs, and I laid in bed reading a book. I read Wild Sign and didn’t live in my world for a bit. I felt so broken like Anna, but along the road to recovery. She resonated with me. And I haven’t really stopped reading since. I haven’t made it through the stack I bought yet, but can you imagine the ink-and-paper feast I’ve had? I just finished reading Jim Butcher’s Peace Talks and Battleground, all in one week because I had them both. I’ve been eyeing Charlaine Harris’s Night Shift and Ransom Riggs’s Map of Days next. What’s on your to-be-read pile? Help me refill the shelf with good choices–anything but horror and westerns.

Update and Poetry: The Club

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

October has been an interminable month. It used to be my favorite as I chased down the fall colors, carved pumpkins, and reveled in cardigan and boot weather. I had been dreading the anniversary of my attack and scheduled my book releases and tours to be done before that day hit me.

I tried to block it out with hiking. Mount Rainier, the Smoky Mountains, and other wilderness areas filled my days. I got muddy in caves with my kids. But I’m still me, and the adrenaline still floods me at nightfall, bringing panic attacks and insomnia.

Then, I switched to updating parts of my house. I have steamed wallpaper, patched walls, and left my house in piles of chaotic clutter. It reminds me of being a third of the way through writing a novel. I can see the end in my head, but I’m surrounded by loose threads. And there’s a lot of work to go. Only I can see how it will all work out; I think the rest of the household are humoring me.

I don’t know if you knew, but October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. And I laughed at the bitter irony that I was made indelibly aware of domestic violence in an October. My poems have been darker, like I’ve embraced the month’s black cats, cobwebs, and fishnet stockings and left out the cardigans and pumpkins.

The Club

There’s no glitter here.
And the lighting doesn’t flatter.
But all of the alcohol you can pour is included with a lifetime membership.

We all get our own photo shoots.
We’re models you see—
of blossoming bruises and chokers stuck to our skin.
We skip the lines—
at the ER.
We take off our clothes—
to don backless gowns.
We do interviews—
with men who forgot their microphones.

Our breaths come in ragged gasps.
We have nights we can’t forget
and friends who won’t remember us.

I won’t welcome you to our club,
but I’ll tell those waiting outside to go to hell
when they say you deserved your membership.

Poetry: Worse

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

The anniversary of my attack is looming, a great maw snapping at the smiles and sunshine in my life. I’ve had an uptick in panic attacks, super hearing, and insomnia. I’m operating on caffeine and stubbornness today. It’s enough. This poem was inspired by me asking my significant other if he thinks I’ve gotten worse. Because for some demented reason, I have to know the truth; I have to pry it out like a rotten tooth.

Worse

“You’re getting worse.”
I wrap my arms around myself as far as they’ll go,
protecting my core like your words are hits.
But they don’t keep coming.

I wait for the conditional get-better-now, stop-panicking
receding footsteps.
But there was no or else.
No if-then.

You pulled me closer
as I apologized for more things I can’t help.
I might as well apologize for the rain, too.
And you stop my torrent
like a shut-off valve in the sky.

Poetry: Un-Days

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

I know that some of my readers are here because of our mutual love of poetry. And the Where Angels Can’t Follow blog tour is not going to speak to that. So, here’s a new poem I wrote yesterday, which was a hard day for me. I didn’t fall into the hole in my calendar, but I did keep busy with random chores, freezing meals to a ridiculous degree (who needs that much spinach lasagna?!), and finishing the day out with a drink. Odin, the German Shepherd who seems to know when my days are difficult, did not leave my side.

Un-Days

The days we used to celebrate

become holes in the calendar.

Stay-away-from-the-edge,

you-might-fall-in days.


Anniversaries that got crossed out–

absent champagne, flowers, and cards.

Birthdays that aren’t

for people that aren’t.

Days when the world stopped

and our lives fell

into a pit disguised as an ordinary day.


It’s a dubious privilege of aging–

learning how to span the shaky debris over those holes.

I’ll tell you my secret:

don’t look down.

Poetry: False Beliefs

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

When you begin trauma therapy, one of the first things you tackle is false beliefs–the ideas that somehow everything is your fault or that you deserve anything terrible that happened. (Survivor’s guilt, years of an abuser telling you that you deserve abuse: there are many kinds of trauma that instill those lies in us.) And as the false beliefs and guilt slide away, you learn to be happy again. To me, that alone was anxiety inducing–where is all of the pain I am used to drowning in? The terror I carry with me?

I was creating some of my own misery by not pursuing things I loved, like I was an afterthought who didn’t deserve consideration. I took on everything everyone else wanted and didn’t know how to say no for a long time. And as you can imagine, people don’t like it when you stop yielding. But no one else will say no for you.

Things have clicked into place for me during the isolation of the pandemic. And I’ve reclaimed my time to journal, my time to read, and time to travel and drink in beauty. Of course, that comes at the price of not doing everything everyone else in my life wanted–not doing laundry for my entire family all of the time, not having an immaculate house, not giving a damn what the neighborhood thinks of my yard, and not volunteering with every organization my kids want to be a part of. The pandemic shut everything down so that I got to see what I was adding back, and the answer is almost nothing that I had before. And I like it.

False Beliefs

I believed The Devil over time.

I believed the terrible things he said about me.

And I began to wonder how anyone wanted me.

I believed no one else would.

And if I was so awful,

then maybe I deserved him.

He punched the wall.

I deserved that.

He broke my lamps, doors, dishes.

I deserved that.

He broke me.

I deserved that.

I’ve served my penance in a hundred miserable ways.

I kept words trapped inside of me, un-writing.

I didn’t allow my eyes to roam over the beautiful words

that other broken wordsmiths wrote.

I didn’t let myself venture underground.

No sparkling speleothems to soak in.

I starved myself of beauty.

I deserved that.

And then the angel came along and wanted what’s best for me.

In every way.

He loves my freckles, my scars,

my hellbent-on-success, impossible goal lists,  

my damn-the-torpedoes approach to life.

And I get to put on a sequined shirt, a leather skirt, a hot pink jacket.

To open the books I’d hoarded for when I was good enough.

To write each day like it’s my last, and the ink is endless.

To linger at waterfalls, wildflowers, and gypsum.

To be happy.


I deserve that.

Poetry: Closet Chair

~ Jessi Kallison ~ Leave a comment

For eleven months now, I’ve had PTSD, following a violent attack, and my panic attacks are not really going away. It’s not a pretty thing that people want to know about or discuss. We’d all really rather I were normal–whatever that word means.

I really like hiding away in my closet when anxiety creeps in. It’s the quietest place in the house, it’s not so bright there either, and I feel safe in the smaller space. I know it’s odd. Just try to explain your habit of freaking out in your closet next to the impractical shoes to someone you might want to date. It makes you really popular, in case you’re wondering. It’s more of a fifth date confession.

My boyfriend really sees who I am in this closet, the good and the bad. And recently he did a beautiful thing; he put a giant beanbag in there for me.

Closet Chair

The beanbag’s overstuffed and too big for its spot–

a chair for you and a bed for me.

Beige microfiber, in full fluff just below the lowest hanger racks.

It cradles my whole body, hugging me when no one else will.

It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s done for me.

You didn’t try to drag me into the light, puffy-eyed and sniffling,

where you could pretend this isn’t happening.

You didn’t impose a timeline on my recovery,

never treating my panic like it’s fleeting.

You pulled up a chair and invited me to be comfortable

while in pain.

Like a spouse settling into a hospital chair to wait out the night,

you settled in like you’d stay.

In the beanbag for two in my closet.