Author: Rose Sylvester

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Ravishing Rose Blog Intersectional Identity A Quest for Healing Power Bicycles

Redefining Social Power:

Why Introverts Might Be the Most Connected People You Know

Introversion is often misunderstood as the trait of someone that solely recharges alone. This is actually only part of the story. Introvert leaning folks also thrive in certain types of social settings.

The Cloak the Mind Makes

There are lots of backstories for introversion — some of it is simply how we were born — but there are also additional factors that can lead to feeling safer in specific environments. As a trauma therapist, I am inclined to focus on these.

A lingering symptom of trauma is the sense that we are broken, ruined, or “not ok” and these types of feelings can lead to a felt experience of isolation. Combine that with a deeply divided society, a sensitivity to over-stimulation, and/or a chronic illness and it can sometimes feel almost impossible to make friends.

I have spent a lifetime combating my own sense of isolation — and I say “sense” with deep intention, because it is a story that my mind will spin regardless of the actuality of my reality. The more honest I have been able to be with myself about who I am, the more I am able to recognize isolation webs as a protective cloak that my mind fabricated a long time ago to keep me safe and cozy when my internal alarm bells are ringing.

This is the story of what I’ve learned in order to hang the cloak in the closet — or at least take it to the laundrymat for a wash.

The Morning Ride

My peak socializing energy is definitely in the morning or during the day and the perfect setting for me is a quiet and comfortable space. Being outdoors is a plus — sunshine or rain I am a bicycle fanatic and I will enjoy my time on two wheels with whomever is willing to join me.

I realized recently, after experiencing some FOMO around missing an interesting evening event, that I was discounting this type of socialization because in my mind, evening socialization is the most “valid” kind of social experience. Catching myself perpetuating this storyline helped me pull a thread from that cloak.

The next morning, after the aforementioned FOMO, I got up early for a ride with a friend who’s also been feeling some social isolation, and we connected over this very topic. We connected. We rode our bicycles in the sunshine, along the water and spoke about our shared experience of the world. What noisy, overstimulating, chaotic evening outing could replace that?

We Are Not Alone in Our Aloneness

Another common trap that I find myself tangled within is the story that everyone else already has the friends they want. Good/bad news: I have lots of evidence that there are plenty of people out there dreaming of deeper connection.

When we are feeling isolated, we are likely to become more attuned to noticing folks that are in connection — so that we can silently shame ourselves for our own shortcomings. The reality is that if we turn our gaze even slightly to the right we might notice someone else longingly gazing at that very same connection we are coveting.

Living with Chronic Illness

Adding a chronic illness to the menagerie of life makes things even more exciting. The illness itself may or may not respond to treatment and we may or may not have the means/energy/ability to manage it at any given point in time and life. We are at the will of this force that we coexist with.

Living with a chronic illness means that my social life has been more creative than conventional. At times I grieve the things I might be doing if I was well enough — but once the clouds clear, I realize how it has helped me focus on the relationships that matter to me. I put the energy I have into helping these buds blossom and ultimately I feel more satisfied and loved than ever before. Performance is less of an option and that isn’t necessarily a loss.

The practical upshot of all of this, for me, has been learning to extend the same flexibility to my social self that I have slowly learned to extend to my body. That means saying yes to the morning ride and no to the evening event — without the accompanying shame spiral.

It means being honest with people I trust about what I can and cannot do, and noticing — with some surprise — that this very honesty tends to bring people closer rather than push them away. It means recognizing that a two hour conversation on a porch is not a consolation prize for a night out. It is, for me, the whole point.

If any of this resonates, I want you to know that the cloak is not a character flaw. It was stiched with care, by a younger version of you who needed it. The work is not about getting rid of it entirely — it is about learning when you are wearing it out of habit rather than necessity, and having the courage to hang it up long enough to let someone in.

The friends are out there. Some of them are drinking tea in the morning sunshine right now, wondering the same things you are, hoping someone will show up for a sic ride.

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A Quest for Healing Power Ravishing Rose Blog

The Power Imbalance of Giving & Receiving

I have to start with Martin & Dalzen’s (2021) Wheel of Consent when I talk about giving and receiving because it highlights the vulnerability and energetic structure of being in different roles of interpersonal exchange. This became apparent to me when I noticed a pattern of women positioning themselves in a relationship towards me as being the giver of care, advice, or mentorship without that being an agreed dynamic. I recognize these behaviours, as much as I have a reaction to judge them, and see them in myself (something I don’t want to look at) as part of a socialized way to feel in control of a situation.

I love being in control. And I, sometimes, recognize it’s illusion: Being ‘better than’ others, having something to offer, feeling of value in a dynamic. I just listened to a recent podcast by Tara Brach about the drive to feel inferior or superior. She has some interesting exercises to reprogram your brain around disconnection and isolation. The positioning of myself as a “giver of care” without fee for exchange (as in a work setting), allows me to feel superior because my health, the measurement at hand, is being communicated as if I were in better condition that the caregivee.

I recognize the urge as my ego and I negotiate who’s in charge. I’ve also learned in past year that, if I catch my ego, it can be a choice on my part as to whether or not to engage in this power struggle. Someone may try to position themselves and if my ego takes over I can physically feel this power struggle in my body, but when I am aware of myself and don’t allow the reactionary action/word/energy to dominate, then I can disengage and remain on an even playing field with the other being.

This is hard in our interpersonal interactions, there’s a lot going on. So I wonder about Brach’s take as she navigates negotiating this power dynamic with other energetic beings such as plants and animals. Our ‘natural setting’ as humans is to dominate these relationships, animals and nature are often domesticated to our habits. What would happen if we simply acknowledge and honour the ways in which our cat takes up space in ways we don’t prefer or a tree root destroys our sewer system? We don’t have to like it, but we can notice that this is how we live in harmony with one another.

It is my desire to grow into being on this earth in a way that honours my surrounding beings. We are all of the same atoms, the same stardust and, I believe, essentially seeking the same harmony of existence. What relationships come to mind for you when you think about this?

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

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A Quest for Healing Intersectional Identity Ravishing Rose Blog

Parts of Me: Elsa

I’ve been feeling stuck lately and having a hard time writing. When I reflect on my stuck feelings…I feel frozen, a sense of impending doom if I make some wrong decision, it’s hard to feel my body and when I do it’s mostly just uncomfortable, my mind wants to take over and SOLVE something but mostly doesn’t know where to begin.

I’ll call this experience of stuckness ‘Elsa’. I feel angry with her at the moment. Elsa is getting in the way of my writing, and I LOVE to write. She’s probably also impeding my ability to do other things that feel important and urgent. Why is Elsa dictating how I spend my time? I refuse to let her win.

But what if Elsa is trying to help in some way? What is Elsa’s core intentions? Most often the parts of me that inhibit action tend to be protective. I identify as both a freezer and a fawner when it comes to high stress situations. These responses are protective measures to keep me safe and stop me from escalating any danger that is happening in my vicinity.

Since the pandemic, my vicinity has felt like it expanded a lot further than the North American bubble that I generally, mentally lived in. Elsa came and went for company. When she went away, I furiously covered the walls of my apartment in paintings like my life depended on it despite not identifying as a mural artist, and I watched and waited as a global disease unfolded. There was a level of connectedness with the rest of the world that had begun through my privileged wanderlust and it was both challenged and solidified through the shutting down and reopening of borders. The mandate that had trapped me on the other side of an invisible wall from most of my family challenged the privilege of border crossing I had experienced the entirety of my life.

Elsa supported me through this experience. She turned my brain off when I became overwhelmed by the things I lost before I was mentally too far outside of my window of tolerance. She kept me company during the many, MANY hours of alone time I experienced during the lockdown since I was living alone at the time. She generally helped me pass the time and likely the tension of her departures helped generate the fire of action that comes forth through me in her absence.

What if Elsa is the precursor to action? As I get older, I realize that often the most challenging part of challenging feelings is the judgement I heap upon myself for having the challenging feels in the first place. An unkind way to respond to someone who is already struggling I know. And then Elsa comes to the rescue to shut it all down. She is the emergency switch that takes brain offline until I can find a little thread of compassion for myself.

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A Quest for Healing Ravishing Rose Blog

When the Mind Wanders Off Leash: The Fantasizing Mind

A handful of recent experiences have led me to reflect upon my relationship to fantasy. You know when a theme keeps popping up in different areas of your life? Time to pay attention? The act of fantasizing is such an interesting exercise and generally considered to be a positive, exploratory or sexy activity, though also considered mysterious and sometimes even dangerous. When we fantasize we might be using our imagination to create future goals for ourselves but we also might be trying to escape whatever discomfort we are experiencing in the moment. Fantasy can be realistic or fantastical, it can be something we truly want or perhaps, and we might not recognize this, it remains pleasant only in confines of our mind. The mind is a truly creative place and a tool that we share across oceans, languages and cultures.

There are a few ways in which I have come to notice fantasy getting the better of me. The first one is believing that a situation or relationship would only be better if this or that were different. If only my friend/boss/partner were a slightly different person, if only we related in this other specific way. This is a trap. They will, very likely, never become that person and this habit of discontent is something that has deeper meaning within me rather than the individual in question.

A second way I’ve noticed fantasy popping up is a little more sadistic. I will fantasize a particular future outcome or vengence if I am in conflict with someone. It has more of a stonewalling or emotional torture type of flavor for me. I caught myself doing this last week with my one of my partners and realized that it was helping me cope with the discomfort of being in conflict. I also recognized that the chances of me following through on this fantasy that took place hours later was pretty slim. The chances of me still being angry about something small after a whole day apart was pretty unlikely.

Finally, the one you’ve been waiting for, using fantasy to explore sexuality. I can’t help but think about the ethics of consent when I think about others sexually cause that’s how I roll. How would this person feel about being a part of my fantasy world? Sometimes we know because we are already in relationship with the person and we can ask directly. There are other times when it’s someone we don’t have a connection with, we might fantasize about them regularly, and it could possibly disrupt a potential connection because, after a certain point, we can have trouble separating fact from fiction.

While fantasy can be fun, relieving and an essential part of creativity, there are ways in which it can wander beyond what aids us in living the life that we hope for ourselves. It is my desire that by identifying the ways in which it might go awry, I can catch myself and start to utilize my fantastical skills for fun, exploration and the deepening of connections.

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Intersectional Identity Power Ravishing Rose Blog

On Hierarchy in Intimate Poly Relationships

We’re talking romantic here, though another piece on friendships would be interesting too. My brain already considered a sub-series of power dynamics about hierarchy before I opened the laptop. It’s important to keep in mind that I don’t believe that relationships can be non-hierarchal. I believe we can strive for equality, but if we ignore the ways in which equality can’t (or intentionally does not) exist then power doesn’t cease to exist.

I go through periods where I immerse myself in short videos of other people’s worlds around the world and so this is what I gathered from my online poly community. Hierarchy is in the way we negotiate finances and how it can impact how much money you spend on a date with another partner. Hierarchy is living together and having down time to chat about other partners, the hierarchy of having more knowledge of others. The hierarchy of knowing a partner longer than another partner. The hierarchy of marriage, having kiddos, sharing property.

None of these are set in stone. We’re a collection of identities that both provide and take away privileges and shift. Consider being a passing trans white man, you have gone from a white woman to what most people will assume is a white man. In some ways, this is an enormous privilege leap while still having been socialized as a woman and retaining that history as well as mental health struggles that can result both from having experienced significant dysmorphia about your body as well as very real fears of being the target of violence politically and in your immediate neighbourhood. Consider being a white cis man that marries this individual, now you are in a queer relationship. How does that impact the way in which you hold power? What situations might result in the experience of more or less power and how might that impact your behaviour?

Power is nuanced, invisible and morphing. There are ways in which it is obvious by a role you are in, think boss/employee or further CEO and entry level employee, and situations in which power might shift depending on the setting you are in despite your relationship to another person. Power is not inherently bad, though many make this conclusion. We are not trying to rid the world of power but more so wield it wisely. It is my desire that we take the time to recognize the ways in which we hold power and use it in ways that align with our values to lift one another up, instead of fearfully taking them down. What are some nuanced ways in which power shows up in your relationship(s)?

Photo by Abed Ismail on Unsplash

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A Quest for Healing Bicycles Intersectional Identity Ravishing Rose Blog

Sorting Axle Nuts

Yesterday I sorted axel nuts. A task I initially felt was a waste of time and was I really getting paid to sort? But it reminded me of the beginnings of being a mechanic. Coop days where a volunteers task was to sort. There’s a TON to learn from sorting parts. There are lots of unique differences between axle nuts in fact. There’s also some humility needed since I associate it with the start of my learning and I was divided between nostalgia and ego.

But back to the nuts. There’s obviously size differences and then thread pitch is the next step to consider. But my axle nut chart, {picture to come as reference}, only has so much range with its 6 options (3 difference circumferences and 3 difference pitches). Some nuts were too big and some too small so I could use the discernment of my eye to weed them out in the beginning (e-bikes for the larger nuts and vintage bikes for the smaller). Recently I encountered an axle nut that didn’t fit a 13 or 12 mm wrench in the collection of standard bike tools. “An imperial size,” my spouse chipped in. The nut was so thin and fragile and stuck that an adjustable was mangling it 😥 .

If you’ve enjoyed the article this far, “Congratulations!”, you’re a huge nerd like me. Maybe you like to get dirty, take things apart or some other obscure thing I can’t think of. Feel free to email me about it and I will add you to my email list once I get that going. Where I want to go with all of this is into the human mind. What do axle bolts have to do with the mind?

This kind of focus on the details of small hardware allows me to relax. Paying attention to the feel of the nut screwing onto the chart, using my sight to assess whether it needs to go into another bin for cone parts, and smelling the old grease and grit that coats them all is an immersive experience. The feeling of not being enough being humbled through a simple task of sorting, unlocking a sort of flow or meditative state.

It is through the work of my hands that I can continue to do the work of the mind and I’m often wondering how they are more and more combined in my life. How do bikes fit with therapy? What can I use from my therapy training to assist me as a mechanic? Have they already combined into the opportunities I’ve had, the experiences I’ve made, the communities I’ve mingled with? I desire that you see yourself as whole, through the lens of many combined identities.

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Ravishing Rose Blog

Ethical Unicorn Hunting

Catchy title, am I right? This popped into my head as a concept as I was starting to explore multiple sides of unicorndom at the same time. In true nerd fashion, I brought this topic to my polyamory group and clumsily tried to weave it into the topic which was about building community.

So hear me out! Cause I’m pretty good at weaving ideas together. What I got most out of the conversation was that the language of unicorn ‘hunting’ is that it incites a certain type of loss of ethics in a way. An object to kill and potentially hang the head of its carcass on your wall. An ultimate objectification! So the term isn’t really instilling any confidence in the community that there are ethics involved.

If one were to use it within the context of a relationship, it could be a fun, kinky kind of objectification. But really, who even decided that this was the term? Everyone recognizes it and if you can think of a better one please post it in the comments! I asked AI and some of my favorite synonyms provided were: triad recruiting, seeking a guest star, and couple’s threesome quest.

My theory, and yes I told you we would get there, is that the moniker ‘unicorn hunting’ is a way to further divide an already divided minority. The anti-thesis to community. How do we deal with oppression? Oppress others! It’s the Great Equalizer. By recognizing this as a societal norm I can release the shame attached to and can identify the ways in which I might be discriminating against others to cope. Is propagating the term ‘unicorn hunting’ part of my own participation?

It is my desire to be intentional with the language I use and recognize the ways in which I may be stepping on tiny, and not so tiny, delicate plants that are growing around me if I am not.

Image sourced from Paper Craft World

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A Quest for Healing Bicycles Intersectional Identity Ravishing Rose Blog

Healing and Bicycles

Bicycles have been a part of my life for a long time. Somewhere, my parent’s have a photo of me at 8 or 9 balancing a pool noodle on my helmet while riding. I also fondly recall riding my cat (Sneezy) around my cul-de-sac in my backpack, much to her protesting. But bicycles didn’t become as integral to my life until I started learning how to work on them mechanically. This process began during my undergrad degree where there was a bike cooperative (Right to Move) attached to the downtown campus of my school in Montreal. I still remember going inside the coop for the first time and feeling very out of place, but also curious and intrigued.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later when my path to becoming a professional mechanic was clear. Another city (Toronto) and coop (Bike Pirates) later, a friend of mine named Matt handed me a bike frame with only the cranks and brakes attached and told me to build. I looked at him deploringly and said I didn’t know how. A few days and several hours of laboring later, Esmerelda was born. I sold her off a several years later in Victoria, BC so she may still be rolling around!

I will never forget Esmerelda. After the build, I started bike couriering in Toronto which will also remain an unforgettable endeavour. I remember stopping at my friend Heather’s (former courier) place on my way home from work and lying on her kitchen floor shovelling in some bulk peanuts she just purchased before she politely took the bag away from me. I hadn’t yet learned with how much food fuel was needed to do the kind of riding I was doing.

Having been mugged at gunpoint in Montreal when I was 17, it took me over a decade to recover the sense of safety that I grew up feeling. Having a bicycle to rely on, that I could repair on the spot, was an enormous leap of recovery from this experience.

It wasn’t without many trials and tribulations. My first professional shop mentor was a gentleman that was of similar age to my parents and the intimacy of us working together one on one seemed to get some wrong ideas in his head about our connection. I almost quit, but decided to take the opportunity to put him in his place with my words and see what happened. Despite my remaining disappointment and empathy for my younger self, it was an empowering experience. I ended up remaining and learning what I could before I moved on with the relationship in good standing. But this was only one of many deeply sexist and power abusing experiences that I have endured in the world of bicycles in order to get where I am today.

I never set out to be a mechanic, I never thought I would be a mechanic and I certainly never thought that almost 2 decades after Esmerelda I would still be holding a wrench in my hand. These days I’m wrenching (term for doing bike mechanics) so much that if I don’t stretch before bed my body will wake me up in the night to make me. This may also be an element of aging 😛

I am passionate about teaching others how to do this work. This skill set has given me so much joy, community, connection and empowerment throughout my life. It has helped to build my self-esteem, shaped the way I travel and interact with the communities I’ve lived in, and allowed me a sense of safety and security when exploring new places.

I also see learning these, as well as other types of skills, as therapeutic. Sometimes it is helpful to take abstract work in our minds out into the physical world to labor over with our hands and our eyes until we can make sense of it all. It has long been a desire of mine to combine my work as a therapist with my work as a bicycle mechanic. It is also my desire that you feel capable to learn something that you otherwise thought might not have been possible. If you have a similar experience where a skillset chose you instead of the other way around, feel free to share in the comments below.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

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Intersectional Identity Power Ravishing Rose Blog

Power and the 12 Steps

Recently, it became clear to me that I needed to write a post about how power is shared in the 12 step community because, at times, it is one of the more non-hierarchical spaces that I’ve experienced. It continues to feel difficult to write about power. My educated guess it that I have been socialized not to analyze it so as not to question those who hold it, myself included! There is also a discouragement within the program not to question why it works. Are these related? I do know that the sharing of power is tricky and there is no guaranteed method, only approximations.

If you’re not super familiar with the world of recovery, I encourage you to read the full version 12 traditions in tandem with my breakdown. The link is to AA’s website, but these traditions carry over to all 12 step programs. This document is basically a guide to help individual meetings make decisions around how to operate. Within this guide, there are several references to how they have achieved what approximates a non-hierarchical system.

Here’s a list of these elements as I understand them:

  1. Common welfare comes first. The health of the group is a Priority and ensuring it both takes into account the individual’s perspective which can be shared at the business meeting as well as a collective conscious, which is used at various times. The existence of monthly business meetings is a surprisingly nuanced aspect of the program.
  2. God (or the faith moniker of your choosing, sometimes broken down as Good Orderly Direction) is the only authority. The important piece here is that part of being in recovery is discovering your personal experience of faith and that is a personal journey so the word ‘God’ is a placeholder. While extremely important, the constrictions/power dynamics of the Christianity of the program are for another article.
  3. The only requirement to be here is a shared purpose. What is more uniting, leveling, than a shared goal? In any conflict, using a shared intention or goal can be a navigational light.
  4. Each group is autonomous. Despite there being larger governing bodies, called districts, here is a recognition that only so many guidelines can be applicable to everyone and there is space created for folks to be collectively creative in individual group settings.
  5. Similar to #3, reiterated the shared purpose.
  6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name… Addresses money and the power that it carries. Through guiding members of the program not to invest financially in anything outside of recovery in connection to it, this guideline protects members from having power struggles over how funds are spent. Please refer to my Money as Power post for more discussion.
  7. Similar to #6 containing the complications of power that money brings.
  8. AA should remain non-professional. Addressing the power that comes with being considered an expert of some kind.
  9. We may create service boards that are directly responsible to those we serve. The accountability to all members of the group is clearly outlined. Whether or not this is upheld may vary.
  10. AA has no opinion on outside issues. This prevents members from having to align with particular political or social issues that could create an imbalance of power and potentially result in segregation of the group which may take away from tradition #1.
  11. Attraction rather than promotion. It is against guidelines to advertise outside of the fellowship. The idea is that those in relationship with members of recovery those that need it will witness the benefits and organically make a decision if it might be a fit for them. We are, hopefully, not trying to dominate others with our recovery. The exception here being that there are mandates within our legal system that sometimes require individuals to attend.
  12. Principles before personalities. This is one of my favorite traditions. To me this has meant being welcoming and tolerant of everyone so that the experience of cliques and hierarchical social systems is as limited as possible. It allows us to examine our own personal biases and the way we respond to different people. This does not mean tolerating harm.

It is my desire that these guidelines allow for another peek and perspective into the way power is navigated in what has grown into a fairly large and prevalent community over the last 95 years. While not perfect, progress not perfection, there is a lot to be learned about wielding power from how this community operates. Within each individual meeting, you may even find some nuanced lil nuggets, including those addressing the hierarchy of christianity.

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

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A Quest for Healing Ravishing Rose Blog

Trauma Play

The concept of trauma play was central to my final project during my counseling masters. To some extent, I don’t even know how I arrived on the subject considering I wasn’t aware of this topic until I began to write about it. When it comes up most folx ask me, ‘What is it?’.

For this, I will refer to one of the academic articles I referenced in my capstone by Jeremy Thomas’ entitled BDSM as Trauma Play: An Authoethnographic Investigation. Unfortunately it’s not open source but I have linked the abstract. Thomas opens the article discussing the research around the resilience and strengths of BDSM practitioners, and shares the research that has debunked the myth that kinky folx are any more traumatized than the average demographic.

Thomas goes on to educate us that the origins of trauma play come from play therapy, used with children to process events where language would fall short. Furthermore, he delineates that his definition is specific to personal trauma rather than collective or cultural trauma (that’s a topic for another post). The official definition landing at: “…BDSM activities that adults consensually engage in that are related to past trauma or abuse and fo which the individual is actively aware of this connection.”

What I like about this definition is that it requires not only consent of all the participants involved in this type of play, but consent of the individual with themselves about the choice to take an active role in their healing. Active in that they are an agent of healing, but also active in that they are physically taking action. I am certain that, even for adults, some things cannot be processed by verbal conversation alone and need some creativity and additional approaches. The most common example being purposefully recreating a scene in which the individual was formerly traumatized and experiencing it anew which the proper safeguards to ensure that it does not cause re-traumatization. Here’s a link to my academic blog if you have yet to hear the term ‘aftercare‘ and you’re feeling curious.

Now Thomas has an interesting approach in that, in the article, he revisits his trauma through the experience, and spectacle, of being flogged rather than recreating a unique roleplay scene. The experience of being flogged publicly allows him to safely revisit a former trauma. This demonstrates that there are many ways to go about trauma play. It is PLAY after all. Thomas highlights the ‘somatic reclamation’ he experiences through his play.

The second question I get is, ‘What does a therapist have to do with this type of work?’ Through therapy we can assist with the creation and processing of these experiences to ensure they are as safe as possible. Ethically we do not participate directly in a scene, but we can help flesh out important elements of the creation through discussion and maybe even brief role play if it would be helpful. Additionally, the experience of a scene goes beyond the actual event and there is lots of space to process the work an individual has done to engage in this kind of play.

Trauma play is not for everyone and it’s also not for every kinky person. Kinksters have a variety of reasons and lack of reasons for engaging in their particular pleasures. Like everything, you will know if it’s something that you are drawn to, curious about, want to research further. It is my desire that you have your own journey when healing trauma and that the concept of ‘trauma play’ might open your mind to the possibilities.

Image provided by www.freepik.com