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The Myth of Normal 44

bodymind unity. Medical professionals often do little to encourage—and may even resist—people trusting their own hunches, which tend to synthesize signals from both mind and body. Memories Aflame: Glenda’s Story Such was the case with Glenda, a Montreal woman, now fifty-eight, who thirty years ago underwent removal of parts of her intestine for severe Crohn’s disease, an ulcerative, painful inflammatory disease of the bowel. In 2010 Glenda got some more bad news when she was diagnosed with stage 2 aggressive breast cancer. It was during the healing journey from the latter that she recovered repressed memories of being raped as a young girl. “Through the process of journaling and dreaming,” she told me, “subconscious memories of my childhood began to emerge along with feelings of sheer panic and terror.” Afraid to know the truth, she tried to keep the memories at bay, but they would not be deterred. “Every time the memories of the trauma surfaced,” she continued, “they were accompanied with very visceral emotional feelings and physical digestive symptoms including indigestion, nausea, and gut aches.” The memories are harrowing enough to roil even an outside listener’s guts. Eight-year-old Glenda and a younger friend were gang-raped by four teenage boys from the neighborhood. The first responder was her mother, who rushed Glenda into the house, she said, “and put me right into the bath. She told me that we were never going to tell anyone about this or ever speak of it again. My mom said it would always be ‘our little secret,’ and put me to bed.” When the memories returned at age fifty-three, they came as “this intense clear visual” of her young self in the bathtub, with her mother crouched on the floor beside her “trying to wash away the rape.” I asked Glenda, gently, whether she had any independent evidence for these recovered memories. She nodded. “My older sister recalls that she actually came into the bathroom that day. Arriving home and hearing my mother bawling her eyes out, she came and opened the door. My back was to her; she said, ‘What’s wrong with Glenda?’ My mother said, ‘Nothing, she’ll be fine. Get out.’ [My sister] told

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