LUCIA OSBORNE-CROWLEY My Body Keeps Your Secrets. Reviewed by Sanchana Venkatesh
Lucia Osborne Crowley explores how trauma affects our bodies, recounting her own experiences and those of others.
‘Despite our best efforts,’ writes Lucia Osborne-Crowley, ‘the body finds a way to express what the mind cannot.’
Through a combination of memoir, interviews and research, journalist Lucia Osborne-Crowley explores the impact of trauma on our bodies, the weight of shame, and the process of reclaiming our whole selves in defiance of a patriarchal world in her latest book, My Body Keeps your Secrets. Osborne-Crowley was violently raped at the age of 15 and didn’t tell anyone until she turned 25. By then, she was experiencing sudden bouts of acute, unbearable pain with no physical cause.
Osborne-Crowley discusses the impact of holding onto her secret and the chronic pain she developed as a result of her rape. She also discusses the mental health repercussions of her trauma, particularly developing an eating disorder, an addiction to alcohol to numb the pain, and occasionally engaging in meaningless sex to fill the void of loneliness. With vulnerability and courage, she discloses her struggles with her body, alcohol, relationships, and sex, and describes the shame and self-loathing she experienced:
Shame is the emotion that compels us to keep secrets. It comes from the outside, but it lives within. A very complicated demon.
But it’s not just her story in this book. While her debut memoir, I Choose Elena, focussed on her experience of rape and pain, in My Body Keeps your Secrets Osborne-Crowley interviews other women and non-binary people from diverse backgrounds about the impacts of their respective traumas on their bodies, and beautifully weaves in their stories with her own to highlight how the system continues to invalidate women’s voices and women’s space in this world. She does justice to their experiences of violence and discrimination, and holds space for their shame, while also sharing their stories of courage and strength. She writes:
It seems to me that to be a woman is to be expected to handle pain. And not only handle it but handle it gracefully.
Osborne-Crowley dedicates a chunk of her book to chronic pain and how women’s pain has tended to be dismissed as psychosomatic. She explains the research into the psychology of pain, and how, while it can be linked to trauma, it is still intensely felt by the sufferer. Invalidation only makes the experience worse. What Osborne-Crowley doesn’t discuss is the longer-term impacts of invalidation and dismissal of physiological symptoms on an individual’s mental health. Her own health remains a work in progress:
What I have been able to do is accept the truth of my intimate self. I know now that she is bloodied and broken, and perhaps damaged beyond repair. But I am trying, and will keep trying, because whoever was buried under the weight of abuse is worth fighting for.
It is apparent that Osborne-Crowley has engaged in a great deal of self-reflection through therapy as well as outside of it. While she acknowledges the patriarchal structures that hold women back, she also appears aware of what she needs to do to defy these structures. Her self-awareness is especially apparent when it comes to relationships – how she sought out meaningless relationships to cover the pain of being of lonely, only to feel lonelier than ever; how hard it is to ask for help; and the mental load of being the emotional caregiver in a heterosexual relationship. She ties these themes in with societal expectations and pop-cultural representations of women.
Osborne-Crowley is an intelligent and empathic writer. My Body Keeps Your Secrets is divided into four parts, each focussing on a particular theme but with no clear narrative arc. However, that doesn’t detract from the reading of the book. Whether or not one has experienced trauma, discrimination or emotional or physical pain, it is possible to find great insights in this book. Hopefully it will encourage others in a similar position to ask for help, give voice to their pain, and thereby reclaim their stories.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley My Body Keeps Your Secrets Allen & Unwin 2021 PB 328pp $29.99
Sanchana Venkatesh is a writer and psychologist living on Cammeraygal land in Sydney’s lower north. You can find her on Instagram @sanchwrites and find more of her writing on www.sanchwrites.com
You can buy My Body Keeps Your Secrets from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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