The Antidote is a newsletter and meditation community featuring essential healing modalities for the modern woman. Our mission is to inspire women to realize their fullest potential through educational content, guided meditation, and self-reflection tools.
Healing family trauma with art
When you reconcile with your roots, the healing and spaciousness that is created is unbelievable. When there is unprocessed trauma in our family, and no healing or forgiveness, a chain of suffering repeats itself conditioning one generation to the next. It’s a kind of blind conditioning.
Making art can unlock forgiveness and acceptance, shifting us from victimhood to power.
When we write books, tell stories, make songs, the first person it heals is the artist. It’s a method to transmute pain. The residual effect is the inspiration it brings to other people.
When we embrace our history, we open to our strength.
For me, writing my family origin stories has been a healing and empowering process.
In this essay explore toxic masculinity in my lineage in this true, wild tale told by my grandfather.
I hope you enjoy.
El Espontáneo
Mexico City, 1939. That summer afternoon gave an unrelenting heat. The Sun Gods glared upon Plaza de Toros, the world's largest bullring. Beer cooled opened mouths and tempered boiling blood. The crowd was restless, the frills had passed. The procession, over. The Matador, missing. The bull, waiting. They were thirsty. Thirsty for blood.
Trumpet horns were loud. The band in the stands made a sinister sort of music with a jungle-sounding beat, amplified but muffled. The sounds and scene were both alarming and eerily beautiful. There was the boy and there was the bull. Not just the Matador’s opponent, but the afternoon sacrifice for the mob.
Down near the pit, we looked up at the stands. Surrounded. People of all walks filled the stadium. Young and old. Rich and poor. Families. Men. Women. Upright animals united in the glory of an ancestral ritual formed into a savage high art. Stabbed by fate, carcasses were dragged away by the horns, two already. The bloodstains soaked the bullring’s yellow sand.
The Matador hid out of sight. This did not appease nor please the people. Masculinity has many faces, and we were interested in all of them. More primitive, crueler, and destructive acts, as well as bravery and performance and desire. Whether it was an atavistic fear or instinct, an opportunity loomed. Where control is wanting, they were left with mere ferocity, inchoate rage. They wanted the show. The show must go on.
Barely fourteen, still a boy. He picked up his macho cues from the scene. He had no father to learn the tenderness in man. I was a bastard. Full of energy. Ready to take life by the horns, the horns of the bull. He said he could do it. The other kids egged him on. Running red. The more danger, the more excitement. It was a dare. His daring could cost him his life. They didn’t believe he was man enough. Prove it, they said. In a gesture of last resort, the sort of behavior that presages the end, he pulled himself up on the railing, the fence of the ring, swung his legs over and jumped in the pin. Sand smoke plumed his fall. All eyes on him. We were in disbelief! What courage!
The crowd roared in delight. Es-pon-tán-eo! They chanted and cheered for the boy. We sensed that we were witness to madness, yet a madness sanctioned by tradition and custom and culture, as finely honed as an artist’s performance at the highest level of genius, and, yet more disturbing. It was immensely gratifying. A masochistic delight in confronting uncomfortable truths. No one beckoned for him to come back. This was his moment. We were rooting for him.
The boy imposes the frozen frame of the matador’s stance. Imitation precedes transformation. Bravery is born. His posture is grand, elegant, strong, his glutes engaged, with his leg extended straight back.
Out before the crowd, baying for blood. He was new blood. Blood in their eyes. Blood on their hands. The crowd, thirsty for blood. Red blood. Cold blood. Did they want a hero or the promise of tragic theatre?
The boy became a man through something that skims power, fear, life and death. In the ring, he became a living conduit for the demonic will of the crowd: the expression of their collective desire, which was the death of a beast and the becoming of man.
The bull charged at him. It was time. The chanting stopped. The crowd became silent. We held our breath. Straight on in the ring, dancing, bobbing and weaving, singularly graceful sweep.
He did it.
My grandfather did it.
Words of gratitude
Thank you for being here. From the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful to all of the women who have been showing up to our women circles and doing deep, profound work. Thank you to everyone who has shared my posts, attended my workshops, and donated to my offerings this year.
With so much love,
Christina
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Christina is an incredible source of wisdom, calm, and strength. She listens beyond just your words to what’s in your heart and tailors each session to your specific needs at that point in time. Through counseling, breath-work, and meditation, Christina helped me tap into confidence and trust in myself that I didn’t know I had.
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