Season 4, Episode 1: Konnie Vissers and Wendy Cabell on Sexual Abuse and Trauma and "So How Are You Today?"

We are back after a brief hiatus! This episode features a conversation with Konnie Vissers and Wendy Cabell, two contributors to the Spring (2024) issue of The Canadian Journal of Mental Health, Disability, and Theology: Trauma and Resistance.

Find Konnie's piece "Sexual Abuse Trauma, Mental Health, and Theology: Why Theology in Practice Matters to Survivors" here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/42977

Find Wendy's piece "So How Are You Today?" here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/42985

To watch on YouTube with closed captions, visit: https://youtu.be/uFirLQStqCw

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Transcript

So welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast. We are delighted to be joined today by two of our Spring authors and contributors Konnie and Wendy. And we'll get to them in a second but first we want to delight and celebrate Dr. Amy Panton who graduated from Emmanuel College this month! So congratulations Amy. How does it feel to be on the other side? Phew it feels good! Thank you Miriam it feels really good. Convocation was last week so uh it was really nice to celebrate with everyone and um I am just so grateful for my supervisor Pam McCarroll and all the hours and hours of love that she poured into me as we were working on my dissertation and yeah, it's been such a good journey. So a hard one, a really hard one, but a good one. So if anyone out there that's listening is thinking about pursuing a PhD in theology I would say go for it. Go for it. It will help you to grow a lot. I uh yeah. I feel more like myself now which is kind of cool it really helped me to learn and grow a lot. And I would say find good support. Yeah. Totally. Yeah I was really blessed to have I have a really cool therapist so um she like journeyed with me through my seven years of studying so yeah for sure having those supports are so important. Yeah. Wow congratulations that is pretty awesome! Thanks. Congrats Amy that's amazing. So uh we should do an episode one day soon on your work Amy. Sure, I'd love to. Well um we are delighted again to have Wendy and Konnie so can you both introduce yourselves where you are and how you are connected to the journal. So maybe Wendy you can begin us off. Sure well um I'm a former preschool teacher and I live out in a very remote spot on the Alsea River in central Oregon um and I basically heard about through Vikki, she's a pastor who also leads a little art group up in Vancouver which I join with online. And she has been really familiar with your journal for a long time and so she introduced me and I thought wow this is really awesome so um I am just really really happy to be here and I think it's really great what you guys do. Thanks Wendy. And we are happy you're here. And Konnie. Yeah thank you. I'm Konnie um I'm currently a PhD student at Emmanuel College which is how I heard about the journal and I love what you guys are doing in terms of both Mad and Crip community I I have studied trauma for quite a while now I did my ThM as well as PhD work now um which I am still working on um in trauma studies and theology. So I am kind of bridging the gaps between those two disciplines. Um but more recently was um diagnosed within the past five years I guess seven years with two different autoimmune disorders that are really debilitating so I just more recently have come to the recognition of the beauty of what you guys are doing for the disability community and how important that work is. I really appreciate it and I appreciate being on here. Well thank you so much to both of you for being with us today and for taking the time out because I know you probably have a lot going on so we really appreciate it. Um ok. So now we are going to get into some of the questions we are hoping to talk with you about today. So as Miriam said you both contributed to the Spring 2024 issue of the Canadian Journal of Theology Mental Health and Disability. Kind of in like two different sections. So Konnie wrote sort of an academic paper and Konnie it was a part of your Master's thesis, am I remembering that right? A thesis chapter? Yes it was a part of my Master of Theology. Ok awesome. And Wendy put in a beautiful poem that she had written as a part of an art group that she was just talking about. So um I was wondering if I could invite you both to just give a brief summary of what your pieces are about. So Wendy can I invite you to go first? Sure well it just sounds so simple when somebody asks you how you are it should be something really uncomplicated but it's not, when you've got things going on especailly when it's more invisible disabilities that are kind of hard to explain and so I don't know it just kind of came about that Vikki was reading a poem by Mary Oliver and that poem to me really captured that feeling [...] about sharing your despair and at the same time she was looking up at the geese in the sky and being inspired and her energy was being pulled up. And so that kind of push-pull about when somebody asks how you're doing it that just felt to really capture it. And so that's how the poem came about. Thanks Wendy. And Konnie. Thanks yeah my piece uh comes out of some of my work looking at sexual abuse and trauma and how that is perceived in congretations. So as a minister of uh for the past decade or so I've I've worked in ordained ministry um in congregations with a lot of mainly women some children some men um who have experienced sexual abuse in various forms. Um I did not come into this work intentionally in any way I just kind of backed into it so the article is really about how our theologies affect how we deal with, relate to, um comfort, um converse with, those who have expereinced trauma specifically realted to sexual abuse and how the church has historically had theologies that have been problematic at best in relating to survivors. And and sometimes further the harms that survivors have already experienced. Yeah thank you your pieces are both um good for congregations and beyond to hear and reflect upon for further practices and theolgies which shape practices of course. So now we'll spend a little time digging deeper on Konnie's piece and then we'll turn over to Wendy. So Konnie in piece we were struck with um the the idea of "reframing" and re-narrating one's story um which is important for healing and for justice and also the relational notion of the Doctrine of Providence and we wondered if you might spend some time reflecting on those on those pieces. Yeah thank you Miriam. Yeah I think I'll take the second half of the question first the relational notion of providence and um so I think historically speaking the idea of the Doctrine of Providence um it originated with some of the historical "church fathers" um and uh what was meant Calvin actually John Calvin meant the Doctrine of Providence to be a comfort to people in his congregations. It was written with the intent of uh bringing comfort in the midst of trial um which I kind of laugh at today because it's so it comes across as very judgemental especially through a post-modern lens um but essentially his um idea is that God is with us at all times in all parts of creation but then he goes into this piece on uh "just dispensation" is the theological terminology for it but he he says that everything um is somehow ordained by God. The good the bad the ugly. And that God uses I believe he uses the term like theives and liars and other sinners to uh to work out negative things in the world for God's purposes. He attributes things the cause um in his language primarily to the individual who enacts violence in some way or another. But secondarily the causation is God becasue everything in Calvin's mind is preordained. Obviously this is problematic when talking about sexual abuse. Um particularily as I mentioned I work with many minors um children who've faced sexual abuse uh this is incredibly problematic like to think that a good God has somehow preordained this um uh as a punishment or as a way for the person to learn. Um and I don't think Calvin himself if he had through this through the lens of sexual abuse would even have stuck with his point so so strongly I mean I don't know I'm speaking for Calvin but um more recently there's been a couple of authors Mark Eliott as well as David Fergusson and they've looked at more of a relational notion of Providence talking about how Providence is not so much about God preordaining every little thing but Providence is about the dance of humankind with God. Um the movement, the back and forth interaction of the Holy Spirit working in the world and um I I love this quote uh let me see if I can find it uh but Mark Eliott talks about the agency of humankind engaging with God as well and I think it's through a relational notion of Divine Providence when we're talking about things like agency that humans are empowered to interact with God in a back and forth dance um that Providence can be really helpful in thinking through God is with us in our pain um God didn't bring it upon us, God didn't cause it nothing like that but is with us and sure the expereinces we have expereinced can be reframed but that always happens from the place of the survivor not from a minister preaching a sermon uh to "get over it" or anything like that that's not I would say that's not even Christian in its thrust. So um that's kind of Divine Providence in a relational notion or framing of it. Uh when I talk about reframing in the ariticle I I want to be very cautious um that comes out of some of the work of Donald Capps who is a pastoral theologian um or pastoral psychologist um it's kind of um he kind of has feet in both of those fields or did, he passed away. He was my MDiv thesis supervisor and so I worked with him for a number of years. Um back in Princeton and I think some of his writing kind of teeters on the positive psychology movement but he also as a theologian himself he is a deep believer in a faithful God. I think some of that gets missed in just reading his work. Um and so the notion of reframing trauma his work specifically talks about the story of Joseph in scripture and how Joseph himself actually reframes his trauma. Um and Joseph says "what man meant for ill God meant for good." Um but it's not a theological statement that Joseph is making he's not giving a blanket theology on God created this evil thing to happen so that I could be made it's a statement of a survivor reframing their own story and saying you know what, this awful thing happenend to me but God has used it for good. And so reframing always comes from the place of the survivor um not in any way imposed upon them. Um and I think that's a really important thing to point out um and to put forward when we're talking about sexual abuse in any way. Um it's not a tactic for a therapist or a minster to use to help somebody um but as Judith Herman who's in the field of trauma specifically not in theology she she talks about uh it slightly differently but she says reconstructing a trauma story. And so her language is perhaps a little more helpful but that comes from the place of the survivor really figuring out and narrating their own story uh so that it is a meaningful narrative in the course of their life um. Thanks so much Konnie so much great stuff for us to think abotu there. And I really appreciate you um bringing the Joseph story into the conversation so thank you, thinking about Joseph as a survivor. So um when Miriam and I were thinking about the questions we wanted to ask you we were reflecting a bit on your author's note and we wanted to ask you can you talk about how the roles of mother, survivor, woman, and pastor mingle together and impact your theology and your work as a theologian? Yeah that's a great question. I think um you can't untie your identities at all and they bleed together whether you want them to or not. Um but just I think I noticed this for the first time in a preaching course uh a decade and a half ago where we were given a task of looking at the story of the Samaritain woman at the well from John 4 and everyone in the class all 50 of us were supposed to write a sermon on this story. And we broke off into groups and we listened to eight different versions, eight different sermons from eight different people in our groups. And as I did that I recognized that people were seeing this story differently through many different lenses and many of the individuals referred to the woman um as a "sinner" or as somebody who was "wayward" um there were all sorts of adjectives uh labelling this woman in ways that Ifoudn were very unhelpful. So Jesus says to her uh I have the text here um and he says "Go call your husband and come back" and she says "I have no husband" and Jesus says "You are right when you have no husband the fact is you have had five husbands and the man that you now have is not your husband." So I mean this is a problematic text I mean and I love some of the work of like Phillis Tribble who interrogates scripture and wonders like what is behind this? But even before I read her I read this and I saw well why has she had five husbands? And this isn't a time that um that it was socially appropriate to have more than one spouse uh so I'm like what's going on here? There must be something deeper. Um and I was interrogating it and wrestling with this piece of scripture that I found deeply problematic and um I I brought that through in my sermon for this course. And later I made that a practice as I brought it through in congregations. Not filling in her story for her cause that doesn't do justice to her or to the scripture but but to question it. To actually say in a sermon uh what happened to this woman? Divorce? Abuse? We don't know. But to name those things those possibilities and to say huh I wonder. I wonder what happened here. Why has this happened. And to remind the reader that everybody has a story. They don't end up quote unquote "that way" just by happenstance. People get to where they are as a result of things that have happened to them as a result of things that have been done to them um sometimes by choices they have made uh all different reaons. And I think so that has as a survivor and a sister and friend and caregiver of people who have experienced violence against them um that has come out in my preaching and then as that came out in my preaching more and more people came to me saying can I talk to you about this. Um because so much of the time I mean just statistically speaking alone most people are hearing from older white male preachers um in the mainline church in Canada or the States. So that is a very different lens than I'm looking through and that is kind of how my pastoring has been affected by these things and how my pastoring has affected the other areas of my life. And particularily mother I think is a complicated one um I have three daughters and I actually was pregnant with my first daughter as I was sitting in a trial for as the key witness for a child who had been abused and um as those identities mingled like that forever reshaped my preaching uh my teaching the way I interact with my own daughters um and their friends and um the way I interact with other survivors and that largley is why I ended up writing not just this piece but that thesis was that experience of being a mother to be sitting on the stand um sharing stories that had been shared with me. Yeah thank you so much Konnie. It's so true that we can never say oh today I'm a theologian or today I'm a sister it's like we are everything all at once and and all of these experiences tie in so and I'm grateful also to how you how you're aware of recognize that importance in your ministry. Thank you Miriam. Uh turning to Wendy for some time now. We wondered if you could begin Wendy by reading us your poem. Sure um ok. So How Are You Today? Sometimes as greeting. Yet a question. Mask I wear, it answers: “I’m good”. Alternatively: "About the same.” When I remove the mask, swirling mix. Positive spins God’s Angels are around us, His Saints. Most of all Our Savior, Our Blessed Mother. All true. And true this overwhelm, this will this pain ever stop, this nervous system miswired, jolted. Rerouted, confused. Never know when the monsters will roar in there, pull up carpet, can’t make plans. Open target–-CRASH, BOOM. Ground hits hardest when folks don’t see it's happening. When don’t see the monsters are here. And if I’m being honest, I need help. Your help. Caregivers, doctors, priests, neighbours, friends, family. I need you to see how things are for me, look the monster in the eye. Not sympathy so much as empathy, and your solid true (to feel, to do) “take my hand--and we’ll get through this”. “Tell me about your despair and I will tell you mine,” says Mary Oliver. “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,” she continues. As I continue to hold both these things. And wrestle how to say this, how to answer how I am today. Thanks so much Wendy for reading that for us what a beautiful poem. Thank you. Yeah. When Miriam and I were sitting and thinking about questions to ask you we wanted to pick up on um the Mary Oliver quote we were wondering why do you think it's hard to talk about our despair with one another? Well I guess maybe one layer is that when you bring up a problem people can feel like oh gosh I've got to do something about that and people have different reactions to that there's different personality types some actually love a challenge like that and others that feels kind of threatening that oh gosh this is something I can't do anything about. Um and I guess it depends on what you're presenting. If its something that they feel they can handle that oh I can do something here where that's easier if it's a condition that people understand and there's already kind of pathways and things that people know you can do but when it's something that there's not a lot of public awareness on when you've got more of invisible disability that's really harder and then it's kind of overwhelming because they are starting from scratch to even figure out what to do so I think that's one reason. Um and I guess the other reason is on the speaker's end that if you don't feel receptivity in the other person then you kind of clam up and it's hard to share something like that. Yeah that's really helpful thank you so much. I I um, I think you're right on both accounts there and sometimes it can feel like at least for me sometimes I feel like I don't want to burden people with some of my pain so I just keep it inside which is probably not a good way of coping but uh yeah thank you so much for sharing that Wendy. Um I think Miriam has our next question. Yeah and there's a component of trust like sometimes we don't want to share certain things with certain people. Um Wendy you talk in your author's note I believe about your Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and you talk about how this' invisible disability can make you feel "unseen." And we wondered if you might talk more about that and talk and reflect on ways that might help you feel more seen. Well um I definetly feel seen when I've told somebody you know if they've asked what the conditions are and if they've actually looked it up you know I know that makes me know that they want to know what it is. Or if they ask about what your life is like because when you''ve got something unusual your live is pretty unususal so that shows that they understand that your day to day life is going to be different than the average person and that I guess the reason that's important is that there's so many ways that when people are talking they've got they've got kind of a framework in the back of their mind about this is how the day tends to go for somebody or how things are done and so what that's different that can really change the context so it's important to know so just knowing that someone has asked that question makes me feel seen that they're curious about that um those are peobably the two main things that make me feel seen. And would you mind telling us what do what does your day to day look like? These days. Well um it's I guess I would start with the environment it has to be adapted I've got it's kind of complicated because I've got different medical issues um that interact with each other so one of the effects of things is that I've got severe light sensitivity coming in they would see it's kind of like being in a photographer's dark room where it's all just very dim red light

[...] amber light at the beginning for the video and candlelight and stuff so it's just a really dim um and I've just gotten used to it but for somebody coming in it would be really unusual. Um I'm kind of up and down a lot during the day because I have to rest the leg a lot um things if they were to kind of look around things are just very adapted like there's lights on appliances that have had to be covered up and things have had to be placed in really ergonomic like positions um this is something where it's like it's hard to almost see the forest for the trees cause I actually have to kind of stop and think about this like what um the word that just comes is adapted. Like nothing that if I were to purchase something I never use it right out of the box it's gotta be outgassed because I've also got MCS and it's usually gotta be adapted somehow and like also just buying stuff I usually don't just go online and buy the standard product I usually have to do research with most things that I do to actually find something that will work so things that seem simple take more time in my life that's definetly kind of a general rule um and just that there's not the energy that that I used to have so I have to be really really thinking through what I'm going to do and just pick the most important because those top one or two things are probably all that's going to get done. So I've really had to get realistic there. Um and going out of the house is a HUGE ordeal so I don't actually go out that much um physically getting ready and um I also have you know a wheelchair when I go out and then with the severe light sensitivity I have to cover my eyes I can't see any way and then I usually get sick because um at home I can control the air quality and products that are used and all of that but you can't really do that in public so there is usually something that I end up reacting to and getting a migraine triggered so anyway it's just things are complicated um that's just kind of the day to day life so I guess it's hard to explain so um so I guess there's kind of a push-pull I want people to understand what day to day life is like and then I have to admit that it's hard for me to summarize so it must be hard for them to understand it on their end when it's hard for me to even express.

Well we really appreciate you sharing all of that with us and I'm a migraine person too so I know what it's like when you can be out in the world and uh not be able to control what's going on so thank you Wendy for sharing that with our listeners. Thank you. Um ok so now comes the point in the podcast where we it's my faviourite part we are hoping that you both can ask eachother questions about your pieces um if there might be something that came up for you as you were reading them again in preparation for today. So Konnie can I invite you to ask Wendy something. Yeah Wendy thank you for sharing all that with us it's a it actually uh inspires some hope uh just to hear your graciousness in sharing um something that is vulnerable uh I wonder just reading your poem this thought came to mind I'm wondering how long you've had this condition or these conditions and what advice might you give to someone who is diagnosed with an invisible disability as an adult? Well um I had uh an accident in 1997 that gave me part of the picture and that was I have a severe neck injury which has gotten kind of complicated but when the CRPS came in and the severe light sensitivity and all that um the severe light sensitivity came in in 2010 when the migraines were getting really intense and the CRPS came in 2014 um so I think your question you had said something about when theyre diagnosed what to do? Yeah I specifically like you weren't born with these conditions so you probably remember a time that was different what would your advice to be what woud your advice be to somebody who is diagnosed with something like that later in life? Oh goodness um well I guess I can say what not to do! Ok! I mean, I'll start with that. I kept getting when I would talk with with doctors I shouldn't say doctors, one doctor that I'm thinking about especially I was asking him for ways to cope in just day to day life with the severe light sensitivity because I didn't know what to do I didnt even have the solution of red light at that point I was like like going around with this tiny little flashlight where I'd like taped off most of it so a little tiny beam came through I didn't know what to do and because that's all I could think of and so when I asked him that he said "Well I don't want to help you cope with this I want to help you heal it" and yes of course I want to try to heal this but this is in God's hands whether or not it's going to heal or not you know we do what we can and it heals or it doesn't. But in the meantime you do need to find ways to cope and so that's something that I just found was really important and really missing the the day to day life piece when I would go to providers and stuff they really didn't want to look at that so I really had to sturuggle to find solutions on my own. Um so I guess putting um an equal amount of energy into finding solutions to cope as in doing the healing would be one um the other is I mean this is just kind of an obvious but getting as much sleep as you can as a lot gets processed as you sleep um giving yourself a lot of grace periods to just kind of - everybody has different personalities types but I need to just kind of zone out a little bit with an audiobook or with doing art and basically turning to the things that kind of relax you more giving yourself a little more time with that um looking back I found the art was especially important I do soul collage and the cards I made during that time period I think were really important for me um but different people would cope differently like if this were to happen to Joseph my husband I can imagine that he would spend a lot of time out in nature which I used to do before this stuff happened or spend more time in the garden um.

That's really helpful thank you. Sure. Yeah you remind me Wendy of this "crip hacks" that uh where the Crip community just teaches each other how to like how to survive and you get certain advice from medical people and some is better than others but some people who who who live in the bodies these ways have have hacked the different ways of being so thank you for sharing. Thank you. We wondered if you Wendy might have a question or a reflection for Konnie. Well I was just really drawn your research that you've done here I love the concept of reconstructing trauma um I mean reframing is neat too but there is something about that term reconstructing bringing in more the creative element who was the author who coined that? It's Judith Herman and that's an older book I think '95 uh she started talking about reconstructing trauma narratives um as a therapist who worked with all sorts of people who faced a variety of traumas. I really like that. Have you used that in your own life and how has that, if you have like maybe you can give an example of that and how it looks and. Yeah um so definitely um so I say as a survivor of complex trauma I have uh I have used my trauma kind of as a catalyst for needing to do things differently for the next generation um there's like pretty strong ongoing intergenerational trauma in my family and um for me that those experiences uh really propelled me to do a lot of the research I've done to do the work I've done um and so I mean I've also done a LOT of therapy um it's not just a sweep it under the rug and move forward sort of thing uh but as like looking back 15 years down the road and to my therapeutic healing process I would say um the trauma has become a reason to to care for people who've experienced trauma to work with survivors and to write uh in ways that are empowering to survivors um both from a theological perspective and a psychological perspective um so I think that's that's largely how I have reframed or reconstructed my narrative is um yes I am a survivor AND I am also a loving mother I am also a teacher I am also a friend and a minister and a wife and a PhD student so it's reconstructing my narrative to always remember like that it is one of my identities and not my identity. Um. What are maybe some um if somebody is kind of overwhelmed about finding what their story is and reconstructing it are there any things you found helpful there any kinds of tips ways to do it? Do you mean like if they don't remember their story or...? Umm more like um having a hard time putting it in words finding the images maybe there's like lots of pieces kind of figuring out what to focus on. Yeah. Yes so um I'm a big fan of um different I'd say so Amy and I both um like I was on the teaching team in a class with Amy this year so she knows some of um my bent on this but in counselling I would be a fan of multi-faceted counselling that looks at the whole person uh even um in integrating nature into it or art into it as you have said those are some of your coping mechanisms even um I would say constructing and reconstructing a trauma narrative rarely happens just through an oral uh explanation of something because trauma doesn't live in the part of the brain that can construct an oral narrative well. Um so whether that is in fragments uh in pieces or whether that happens through poetry like your writing or um Dr. Gildea who recently published The Poetics of Belonging um or whether it happens for me journalling was a big piece I'd say in fragments is how I would write but gardening has also been a big piece as I weed and get that little dash of dopamine from getting out a root um it's been it's been therapeutic in that way and has also let me sit with those various pieces that I can't necessarily name but um that I can re-orient in the garden and create beauty out of a field of weeds um so it's the coping mechanisms are different for everyone but I'd say modalities that attend to parts of the brain that speech cannot um are very very helpful. I like that and I like how you said reorienting because it's like we don't always need the words it's like it's more something that kinds of happens inside you even if you can't name it. Umm humm. Absolutely. I like that. Well thank you both so much it has come to the time where we must end today's episode so we just want to thank you so much for coming and spending time with us today and sharing your stories and um sharing some crip hacks like Miriam had said um as we all continue in our community to um help each other and um love each other on our journeys so uh thank you so much! Thank you for having us. Thank you! This was awesome, it was really good meeting you, all of you.