**TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING** **TRIGGER WARNING**

I have been very lucky in my life. I have not had any trauma specifically affecting me, my body, my direct life. No major injuries, no sudden job loss, only the kind of minor sexual assault every girl experiences (and, apparently, the President of Mexico). A residual fear of crowds and mobs that makes me cautious about going to protests or even festivals. And of course I shared the deep national trauma of 9/11, in a fairly personal way.

But people I love have had unexpected sudden death or catastrophic injuries.  And, while all of those deeply affected me emotionally at the time (and in retrospect), only a few had immediate direct impact on my daily life. Those are the ones that still grab me, hold me, come up unexpectedly and punch me in my nose. 

When  I was in grad school, in 1980, one of my dearest friends was murdered on her doorstep on a Saturday night. Horrible, but it got worse. There appeared to be a serial killer abroad. Or, perhaps it was someone I knew. My roommates and friends and I were interviewed, fingerprinted (for exclusion purposes they said, we had been in her apartment and driven her car), and interviewed again and again. We supported her family, my first personal experience of dealing with the mundane aftermath of death, packing up her things, organizing a memorial service. My grades plummeted. Three out of four semesters in the top 10% of my class, one semester barely getting by.  For the better part of a year, I didn't sleep the whole night through, but existed in a kind of split shift. Bed early, up after midnight for hours doing school work, back to bed as the sun came up. I graduated, left town with no resolution of who done it, and life moved on and into a more normal pattern.

A couple of years later, I was living in Ohio, and sleeping at my boyfriend's house. I was drifting off as he watched the 11 o'clock news in the bedroom. Suddenly, I jerked awake as I heard "authorities say the suspect may have been responsible for a string of murders of women in Michigan and Texas". Just that. I was too late to hear more, but I lay rigidly awake all that night. The next night, I was again drifting off when my boyfriend came into the bedroom. I jerked awake, and all I knew was I wasn't dreaming, there was actually someone there, not my imagination. I screamed! I shrieked enough and so loud that the neighbors all turned on their lights and checked  their yards. I quickly settled, but it was the start of another long spell of sleep disrupted nights. The following day, my phone rang. My old roommate in Ann Arbor said, "Yes, they've got him."

From time to time I've toyed with the idea of writing in more detail about this, and I thought that maybe now, in my old age, it was time. Maybe pushed by finishing a novel that dealt with the aftermath of trauma, I thought about it for a while this morning. Write about my friend and our friendship, and our circle of friends. Recount the immediate events, maybe look at my shelf of journals to find what I wrote at the time, make it clear finally -- not the resolution, there can never be that -- but who killed her and what happened to him. Tell it as a story. Put a bow on it. Be sure others know about her and what happened. Thinking about it, I wondered if there was a picture of my friend on the web. I was curious if I could find details of her family, wondering how they had gotten on. 

I was startled to find a recent (this year) documentary about the killer. I didn't read enough to find out if the whole series was about him, or just the episode. With shaking fingers, I bookmarked the site, and closed the tab so I wouldn't stumble on it accidentally. I was gasping for breath. Panicking. 

I fell back on my mindfulness training: Just breathe. Close your eyes and feel the breath. Let feeling the breath fill your mind. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? Just sit with it, inhabit it. After a few moments, feeling calmer, try visiting the emotions that drove this panic. Let the emotion come. You are safe. You are in a safe place. Feel what you feel. How does it actually feel? Can you name your feelings? Where do you feel them? Just sit with it. Don't push it away, but let it come. You'll be fine, because you are really safe. If it's too much, return to the breath. You are fine. You are safe. You are sad, but that's ok. You are fine. As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong. Just breathe.

This has been the hardest thing for me, actually allowing myself to feel my feelings. Not just now, but for years. My brief foray into therapy with a mindfulness twist let me finally get there.

The unexpected reminder of trauma is traumatic. Trigger warnings are a real and necessary thing. As "woke" becomes an object of scorn (not among you, my dear readers, I know) so have trigger warnings been subject to derision. But finding a level of detail and images about my friend set me off today, even though I initiated the search. It's taken me three hours to write this, with breaks for walking around and dipping into more breath meditation. I'm pissed at how much I'm blowing my nose, when I thought I was almost done with my head cold of this week. But I felt a need to capture this moment, not to just move on.

I may write more about this. But I'll do it with plenty of warnings for myself in place. It'll be some work, not just the writing of my own thoughts, but having to do research to ground my memories in facts. Something to tackle gradually, not all at once.

But today will be a fine day. I have several projects planned, and a neighborhood get together to cap it off. Excelsior!