Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick out the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host Rodney Olsen.
Welcome. Please share Bleeding Daylight episodes through social media and word of mouth so that more people can kick against the darkness. Our social media links are at bleedingdaylight.net When we're faced with trauma we can continue to live with or we can move towards healing and restoration. Today's guest has traveled that road my guest today suffered early trauma, which affected her into her adult life. These days she makes it a priority to talk about the way of
recovery. Her book resurrected roadkill has been described as a fascinating odyssey of escape, recovery, transformation, and ultimately, transfiguration. It's my pleasure to have Melanie Goodwin, join me on Bleeding daylight today. Melanie, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
I know that you always choose to focus on recovery, rather than trauma. But maybe you can give us a quick understanding of the trauma that you experienced in the very early days of your life.
Sure, that makes perfect sense. I was very healthy at birth, but I went into a nursery more or less immediately that they didn't know this, of course, there was a presence of staph infection already in the nursery. And so I was baby number 20 out of 21 babies that went in there. All of us got staff, the outcome of the whole chapter for that hospital was that there were 21 deaths, but 19 of them were infants.
And two of the deaths were nursing mothers, I had a very profound healing experience with God that lasted about 90 minutes, and actually kind of remembered it or saw it more or less. I recall the undulating rage and terror of these babies that I joined. And the illness itself was one where boils form on the skin, and they have to be lanced on a regular basis. And so the first human contact in my life was regular lancing. That lasted apparently about two weeks, at one
point, they discharged me and taught my mom how to do the Lansing. So instead of bonding with my mom, and by the way, take note, there's no villain here, except for illness itself. Everyone was working to save my life. But Mom was trained to do the land sings and my siblings remember me on the dining room table, just screaming and mom weeping. And I did recover. They used penicillin, which was in an experimental phase, it tells you how old I am. I obviously lived but I
did not recover from the trauma, I did not ever bond. My role. And I'm using air quotes, as I say that in the family was the problem child. And that set a whole lot of things in motion, where I was just constantly in trouble and constantly blamed. And basically, I, I believe I was acting out from the trauma and the way that it's affected me even at that early point, but no one understood trauma. Back in those days, like we do today,
you're certainly someone who believes that there is a space for God to heal miraculously, as well as the process that we go through. And you've experienced both. So tell me about that recovery in those early days, when you say that, there's so much death around you. And yet you survived through that. And you truly believe that God brought you through that told me a bit about that.
I didn't have memory of it. The way it it kind of existed for me is I spent most of my adult life thinking I was fine. And if my mom, I mean it back in childhood, if my mom mentioned this horrible story, I would kind of roll my eyes like, Oh, there she goes again. And it never occurred to me that my mom was telling me a story that had to have affected me profoundly. But I just saw that as her doing her thing. When I was 39 years old. I was at a healing
conference. And that's where that 90 minute window transpired. And the way that it transpired was fascinating because a prayer was invoked, and I immediately had an awareness of kind of Three different people. I was screaming and crying like a baby. But I was very aware as an adult watching and processing everything going on. And the third person was Jesus. And Jesus was guiding and strengthening me, frankly, because it was rough, it was hard to go through. But that's
where I was able to see the visions of the little isolette. My mom, I later described this for my mom. And she said, that is right, that is right. I mean, you've seen it. So I described the isolette. And the lighting, and basically, the screaming and the way that room just kind of surged, and then there are kind of rises and falls of rage and terror, there was definitely a spirit of death. What the Lord
showed me was, I had physically survived. But infants are designed to bond, there was the moment when most of the other infants had died. And it was finally quiet. And my little spirit kind of bonded with the spirit of death. And that's the best way I can try to describe it for anyone else. Until I was 39 years old, that was completely unknown to me. The Lord, of course, broke that. And that was the beginning of real change.
This this ongoing trauma, you're not really aware of what it's brought about. There's the stories that your mum tells. And I guess she's carrying trauma from that time as well. But you didn't fully understand that. And maybe even your siblings, because suddenly there's this sick baby that's brought into the family when things are going fine. They're expecting a brand new sibling to come along. And then suddenly, there's a sick baby that is commanding your mother's
attention the whole time. Exactly. So this trauma goes right throughout the family, doesn't it?
Yeah, it is definitely a family trauma. And I have one sibling who remembers it very clearly. And I have another sibling who I think remembers it, but not at all. Clearly. It's more in limbic memory, or the primitive brain. This thing played out throughout all our lives. Because I think I was labeled the troubled
child, I can tell you that definitely. I've remembered if adults, and when I have memory of it, I kind of see it through the eyes of my childhood were these big, big powerful people are grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me in their faces in my face. And they think and I eventually earned the label of defiant, they think I just need stronger discipline. But what's really going on is I am terrified. I
am absolutely terrified by all of them. And the more their anger than I get, I just think I'm fighting for my life that my life is in danger. And so I bid them, I kick them, I did anything that I could to break away from there hold. So yes, I was definitely a problem for the family. And it didn't last just those first two months, where I was dealing with staff. It lasted for years,
at the age of 39. When you have this 90 minute period where God is doing something miraculous in your life. You're saying that this is kind of a trigger to go deeper and to find further healing. So this is God making you're aware of it. But he's not saying okay, it's all done with that started a process for you, didn't it?
Yes, that's exactly right. It did start up deep process and a long one, to be honest with you. I think people understand what my early trauma was, there was the infant chapter. And then there was also just the way that I was raised and treated. Because I was regarded as a very defiant child. I had trouble with teachers, babysitters, whatever. When I got older, actually, I was a good student. But up to about the age of five or six, I was in trouble pretty much
everywhere. I mentioned earlier imagine this or that. And basically what I'm getting at is the conference that I attended, had a very unique understanding of Christian imagination. And that is something that's really important to kind of explain. The secular world is taught that human imagination is a skill that is abundant in childhood, and it's our ability to make things up or put ourselves in a
world of make believe. That's not incorrect, but it isn't complete the Christian imagination and I learned this from CS Lewis and I was introduced to all that work through the ministry of Leon Payne, who followed CS Lewis, the understanding of the Christian imagination is that God gave human beings a two way communication system. In other words, it is possible For us to make things up. But it's also possible
for us to receive from beyond ourselves. Sometimes a thought will play in the mind, or there might be a vision that we don't actually see with our eyes, but we see it in the mind's eye. And that is a function of imagination. And if anyone's wondering, yes, it has to be sanctified, it really has to be dedicated to God to be used cleanly. But it is a powerful gateway for receiving from beyond, which means it can be a way that we can receive recovery,
we need to verify this is coming from God. Otherwise, we can imagine all kinds of things and just say this comes from God. And I guess there's been trouble through centuries and centuries of people saying, Thus saith the Lord when it hasn't been God at all? So how do we begin to get a handle on? What is it that God is placing into our imagination? And what is it that's coming from us?
Oh, that's a great question. Basically, if you ask people to close their eyes or not, but basically do some math in their head, do 20 times four, or 25 times seven, you know, just to make the brain have to think a little bit. Some people are going to be aware, while they're crunching those numbers, that there's a sensation on the front of the head. And the reason I'm going there is because there to do a calculation of math, you have to use your prefrontal
cortex. And if you access memory, like if I say, imagine a day, you know, when you're about a 12, or 13 year old, think of one of your favorite memories, if people are feeling anything in their mind or in their brain, I should say, it's going to be in the midbrain on the upper left, because that's where memory is. But if I say to a room,
and I've done this many times, now close your eyes. And let's pretend for a moment that someone just said, Did you just hear that, then everyone is going to put themselves in a position to hear and listen, that is the mechanics of using the brain for receiving. Everyone knows how to do that in the natural and it can be done in the Spirit. And to another aspect of your question to answer that rod is, first pray for the Holy Spirit and that spirit alone, truly commit yourself to
serving God only. And basically, I pray a hedge or in the in the beginning, I definitely pray to hedge against any other kind of insight or use of my imagination. And then I would position myself with that listening posture that began my time with God.
Is there a part that the scripture plays in that we know that God will not reveal anything that is not in line with scripture? So what part does Scripture play in hearing from God through our imagination?
What I think the Scripture says, across the board, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament, is that God is speaking, some people are here, the word of God, you know, there's different types of prophetic anointings. In the Old Testament, we obviously talked about the gifts, word of knowledge is also a use of the imagination. When word of knowledge is in operation, people suddenly
just know. And an example of that and how it works in my life is when I encounter someone for the very first time, this doesn't happen all the time, but it can happen. I know, this person was sexually assaulted as a boy of six. And that's just word of knowledge. But it just floods my knowledge, much like the same listening posture that I described earlier. So I think that for the gifts of the Spirit to
operate, we're always using imagination. And then another aspect that is very clear from Scripture. in Habakkuk, the Lord says, write it down. There's a very clear passage in in the Hebrew where the prophet sees, and then they're instructed to write it down. And a lot of people with more of a literary or an education, focus, use that passage to justify or emphasize really is a better word, the Lord's priority on literacy. What I'm getting at here is that even words are symbols. Even
language is a symbolic system. God is constant Les causing us to speak in symbols, he is speaking in symbols, we need to understand his way of speaking symbolically. All of that has to do with the right use of the imagination.
Now I can imagine people listening at the moment. And because this is also new to them, because this is all so fresh to them, there might be a sense of confusion, maybe a sense even of fear saying, is this. Is this real? Is this something that God is endorsing or not? And I suppose that in the early stages of you exploring it, there might have been some of those thoughts as well. How did you develop to the point where you thought, actually, I believe this is God speaking to me?
Yes. Another great question. I'm just going to add to what you said before I answered it. Another thing that I think is difficult, and I have this difficulty, even to this day, sometimes, when I read CS Lewis, sometimes I have to read him two times or three times, just to really get the meat of what he's saying. He was so phenomenally well educated, that I just really have to dig deep. The imagination can also be a simple thing. Jesus said, You need to have
faith like a child. And children are full of faith, full of belief in things that we can't see or put into a petri dish and weigh on a scale that makes children vulnerable. That is true. But it also makes faith possible. For me, in the beginning, I just did have the seed of faith. And my case was, I knew there were moments in my life where everything just suddenly turned extraordinary. A lot like CS Lewis describes, in his book surprised by joy, a childhood experience that is very
ordinary until it isn't. And then there's the impact of something like that on his childhood. And mine was the knowledge that even though I can't always see it or feel it, there is a beyond and it is actively seeking Me. In his case, it was very late in life when he connected all
the dots and came to faith in Jesus Christ. But that knowledge that there is something more is something that most of us can remember from childhood, the only thing that is needed is to pray it into the domain of our faith in God, so that we're not susceptible to outside forces, basically, to kind of be more specific about that you can really blemish the imagination. One of the greatest harms to the imagination is the use of pornography. That is a very imagination based practice,
where the person is the center of their own attention. The whole world is revolving around them and meeting their fantasy or desire. That is pure imagination. But there's nothing about that that's redeemed, we just have to make sure we're asking the Lord to give us guide
rails, I understand that concern. And I understand the skepticism. But nevertheless, if you look at scripture, with an eye to how does God communicate to us, and how desperately we need guidance from God, then you start to see, yes, there is a way that is full of error and danger. But at the same time, there is a clear path for dedicating our imagination to the Lord and to be used only by Holy Spirit, then we really have stepped through a gateway to living powerfully,
you say that when trauma is unresolved people often repeat it in an attempt to find resolution. I'm wondering how many people are continuing to repeat that trauma that has been unresolved and aware of the trauma that is underlying because as you say that it wasn't until you were 39, that you really started to realize what this trauma was that you had heard of and you understood in some way that that fear when adults were interacting with you, but you
started to understand that a whole lot more. How much trauma Do you believe that there is that people don't even realize is there?
Unfortunately, I think there's a great deal of that. One of the premier traumatologist is a doctor by the name of Bessel Vander Kolk. Before COVID, he described unhealed trauma in adult survivors as America's number one health issue. I'm not sure what he would say now post COVID. But one aspect of being post COVID Is that I think the whole world has a measure of untreated trauma. Now, just
because of COVID. There's a distinction here, because a lot of adults went through COVID As adults, and this might be a great time to contrast adult trauma from childhood trauma. In the adult, the brain is already formed, they have already had good relationships, hopefully anyway. And so if there has been a very traumatic experience, they can rely on the strength of the relationships, the loving relationships in their life, and sort of head back to a place they
previously knew, which was one of balance and trust. For childhood trauma, it's very different. Childhood Trauma actually stalls or prevents the brain from developing as it normally would. And so there are actual deficits in brain development. One of the ways that that's expressed is people in adulthood will go about just trying to work out their trauma is called trauma reenactment, they will create
situations where the trauma is activated again, and again. They won't extract themselves from dangerous situations, or they won't recognize it like a healthy brain would, and they stay there. In my case, the reason I was in a healing conference, that was a rare gathering for people who just had not been able to get a meaningful health from other places. And so literally, they fly in from all over the world to attend this thing. The childhood trauma that was expressed
in my life was I was in a third marriage. It was volatile, and dangerous and toxic. I still didn't know that I was trauma, reenacting. I just thought I wanted help for my marriage. When the Lord gave me that profound healing, what I realized was, there was a trauma origin that was behind all of the mistakes and errors and judgment that I had made as an adult. And it really got clarified about 10 years later, to be honest, when I discovered trauma bonding, but to answer your question
about trauma reenactment, it's also called trauma repetition. That is exactly what people are doing. They're taking their unhealed trauma. And they're living it out again and again, in the hopes of finding resolution. But that's not the way that is not the path to resolution. The path to resolution is to let the Lord help you deal with original trauma. And then you're free from trauma reenactment.
And I suppose those early years for all of us, were setting up patterns of what we imagined to be normal or helpful behavior. So if they aren't present in those early years, we understand those bad things that happen to be the normal or the helpful practices when they're not.
Exactly yes. And people will speak about it in a variety of different terms. For example, people who did not learn that their boundaries could be respected. Also, usually don't learn to respect other people's boundaries. So there are frequently boundary issues. I mentioned before that the kinds of red flags that might send a healthier person running away from a relationship or at least putting distance in the relationship for someone who's known
trauma and toxicity. A lot in their life, those red flags aren't even gonna show up,
if spent some time now in helping others to find this kind of healing. Tell me a little bit about the book resurrected roadkill and what your aim was in writing that
first, my aim in writing the book wasn't a goal to write a book. I was living in England and caring for my grandchildren who are growing up in Oxford. And so I took a creative writing class at Oxford in the evenings just to sort of balance my life between being focused on small children and then doing something that was very different and taking advantage of the culture of Oxford. I started a screenplay there but Basically, the course was called
writing from real life. And so it was how to take real life experience and use it in fiction or whatever genre a writer would might choose. I was working out my own life, I was trying to understand what had happened. I was basically trying to process my life when I was at that stage, what ended up happening after two or three years, I continued to do further research. And then I realized my traumas processed, I think I've processed this through, but I had this body of knowledge. So
I had to make a decision. And it was a prayerful one, on whether or not to just get on with life, or to create something that might help others. I heard a really poetic speaker reference Homer's Odyssey, he was saying that what the artist does is after they finish their Odyssey, whatever the experience is, that they've, they've gone on, it's been long, it's been hard. And there's always a point where the
hero of the story despairs of ever reaching home again. And I really related to that note, I thought, yeah, I have definitely been on an odyssey. And in some ways, it's been, you know, the last three or four or 10 years, but in some ways, it's been my entire life. I felt the Lord encouraged me to create a book that would help others who are adult survivors of childhood trauma. And I go through a myriad really, of things, not just trauma reenactment, but how God helped me come into a
sense of agency. It has a lot of healing tools that are referenced in the book and explained, but it's also got good narrative and storytelling. I had a little test group of readers and even a person who isn't necessarily motivated by an interest in understanding trauma itself, or their own trauma, can still read the book and enjoy it, because it's a good pace, fast read. I wrote it for people who are looking for answers. And my experience was, the world does not
have anything close. There's some really good resources in the world. But nothing comes close to the power of God, and the beauty of walking in a hearing relationship with God, for having one's life restored. And some people asked me about the title, I'll just say that there was a point when I felt utterly hopeless. I kind of dubbed the name roadkill, because
it was a counseling session. And the woman had said, we're going to just learn how to process these emotions, your self image is quite damaged. You're just going to learn how to manage all that. And my response to her was, Are you kidding me? The best you can tell me as you're gonna give me coping skills and learn how to manage I mean, I'm because of something happened before I turned two or three months old. I'm just a
roadkill I'm just a splat on a street. The resurrected part of the title is because of the passage in Romans, where it says if that power that raised Jesus from the dead, is living and active in us, and of course it is it's living and active in us. And it's not a power that is going to happen once upon us. When our bodies die, and we go to heaven. It's an act of power that gives us power every day to live righteously, to choose God when there's an array of other choices. That's how the
book titled the way it did. I felt like roadkill and through the power of God, my story is one of resurrected roadkill
in everything that you say there's this sense that we don't have to just cope. We don't have to find those coping mechanisms. But there is actually healing for our deepest wounds, things that can salutely change our lives and put us on a very different trajectory. And I know that that would be really resonating with a number of people if, if people want to get a hold of the book or get in touch with you, where is the easiest place for them to go?
Well, if they want to get a hold of the book, it's on Amazon. And if they want to reach me, they can reach me at info at Melanie Goodwin studios.com i Man that mailbox, so I will see any inbound email there or just get a little bit more information at resurrected roadkill.com.
I will put those links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you very easily. Melanie, I know that we could talk forever, there's so much more to explore. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.
Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure. And to anyone out there I just want to say there is absolute reason for hope. God is not one who wants us limping along, and coping. God is here to heal.
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