body memory

my elbow remembers
riding my rocking horse off the front porch.

my skin remembers
slap of the flyswatter metal wire handle.

my tongue remembers
bar of soap shoved in my mouth.

my hand remembers
spilled milk on the first day of first grade.

my stomach remembers
crying in front of everyone ’cause I lost the fight.

my knee remembers
wait for me daddy before I fell + broke my leg.

my feet remember
please teach ricky how to skip
pinned to my kindergarten shirt.

my chin remembers
falling out of bed into a
daddy’s mad again hot sunday night.

my nose remembers
can’t breathe comic books in ragweed darkness.

my fingers remember
building model rockets in a cool summer basement.

my neck remembers
father’s hands closing tight around my throat.

my ears remember
mother screaming stop it dick stop it.

time passes but nothing is lost
I can’t fool myself
my body remembers everything.

(PDF version)

The body memory by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

May 19th, 2009 in poems | tags: abuse, adult survivor, Body, body memory, childhood, father, father wound, Iron Man Family Outing, masculine psychology, men's issues, mother, Poetry, psychospiritual, ptsd, time, trauma, wounded man

6 Comments Add your own

1. MarjakaThriver | May 29th, 2009 at 8:42 am

My heart just aches for the pain of that little boy. You’re right–our bodies DO remember. Thanks for letting us use this poem for THE BLOG CARNIVAL AGAINST CHILD ABUSE. I’ll be getting the May edition up later today.
2. ChildPerson | May 29th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Thank you for sharing this for The Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse. I can’t say more for the day is long and the triggers have been too many. Time now to take care…
3. Rick | May 29th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

Marj,
Thanks for reading and commenting. If you’re interested, I have an article on making use of the information available in the body at:

http://rickbelden.com/blog/2008/12/14/the-body-is-the-gateway

Thanks also for organizing the carnival this month and providing the rest of us with the opportunity to contribute.
4. Rick | May 29th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

ChildPerson,
Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment at the end of a long day. I hope the remainder of your day provides lots of time and space to process, to rest, and to tend to your own needs.
5. Nancy Richards | May 29th, 2009 at 9:16 pm

Rick – Thank you for sharing this poignant poem. Your poem gave me pause because I have currently been working on paying attention to what my body is telling me; something I have overlooked for years. Nancy
6. Rick | May 30th, 2009 at 9:27 am

Nancy,
Even after years of working with the information in my body, I still frequently miss or override what it’s telling me. All those years of being conditioned to ignore it (”no pain no gain” etc) take a lot of time and focused attention to unwind, I suppose.

In an earlier post, I wrote:

I was also, at that time, coming into a new form of relationship with my body. I’d been treating my body like a mechanism for most of my life, a strange and mysterious “other” that felt external and separate from what I thought of as myself, an unreliable machine that suffered from all sorts of inconvenient problems and breakdowns that no doctor I’d seen could explain. I know now that this sort of separation and dissociation from the body is very common among men and boys in my culture. I also know now that it’s common to another demographic group of which I am also a member: adult survivors of childhood abuse.

Twenty years later, I’m still working to learn and remember to listen to and honor my body. It’s one of the best guides I have.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

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