The woodlot – using early sexual memories to heal trauma
I recently recovered an early sexual memory, from a woodlot in Switzerland aged 10 or so—around the same time as my first experience of porn. Recovery of this memory shows that I’m accessing deeper layers of my unconscious.
It also signals there was something bruised around this event that needs resolution. The memory is calling out for healing, like a sonar emission from the depths. Even with the tiny fragment of the event I’ve recalled—a partial image, an incomplete context—it’s enough to resolve the remaining trauma.
The woodlot
The woodlot was on the outskirts of Montagnola, a small village on the Collina D’Oro (golden hill) above Lugano in the southern, Italian-speaking tip of Switzerland. We lived on the collina d’oro from 1968 to 1972.
Montagnola was then very much a rural environment. I can remember buying fresh milk by the ladleful from a large urn for 1 or 2 copper cents. Around a small central square (used as a basketball court in summer, an ice hockey rink in winter) the buildings dissipated into the surrounding woods which turned bright gold in autumn—the collina d’oro.
The woodlot was somewhere on this fringe. It was a liminal space, constricted yet lacking boundaries. A place where people were closer to nature, untethered from social niceties. Animals fucked, gave birth, and died. The old-time villagers pretty much did the same.
Visually, all I can remember is a long A-frame with tall timbers resting against the sides, forming a simple log cabin that we played in. The photograph above, though much gentrified, is the nearest I’ve found. I can’t remember whether the wood was sawn or just rough logs.
Edit
The day after writing this blog, I came across this structure in some woods I’d never walked before. It shows the A-frame construction with a central beam supporting logs at the side, forming a tunnel-like inner space. A space of initiation, a portal to our own underworld.
If it seems remarkable to stumble on this right at this point, remember that our lives are constant feedback loops. Life is constantly mirroring back to us the areas that need attention. A reflection of a trauma appearing in your life is a sign of unresolved emotions ready to release. Honour them. Feel what needs to be felt and let it go.
Memory formation
Trauma affects memory formation. All trauma is by nature shameful because we’re ashamed of the way trauma paralyses and diminishes us.
Memory formation around trauma can be either heightened or repressed. We can recall brief experiences of shame with a poignant flush decades after the event. They can sink into our deep unconscious, never to reappear, or—like this one—to surface decades later as we strip ourselves bare on the road less travelled.
Quite what happened in the woodlot I’m not sure, except that my genitals were exposed. I’m not sure what the context was. I sense there were others around but, again, it’s vague.
I don’t have a sense of any abuse, though I may have screened that out. The memory feels playful and exploratory—yet something left an emotional bruise that took five and a half decades to surface.
Hessa
As I mentioned, it was around the time I first saw porn—a softcore comic book (a fumetto) from the Hessa series, about the unlikely adventures of the leader of some nymphomaniac Nazi frauleins who screwed their way to victory for the Third Reich.
This, too, was a recovered memory—the exact comic (no. 6 in the series) that I probably saw in early 1971, around my 10th birthday. It took about 30 years to recover the cover image, only a few minutes to find a copy on the Italian eBay site.
I have a vague sense that the experience in the woodlot may have been a response to the porn, which turned out decades later to be a critical incident in my life. I may have been re-enacting Hessa’s bondage in the woodlot’s A-framed cabin to rationalise and process it.
Healing trauma
In this blog you can see two of the techniques I’ve used to winkle out the trauma.
The first is the image. By finding images that reflect the contents of your unconscious you can strengthen the signal. You’ll know the images that resonate because you’ll feel a pull.
With sexual memories, porn can be a useful aid. Porn is the most intelligent language we have for disentangling masculine-feminine imbalances.
If you find an image that mirrors the memory, just feel into it, and breathe. See below the surface of the image to the metaphor that’s being presented. You’ll feel the trauma let go. When it does—and not before—the pull of the image will rapidly subside.
The second technique is journaling. You don’t have to write a lifetime memoir. A short, free-flowing account is enough. You may be surprised by the detail that comes back, like the milk.
It was only while writing this blog that I linked the memory of the woodlot to seeing porn.
As well as the woodlot, there are other liminal spaces I recall. A darkened restaurant garden at Gentilino; a country house in Jersey; the Tutaekuri riverbank in Taradale, New Zealand; a building site in Greenmeadows in the summer before I started high school.
Exploratory experiences of nudity with others, sexual energy quickening in my teenage veins. To fully heal our trauma, we must slough off the blinkers of childhood innocence and reclaim our true adolescent experiences, whatever they were.
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Photo: Timbers by yui* on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)