Trauma Healing and Recovery
Donation protected
My name is Kevin Tucker. I'm a writer, speaker, editor, husband, father, and musician, and I'm asking for some help.
This is a really hard thing to put out there, so I'm going to take it slow.
That said, I will avoid details, but this does need a content warning for abuse and mental illness.
2020 has been a great many things to all of us, there is no question. But it's also been the first time in my life that I've been safe, in a loving relationship, and free to start healing. That is, unequivocally, great.
Unfortunately, that's only one part of this story. The truth is, it means that it's the first time in forty years that my life hasn't been anchored in abuse. There are a lot of details that I cannot give and many that I'm not ready to give. Events that transpired over the last year and a half drew new light on a lifetime of mental and physical health issues that had been building up in my life.
I was, in no uncertain terms, dying. I struggled daily with suicide, emotional crisis, untreated medical conditions, had become debilitated in many forms, often unable to walk without a cane, riddled with chronic pain and inflammation, and was severely isolated.
It took everything, but I did leave that situation. And once I did, the floodgates began to open. What you don't hear about leaving these situations is that once you are out, all the unresolved aspects come to the front. The body truly does keep the score, and trauma can do a great many things, but it doesn't truly forget.
Within months, I started having black out episodes and seizures. Everything was heightened and triggering. A horrifically contentious divorce and custody case helped nothing, and abusive figures in my life preyed upon the circumstances.
I'm not ready to share more details than that, at least not right now. With the help and guidance of a loving partner and a couple excellent therapists, we got a number of names for the nightmares that were eating me alive.
The biggest is Dissociative Identity Disorder. That was hard to hear, as, predominantly under its former name, Multiple Personality Disorder, it's got a pretty horrible rap. As these things go, the truth is more complex, and DID is exhaustively so. I suffered horrific abuse as a young child: I was sexually assaulted for years by a member of my extended adoptive family, and to cope with it, my mind fractured into alters and personas.
They are not, as is often said, "voices in my head," they are individuals, seemingly all iterations of myself of varying ages, that were born of trauma. There are many of them, and each formed to serve a purpose or to hold experiences that are too much for others to bear. It's something that was always there, but it is the nature of the disorder that I don't know it is there or what happens when I switch. It is nothing like the movies where alters are serial killers and sociopaths, but it is intense.
My whole system stems from this, trauma and patterns of abuse. I have PTSD and the triggers have grown in severity to the point where I have been unable to work for sometime now and for the foreseeable future. I am in the process of getting on disability, but it is long and painfully slow, but it doesn't help at times like now when it's desperately needed. I have a slew of physical health problems that stem from this combination of things, not helped by having chronic Lyme's disease and joint issues related to it and none help the long process of healing.
I have a lot of medical bills to pay, on top of bills and life expenses, but after being gutted by lawyers and life, the debt accrued by running a long time anarchist publishing company, Black and Green Press, has exhausted me mentally and financially.
My life's work remains in writing, researching, publishing, and loudly advocating against the ongoing process of colonialism and imperialism, attacking this beast that is civilization, as it tears apart our living world, extracting the essence of life and leaving reduced corpses as cogs for its machinery. I've been able to pour myself into that work my entire life and continue to do so.
My current books include works on missionaries as agents of empire, the nature of colonialism, and the disembodiment of us from our wild, communal contexts. My existing books focus on the ecological, social and political consequences of domestication, the ecocidal conquests of technology, the realities of extraction, colonialism, and the emptiness of the lives civilization gives us, and the need for wildness and healing in our lives.
I have spent decades as a writer, editor, collaborator, musician, speaker, podcaster, and more dedicated to uncovering the mechanisms in our lives that rip us from each other and make us suffer alone. I have a lot more to give in this regard, but I really need help to get out of the panic zone and enough space to breathe and heal so that I can keep going on with this work.
I have been enormously moved and thankful for all those who have supported me and my work for decades now. And there have been a lot of really gracious donors as well. But I need a boost to get things going and the amount listed here is a start on that process.
I appreciate your time and support.
Thank you!
For wildness and anarchy,
KT
Links for my work: kevintucker.org
Link for Black and Green: blackandgreenpress.org
This is a really hard thing to put out there, so I'm going to take it slow.
That said, I will avoid details, but this does need a content warning for abuse and mental illness.
2020 has been a great many things to all of us, there is no question. But it's also been the first time in my life that I've been safe, in a loving relationship, and free to start healing. That is, unequivocally, great.
Unfortunately, that's only one part of this story. The truth is, it means that it's the first time in forty years that my life hasn't been anchored in abuse. There are a lot of details that I cannot give and many that I'm not ready to give. Events that transpired over the last year and a half drew new light on a lifetime of mental and physical health issues that had been building up in my life.
I was, in no uncertain terms, dying. I struggled daily with suicide, emotional crisis, untreated medical conditions, had become debilitated in many forms, often unable to walk without a cane, riddled with chronic pain and inflammation, and was severely isolated.
It took everything, but I did leave that situation. And once I did, the floodgates began to open. What you don't hear about leaving these situations is that once you are out, all the unresolved aspects come to the front. The body truly does keep the score, and trauma can do a great many things, but it doesn't truly forget.
Within months, I started having black out episodes and seizures. Everything was heightened and triggering. A horrifically contentious divorce and custody case helped nothing, and abusive figures in my life preyed upon the circumstances.
I'm not ready to share more details than that, at least not right now. With the help and guidance of a loving partner and a couple excellent therapists, we got a number of names for the nightmares that were eating me alive.
The biggest is Dissociative Identity Disorder. That was hard to hear, as, predominantly under its former name, Multiple Personality Disorder, it's got a pretty horrible rap. As these things go, the truth is more complex, and DID is exhaustively so. I suffered horrific abuse as a young child: I was sexually assaulted for years by a member of my extended adoptive family, and to cope with it, my mind fractured into alters and personas.
They are not, as is often said, "voices in my head," they are individuals, seemingly all iterations of myself of varying ages, that were born of trauma. There are many of them, and each formed to serve a purpose or to hold experiences that are too much for others to bear. It's something that was always there, but it is the nature of the disorder that I don't know it is there or what happens when I switch. It is nothing like the movies where alters are serial killers and sociopaths, but it is intense.
My whole system stems from this, trauma and patterns of abuse. I have PTSD and the triggers have grown in severity to the point where I have been unable to work for sometime now and for the foreseeable future. I am in the process of getting on disability, but it is long and painfully slow, but it doesn't help at times like now when it's desperately needed. I have a slew of physical health problems that stem from this combination of things, not helped by having chronic Lyme's disease and joint issues related to it and none help the long process of healing.
I have a lot of medical bills to pay, on top of bills and life expenses, but after being gutted by lawyers and life, the debt accrued by running a long time anarchist publishing company, Black and Green Press, has exhausted me mentally and financially.
My life's work remains in writing, researching, publishing, and loudly advocating against the ongoing process of colonialism and imperialism, attacking this beast that is civilization, as it tears apart our living world, extracting the essence of life and leaving reduced corpses as cogs for its machinery. I've been able to pour myself into that work my entire life and continue to do so.
My current books include works on missionaries as agents of empire, the nature of colonialism, and the disembodiment of us from our wild, communal contexts. My existing books focus on the ecological, social and political consequences of domestication, the ecocidal conquests of technology, the realities of extraction, colonialism, and the emptiness of the lives civilization gives us, and the need for wildness and healing in our lives.
I have spent decades as a writer, editor, collaborator, musician, speaker, podcaster, and more dedicated to uncovering the mechanisms in our lives that rip us from each other and make us suffer alone. I have a lot more to give in this regard, but I really need help to get out of the panic zone and enough space to breathe and heal so that I can keep going on with this work.
I have been enormously moved and thankful for all those who have supported me and my work for decades now. And there have been a lot of really gracious donors as well. But I need a boost to get things going and the amount listed here is a start on that process.
I appreciate your time and support.
Thank you!
For wildness and anarchy,
KT
Links for my work: kevintucker.org
Link for Black and Green: blackandgreenpress.org
Organizer
Kevin Tucker
Organizer
Denver, PA