Tackabery Chronicle

Kimberly Dozier’s take on surviving trauma

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CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was on CNN today talking about her new book, Breathing the Fire. In two interviews I watched with her today on that channel, she spoke about how constantly speaking about her experience, and writing her feelings, memories and experiences helped her deal with the trauma.

She was asked by both CNN interviewers if she experiences flashbacks and continued trauma over her experience. She said she occasionally does, but not to the extent of some others she has met; she attributes her success to her ability to continually communicating her experiences.

Guilt, pain, trauma - they succeed in crippling us because we don’t talk about them. Sexual abuse and incest - these things have continued power in our lives because of our silence. This is why I am writing this blog and trying to talk more and more about my experiences of abuse, my memories, and my experiences with recovery and my daily life as a survivor.

Because those evil things can’t lose their power unless they are exposed to the light and burned away.

From the excerpts available on her website, the book in unflinching in its exposure of her thoughts and feelings:

. . . whenever I wasn’t doing physiotherapy, I was ambushed by all the other things I’d been able to silence until then or at least muffle in my psyche.

Now I had nothing but time to think about the bombing, Paul and James, and their families. Images of them repeatedly hit me, and each time my mind said no. I didn’t see their bodies at the bomb scene. I hadn’t seen their funerals. For me they remained frozen in time, doing a Memorial Day shoot.

And I saw every memory through the fisheye of narcotics, intensely magnified and leavened by the multiple nerve depressants that were meant to control my physical pain. From hour to hour my emotions roller-coastered, mostly crashing down.

Bravo, Kimberly!

ColorFall by Asif Akbar of India courtesy of Stock.xchng.

tags: kimberly dozier, breathing the fire, war wounds, ptsd, asif akbar, commonsenseindia

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