What does normal anger look like?

Have you ever wondered why hurt and anger, fear and pain are such powerful influence over human behavior?  Why do these emotions drive us to do things and be people that we normally wouldn’t or aren’t?  Have you ever, in a moment of anger or fear said or done something that you regret then afterward questioned yourself?  “Why did I do that?”   Or have you ever watched someone you love be transformed into someone they are not because of the hurt and grief they feel? Our primal, animalistic brain gets triggered and we become so very different.  The fight or flight response exists for a reason.  But how do you survive when your switch has a hair trigger?

When you have a trauma history the world becomes very different.  Sometimes without our knowledge, slowly the exceptions become the rule.  Our brains change as we repeat the same patterns over and over again.  It doesn’t matter whether we are the victim of abuse, combat veteran who watched their buddy die, or a police officer who responds to calls for domestic violence.  Eventually our brains change  in response to what we see and feel.  The change is beyond our control, it isn’t a matter of weakness.  So why do we blame ourselves and deny that it exists because the denial only makes it worse and doesn’t change anything.  Once we realize that we are different than we thought,  how do we get to know the person we’ve become and what, if anything can we do about it.

I read an article today that said that due to the course of anger, you often don’t realize the consequences of it until it is too late.  I had no idea that was normal.  These days I do a better job of managing my anger before it hijacks me, but for years I never realized that was what had even happened.  I just felt so enraged and so violated by what ever had just occurred that I was ready to fight without realizing it could have been avoided.  I suppose that is one of the consequences of living with PTSD.   My anger became my unwieldy weapon turn inward and out towards others.  But now that I have better control of how I react, I’ve come to realize how difficult it is for me to experience other people’s anger.  It terrifies me. I never realized that just a simple raised or angry voice would cause my spine to shiver.  I didn’t understand that a simple grimace or annoyed stare would make me want to cower.  I had no idea the power that other people’s anger would have over me.

And so, I find myself in a situation where I still don’t know what normal anger is.  While I have learned to manage my anger, it doesn’t mean that I have figured out what is normal or healthy to endure at the hands of others.  I don’t know when to say, “excuse me, you are angry, this conversation is unproductive and I am going to go somewhere else and give you some time to calm down”  and when to simply cower and shield myself from the emotional blows.   I have a tendency to do the latter, to fall into the helpless role and then just take the punches, a response that ran rampant in my last career.   I allowed myself to endure the anger from people who couldn’t control their tempers because I thought I was being a bigger and stronger person by accepting it.  I became a victim of my design.  In the end all I did was subject myself to experiencing bad feelings that I could have avoided. But yet I so frequently reacted in other ways that brought it on myself because I felt so hurt and angry.  It is that vicious cycle that occurs between two people.  I felt hurt and angry so I react in a way that hurts and angers you.  Your response then fuels my rage and then the dance goes on.  How do you stop that pattern and when do you simply just move on?

It hard not to be angry at life because it is such a struggle to learn how to have a healthy boundary with others.  My understanding of how people treat each other was so distorted as a child:  Love hurt, anger hurt, families hurt each other, loyalty and friendship didn’t really exist because you simply needed to survive.  I never realized that the effects of abuse became so entrenched within me.  I never thought that I would still be trying to escape it.

Life Flows On

The rain spills forth from the saturated overburdened clouds as the tears spill forth from my heavy and saturated heart.  The rain lands softly on the leaves of the trees that surround me, as the chorus of birds still sing.  There is a glimmer of an orange and purple hue as the sun still rises despite the sorrow burdening my soul.  The heavens weep along with me.   Yet life flows on and so must I.   Life is still beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fotEuKhBYDc&feature=related

Amazing Grace – Part 2

 

Victor Hugo said “Music expresses that which can not be put into words and that which can not remain silent.”   I have a variation of the song Amazing Grace and at times it is unrecognizable because of the seemingly random, chaotic noise of musical notes colliding with each other, sounding like the musical equivalent of an explosion.  The variation starts off regularly enough and slowly builds like a storm rolling in.   It crescendos and then goes quiet, like the eye of a hurricane, providing a brief moment that allows you to remember what life can be like when the sun still shines, eerily in its calmness,  then the song explodes again  like the storm that comes crashing down with torrents of rain, wind, and flying debris, flooding everything around it.  The music seems random, disjointed, almost violent, but yet never loses the undercurrent that commands you to remember the unequivocal power of God’s grace.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come;  Tis’ Grace that brought me safe thus far and Grace will lead me home.”

Yesterday, as I entered my car and turned it on, the song began to play on my radio and I realized it put to music the thoughts, emotions, and psychological journey I had just experienced in my 90 minute therapy session.   Emotions and insights that seemed completely unrelated, so intense that they consumed and forced me to mentally thrash about.  Every emotion collided.  Each tossed me about like a small boat lost at sea in a violent storm.  All were drowned out by the thunder of my pounding heart.  Some how these complicated feelings are connected in the same way that those random notes were contained within that song.   Some how everything is still part of the same composition, even if I can’t make sense of it it in this moment.

I concede that today the storm clouds linger and the winds have not yet receded.  I must walk in faith and not by sight for a darkness broods over me.

A Simple Modest Grave

During an art class in the first grade our teacher walked us over to the cemetery that neighbored our school.  Armed with our sheets of white paper and black crayons we wandered through the aged and crumbling stones looking for the perfect one.  She showed us how to carefully place the paper over the engraved lettering and hold it in place with one hand and how to rub the flat of the crayon against the paper, and move it gently back and forth, creating white letters where the crayon passed over the sunken spaces of the grave stones forming the name of the deceased.  Perhaps it was the excitement of being able to leave school grounds during the day, or perhaps it was because she transformed a cemetery  from a creepy place where zombies lived and dead people were buried into an art gallery, but I have loved cemetery’s since then.  I love exploring new ones, the larger the better.  Their winding roads that pass over and around little hills that completely blind your view and make unexpected 90 degree turns.  I love the ones with ponds that geese and ducks always find or are graced by an occasional white swan.  I love the stillness and the solitude yet the feeling that you are not alone, the freedom to feel sad and mourn the hurt and loss in your life.  I love the quiet contemplation that the cemetery commands the moment I cross its thresholds much in the same way that the hush blankets you as soon as you enter into a library.   The air is just different.  I love the old stones that are worn and covered in growth but yet still display a way of life from two centuries ago.  I love the small stones of the modest nuns and priests and the grand stones and tombs erected by affluent families,  the crosses on the monuments and life-sized statues of angles, Jesus, and Mary.  I love the graves of stone carved into benches and steps, inviting  you to sit and visit them.  I love that you can have conversations with the deceased, with God, or with yourself and some how feel as if they all are listening.  I love the way that families honor their deceased, adorning their graves with the trinkets, cards, and flowers, each one capturing as special memory, telling a story of their love and friendship, divulging a clue to better know the person they once were.   I love the phrases and statements that are engraved on the stones “Beloved Mother”  “Always in his care…”  I love the contrast between the large white marble stone and the brightness of the small green blades of grass, the vivid reds of flowers, and often sob when I see a single rose laid across a grave because of the way its simplicity depicts the magnitude of love.   I love that people walk and run through them as if they were a park while others grieve  and mourn their loss as  children use them as short cuts to get home from their sports practice.  A cemetery invites the living to never forget the dead.  To me, through death, a cemetery captures all that is beautiful in life.

I read Paul Richard Evan’s book A Christmas Box and then read A Christmas Box Miracle, which combined, tell the story of the creation of the Angel Monuments for families who have lost a child.  I never anticipated that I would see one, so the day I stumbled upon one in my favorite cemetery, I was caught off guard because I didn’t know it was there.  Recently constructed as the grass barely grew,  on either side of the monument were two large marble panels with names engraved on them.   I began to read them and recognized the names, looking down I saw a single red rose at the foot of the angel, just like the in the story in Richard’s book.  I was flooded with compassion and sadness for these families loss and thought of a friend who had recently lost a daughter.  I felt so greatly moved by my awareness of their loss.  How does a person survive such a horrific thing? I don’t know how they find the strength to go on.

Sometimes after my therapy sessions when I need a place to sit in private and collect my thoughts and emotions, I drive to a large Catholic Cemetery that rises up on a very large hill.  There is a beautiful crematorium at the top and just beyond is a section where priests and nuns are buried.  The first time I wandered upon it I didn’t know what it was and was intrigued to find the modest stones that lay flat along the earth, a few dozen all sharing the first name of “Sister Mary.”  Most were covered in grass clippings, aged and brown from when the ground keepers cut the lawn, or were covered by the overgrowth of the grass around it.  I was struck by the absence of the living, as it appeared that no one visited them.  They had no flowers, no cards, no gaudy memorabilia adorning their modest graves.  The magnitude of the sacrifice these women made for God and for faith echoed in their simplistic little stones.  They have no children to mourn their loss, no family to grieve them. Will they be remembered by anyone else a generation from now?  Did they die alone or surrounded by support and had they truly lived a life where the reward of their devotion to God results in eternal salvation?  When  you live a life that committed to your faith do you some how transcend the human need to leave a legacy?  Is your life so fulfilled by faith that you do not need to be remembered? As I stood and pondered these thoughtful questions I bent down and began to clear the graves.  This simple act then brought me to my knees and one by one I honored these women as I wiped the grass clippings off the face of aged stone, trimming the growing grass that obscured their view.  And so, when I have the time and when the weather permits I often go and visit these nuns after my therapy, sitting in silence, just offering my respect, wishing I had the courage and the strength to have live a life that is more humble and devout,  perhaps some day transforming myself from a gregarious fool into a person who emanates solemn  wisdom and peace and aspire to become a person who only needs a simple modest grave.

I Don’t Dissociate, I Time Travel.

Chocolate half-moon cookies were my favorites as a child.  I loved the soft cake like texture of the cookie balanced with the fluffy white sweetness of the frosting on precisely half of the cookie while the chocolate glaze is flat and shiny, coating the other half.  I loved the moment before I took my first bite when I had to choose which flavor I’d eat first. For what ever reason my first bite was always from one side or another, I never  started in the middle where I could taste both the chocolate and vanilla.  I always ate one side completely before starting the other.  How simple life was then.  I had two options, chocolate or vanilla.   Black or white.  In hindsight, I realize that I thought eating from both sides simultaneously would somehow change the flavor and lessen my enjoyment.  Even as a child I was conscientious of obtaining as much pleasure as possible out of a world full of contradicting experiences.

Life is a half-moon cookie.  We can taste the chocolate or we can taste vanilla, or we can taste them both.  Yet, if we choose we can  look beyond the finished cookie and perceive the chemistry involved in its baking.  The eggs and sugar dissolve together forming something new.  Add some butter and some flour, salt and baking powder.  Don’t forget the chocolate, perhaps vanilla too. But then it takes motion and friction to blend it all together, heat to bake for precisely the right amount of time.  If one measurement is off, you don’t stir enough,or  your oven is too hot your cookie will be ruined.   Long gone are the days for me when a cookie is just a cookie.   It is the sum of its parts, plus the environment around it.  Is it hot or humid making the cookie sticky?  Or is it cold and frigid, making it firm and chilling it more quickly? Then I know that the cookie can only taste as good as I perceive it.  If I have a cold and my nose is plugged the cookie will never taste as good as when my nasal passage is clear and I can breathe  in its sweet aroma first. Once you realize you can eat the cookie appreciating the intricacies  it is hard not to do so without feeling like you are missing something.  But this way of being  can be so fatiguing.  It is exhausting experiencing everything so intensely.  Insight has its cost.

I read the book “The Time Traveler’s Wife” several years ago.  It intrigued me at the time, I thought perhaps the reason was because it tapped into the romantic ideal that there are other worlds and lives around us, occurring all the time, the tapestry of life, interweaving with each other, passing without knowing…the mystery of life.   Often, pondering the possibility that there could somehow be another me in existence, in a different realm, in a different life has been a way I’ve dealt with painful moments.  Sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever crossed another “me’s” path. There was one moment where I swear I almost met myself, again at the park where I walked the wooded path practicing faith that with each step my direction would clear.  I would go so deeply inward within myself that it was as if I found a portal to a more vast and expansive world.   It was like taking a drug that intensifies colors, scents, and sharpness of vision.  My focus funneled into things so acutely and to the point that the weight of being able to see each atom of life became so heavy that it fell in upon itself.  As if there were some force sucking and pulling me and everything through some tiny pinhole in the fabric of time and projected me into a different world like space where the gravity was different.   Our earth remains unchanged whether we view it upward from the depths of the ocean floor or whether we look downward from a crater on the moon.  It is physically the same earth, but yet it is very different.  How can a simple  human contain the paradox and vastness in the awareness of such things?

The view of the ocean and the view from the moon are two very different worlds.  If the world can be not one, but two contained within itself, why can’t it split again and be a third, perhaps the view from a mountain?  But if it splits into a third you can begin to see the infinite reality of life.   As a child I used to like to open the medicine cabinet in our bathroom and position its mirror so it reflected the image of the mirror on the wall.  Looking into a reflection of a reflection…of a reflection reflecting back going on endlessly.  I sat transfixed, amazed and intrigued an hour at a time.  Each image got smaller and further away but yet no different from that.   “How it could be?” I wondered.   Did each me feel the same or did each one have a different life?  Which one of me was real? Was I real?  I did not know and had no one that I could ask.

Now I realize why I liked the book “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”  His time traveling was so much like the way I dissociate.  Living a life, engrossed in a moment then sometimes without out warning “poof” I’m sucked into another world, another emotion, another place, another time appearing naked, exposed and vulnerable, vomiting and weakened by the change, never having control of when I’ll come or go.  Some times the time travel saved him, sometimes it put him in great danger, sometimes it brought him love and joy some times it brought emotional pain.   It is far more romantic to fantasize that time travel exists than to admit I have a mental illness.  The problem with dissociating to the degree that I do, is that it goes beyond the harmless daydream to the extent that I just get lost in thought so fully and intensely it’s as if the me in this world disappears for others.  I remember the first time I realized it was what my mother did as well.  I watched her leave this external world and disappear right before my eyes.  I remember how painful it felt for me; that I had been the one to trigger her; that she wasn’t strong enough to deal with what I was saying; how angry and hurt I was that my feelings, in that moment, simply didn’t matter; but yet having pity and compassion because she was so fragile and fragmented.  I now hold the knowledge that I’ve done this to others, that when in moments they’ve needed me to be present to comfort their own pain, I abandoned them like the time traveler and simply disappeared in the middle of their sentence.  My head hangs low, my throat burns and my stomach feels queasy, I hate who I have been.

I Tried Not To Be Catholic

I fought against religion because my mother so intently evangelized God’s love and the power of Satan.    The fear that I would end up in Hell because I was not good enough is one that has torture my mind as long as I can remember.   I remember being afraid, so much so that I could not sleep at night.  “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  What if God didn’t want me?  What if I wasn’t good enough and I died and he wouldn’t take me….I worried and worried and worried…never realizing that the prayer was meant to bring me comfort.  When you are a teenage girl who’s just been hurt by a boy, you don’t want to hear how weak you are because you allow the devil to influence you, you simply want a hug from your mom.  I never got that, so I turned my back on God in favor of alcohol and cigarettes.  I was 16 when stole my first bottle of my father’s scotch and hid it under my bed.  I knew it was wrong, that was why I did it.   I didn’t like the taste but I loved the burn.  When I felt angry or nervous I’d just take a shot, I don’t know that it ever got me drunk, but that wasn’t the point, it was the very act of being defiant.  Which is why I had a brief stint where I started to smoke.  The boy that had just broken up with me hated it, so I’d smoke just to prove my point, I was hurt, I was angry, I was reckless and I simply didn’t want to care, so I pretended I didn’t in hopes that I wouldn’t. . . I was lost and simply needed a hug from my mother and was angry at the God that my mother so passionately loved more than me.  I thought that if he were watching he had abandoned me.

It would be decades later before I realized that my story is more reminiscent of “Footprints” in the sand than of being forsaken by God.  So, despite my  attempts to futility fight against my Catholic faith, I am indeed Catholic and in the recent month I have been attending Mass three to four times a week and I find that on the days I don’t go, I miss it.  Part of me screams out “how the hell did THAT happen” while a part of me, in a calm and gentle voice soothingly chimes “of course it did.”  That doesn’t mean I accept and agree with every decision and belief disseminated from the Vatican.  My beautifully blessed children were conceived through in vitro fertilization, they’d not exist had I’d followed the church’s dogma devoutly.  I spent years searching for spiritual answers because I did not want to be small-minded in any way.  I thought that one denomination or religious view would constrict my lens and narrow my scope to the point that I became blind and ignorant.  Yet I have still settled into it and have accepted that may Catholic faith is as much about accepting things we do not embrace and daily practice just as much as Buddhism or any other spiritual belief.  I’ve come to recognize that the person who practices Reiki goes through cleansing rituals of fasting and meditation and believes in “laying of hands” just as intensely as a Christian might.  I recall the words of the Dalai Lama when he said that if we tried to feed the world only with wheat we would be ignoring all the people who only eat rice and that the reason they eat rice is because wheat does not grow where they live.  So in that, I believe that God appears differently to each of us and I took the long route to cut through the chase and simply accept him for who he is.  I suppose it is the accessibility, the simplicity, the tradition and my childhood roots that have brought me back to the Catholic Church with some gentle nudging and encouragement from a few influential people.  The noon day mass several blocks from my office, or a seven am service each day just makes it easy to be there.  A Sunday service that engages my children a block from their favorite restaurant allows me to feel I’ve done well and not tortured my kids through an hour of boredom.  Despite my growing devotion for the Catholic faith, I still quote Elizabeth Gilbert, when asked what type of God she believes in she replies “a mighty one.”

I scrutinize myself and worry, wondering how do I raise my children to embrace a religious belief when I felt so burned by God’s love in my youth?  My mother’s adoration of God somehow became perverse and distorted, her religious fervor fueling her emotional abuse and medical neglect.  I hated going to Sunday Mass, it was so boring, confusing and I never understood it.  She’d send us to Religious Education classes but instruct the nuns that we were not to learn the “Hail Mary” because we’d be worshiping false idols.  She didn’t want me to learn about evolution for that matter either. I remember the little things, like being put in a pink floral dress for First Communion and wondering why I wasn’t in white or the way my father would stop by the convenient store on the way home to buy the Sunday paper and purchase himself a coffee.  When he returned to the car the aroma of coffee and donuts emulsified through the air.  I remember always wondering why he never offered us anything, never brought us donuts or cocoa but simply lived in this world where there was only him and he had no affect on us.  Breathing in the belief that I didn’t matter along with the scent of coffee.   So it should come as no surprise that I have struggled to find a way to create a different experience of religion and faith for my children, one that is fun, intriguing, and happy.  One that brings comfort instead of fear.  One that brings acceptance instead of judgement and forgiveness not blame, at the same time I am redefining faith for myself.

When you attend Mass frequently you begin to notice the little things that go into the procession, the flow and beauty of the tradition.  there is so much I just never knew.  I find there are moments where I am touched by the spirit, flooded by the power and grace of the moment in the same way that I felt when I meditated.  These days I  often leave Mass feeling like I’ve just had an hour massage of my mind and spirit.  I think of the times that I went to Mass and felt nothing and angrily said “see, there God, it didn’t work” and used it as an excuse to never go back.  Yet I am reminded of the times I paid for a massage that failed to get the knot out of my back.  Instead of saying “see it didn’t work, this is a hoax, how foolish and stupid I was for trying,” I scheduled another and forked over more money.  I failed to realize that if Church didn’t work the first them, then I just needed to go back, I simply hadn’t prayed long enough.

Yesterday I went to Mass with my children and brought along my niece and my nephew (ages 7 and 3).  That meant that I waddled into church alone like a mother duck leading her flock, four children under the age of 7.  I reminded the twins that their cousins didn’t know what to do during Mass so it was their job to make sure they didn’t feel nervous and to help them through it.  I listened as my daughter grabbed the cards with the new Mass language and showed her cousin how to find the readings and hymns in the great big blue books that line the pews.  She showed her how to cross her arms for a blessing instead of communion and watched as my son held the hands of his cousin leading him down the aisle.  I sat with a child on my lap during the sermon, another one tucked under my arm, just soaking in the hour of contentment that they experienced simply by being with me.  I think back to my childhood and wonder whether I might have enjoyed Church more if it brought me an hour where my mother sat silent and simply hugged and snuggled with me.

At the end of the Mass before we exited the pew an elderly man approached me wearing a pastel yellow polo shirt. He walked up the aisle from the back of the Church, leaned over and embraced my arm.  His voice was soft and spoke kindly, warmly yet matter of factly, stating to me “You are an incredible mother.”  I felt my jaw hit the church pew and was quick to reply “Oh, only two are mine, the other are my niece and nephew.”  He simply smiled and tipped his head saying “It doesn’t matter” and walked away.  I stood shocked for a moment thinking to myself “how the hell did THAT happen” but quickly followed it with “of course it did.”

I Greeted Death Today – Part 2

I sat with June today, in a lawn chair under a maple tree watching cars drive by and life walk past.  The two short hours I spent with her might have been the most meaningful I’ve ever had.  Perhaps I should rewind my story and start by saying that I never figured out what the Hallmark response was when someone tells you they have cancer, but I did find an American Greetings card.  A bit cliché with a cute stick figure wearing great big red boxing gloves, the card said something like “Let’s get ready to kick some cancer butt.”  Feeling helpless with June’s situation I forked over a few dollars to buy it because I didn’t know what else to do.   I sent her an email earlier this week and I tried to call.   I had a few child free hours today and decided to risk it and see if she’d accept a visit.  When I called and asked if I could stop in she quickly accepted and even seemed excited,  so I swung into the grocery store, because on Sundays, in this small town, it is the only place you can buy flowers.   I thought that I should bring her some food, some tea, something to demonstrate my genuine sympathy.  But I didn’t know if she’d already had her surgery or whether she felt ill, or what she would like to eat if she could, so I settled with flowers for now.  My daughter asked to pick out the bunch, selecting the brightest bouquet she could see, her intentions seemed admirable and I agreed.  Smiling with pride she wanted me to make sure June knew that she had been the one who’d chosen them.

As I drove to June’s house I was surprised at my calmness.  Usually when I attempt to do something nice for someone else it comes from a sense of obligation, a self-serving desire to be a better person, or because I know it is the right thing to do, even if I don’t want to. Perhaps because it usually feels so forced or contrived I get that familiar anxiety ridden feeling.  But with this,  I had no agenda.  I had no intentions of doing anything more than just keeping her company, maybe metaphorically speaking, hold her hand and to let her know she is not alone. To simply be the type of person who doesn’t shy away from death but stays by the side of the dying.

I have been in her home once before, about three or four years ago.  It was an upstairs apartment and the hallway leading up the flight of stairs was adorned with the painting of a garden mural that was clearly amateurish.  I was surprised to discover that she was the artist, despite all the years we had worked together I did not know she could paint.  Her apartment was crowded with books and knickknacks reflecting her life’s accumulations.  I recall feeling cramped and a bit claustrophobic, although it was all very orderly and neat.  When I drove up I was relieved to see her sitting outside in a lawn chair under a tree because I was afraid that the confined space would distract my attention from her.

She stood and embraced me. I felt her softness fold over me like a favorite blanket as I embraced her back wondering if with each passing week I will begin to notice her skin start to sag and her softness slowly give way to the hardened bone as the cancer and chemotherapy suck the life and weight from her being.  I looked at her hair, white and thinning and tried to envision how she will appear when she’s bald.  Will she wear a bandana or will she decide to  remain uncovered exposing her battle to all that are brave enough to look?  She opened up to me quickly and began to describe the series of medical tests she’s undergone.  As she described the spots on her thyroid, in her throat and in her lung I noticed the bruising up along her arm.  She bore the bruises of the elderly, the type that aren’t quite purple nor are they red, the size of tennis balls.  We made a few jokes as she described the reasons for all of the tests, some of them were preparations for her surgery this Thursday.  I thought to myself as I deep inhaled,  “okay, so she’s not had the tumor removed yet.”  She said that she believes they will start the chemotherapy  soon there after.  I wondered why my knees were getting weak?  I was thankful that I was sitting because I felt the weight of my body settle downwards, caught and supported by my chair.

I hadn’t realized that a part of my mind had hoped she’d already had the surgery and started the chemotherapy so that however she looked today would be the place where she started to get better.  I wasn’t prepared for the recognition that this was the calm before the storm.  In that moment, I took her in, trying to create a mental imprint of how she looked and to preserve my memory of how she felt so that I could remember her before she no longer appeared the same.

She proceeded to tell me that the type of cancer she has and that the prognosis was rather poor.  She said the doctor implied that she had a year and even if treatment was successful it won’t be long before the cancer returned.  Then she said it . . .  the first of her “lasts.”  She said “when he told me that I thought: My God, I’ll never see the trees bloom again.”  This is first of many reasons that she’ll provide as to why we shouldn’t take life for granted.  She began to talk about the depression she’s suffered over the years, how in her young adult life it had been severe and dangerous but as she got older it gave way to the gentler, more manageable kind, and while still struggles with it regularly, the past month was much worse and unruly.  I looked at her astounded at what I had heard, wondering if she already knew what I was going to say and whether she just needed someone to say it for her.  I said, “Oh June, that’s not depression…it’s grief.  You’ve just been told you have a terminal illness, how else does a person cope with that?”  And so we began to speak about the challenge of maintaining a positive outlook, of believing that she can beat the illness, but yet accepting the fact that she’s dying so she can enjoy each day more fully because each one that passes is one day closer to death.

She’s been a widow for 12 years at least.  I asked her if she thought that watching him die slowly  has prepared her in any way for her own death. She thought perhaps it had.  Towards the end of his life she was unable to care for him so he was placed in a nursing home.  She started by saying she was there with him the day that he passed but then looked at me and said “I was there the moment he took his last breath” and she began to describe her most vivid memory and stretched out her left hand to mimic his and slowly ran her right hand over it, describing the whiteness of death as it traveled down his harm, erasing the pinkness of life from his skin.  She sat there and watched as the coldness from uncirculating blood began to settle over him.  I had no idea that it really happened like that.  How ignorant and naive I felt.  Yet humbled and honored by this woman who was, in that very moment as I witnessed it, transcending time, bilaterally splitting the moment with one foot in a painful memory of the past and the other  in the future viewing her fate.

As she spoke two young men walked by.  Two bodies not quiet men yet no longer children, caught in a world of maladaptive angst.  With their swagger and wayward appearance, they were the type that I would avoid.  She called out to them, knowing their names asking them how they were and what they’d been up to.  When they were no longer in eyesight she explained that she likes to let the troubled kids know that they  matter and that some one really does care.  In that  instant it appeared as if she had switched gears and changed the topic and she began to describe named Danielle.  She described her as a “street urchin by age 7”, chronically beaten, neglected and sexually abused, her mind severed and fragmented into multiple personalities, driven to a convent in search of redemption, which she later left and married a drunk.  Because she didn’t know how to have relationships with people, her life was chaotic and crisis filled.  Eventually she bought a home in the country and turned it into a half way house that was used as an overflow residence for an inner city.   Her problems and mental illness remained, but she always ensured that others got the help that they needed.  June described some angry alters, ones that would shout out things like “drive over the bitch” when June pulled over to let an elderly woman walk past.  But then, suddenly as if a switch had been flicked, in the last 8 months of her life Danielle suddenly calmed.  She resumed her devotion to God and spoke only of love and kindness.  And then she died. It was as if she had finally seen the light, had gotten things right, and then just went home.

With tears in her eyes June looked at me and said, “what have I done that compares to the courage and inspiration that  that woman showed?”  She felt that she was not worthy of the degree of kindness and support she’s received.  I thought for a moment and replied “June, in just sharing Danielle’s story with me you honor her memory and are a steward of her inspiration for myself and others.”  I was humbled by her lack of recognition and acknowledgement of the number of lives that she’s touched and inspired herself, the hundreds of people she helped in her career, to say nothing of raising two sons, one of which has earned the title of “doctor.”

She hung her head down low and said “I’ve lost control”  a sentiment not lost on me.   She spoke of her guilt of having burdened her children so much in their lives because of her illnesses and doesn’t want to burden them more now.  But, yet she knows that if she refuses their offers to care for her, she is denying the chance for them to grieve and honor her the way they need to for them to be able to move past her death some day.  I was humbled by the complexity of her thoughts and the honesty and candidness of her disclosure.

I wondered if she had felt the emotional fatigue that I had felt by that time?  The weight of our conversation, although interrupted by humor, was no doubt great.  I told her that I would like to visit again and that she need not worry about adding me to her list of people to call and tell her how things were going, that I would reach out to her and she could respond simply when she felt like it.  Then with tears in her eyes she thanked me and told me that I didn’t know how much it meant to her that I came to visit, between my work and my children, that I made time for her.

Yet I left feeling like I should be thanking her, for the wisdom, the insight, the genuineness she shared, but most importantly for giving me the opportunity to simply share myself with her, for allowing me to sit by her side and just be me,  I can feel the groans and grinding as my foundation shifts.

Emotional Tides Do Fade

Without therapy how do “normal” people understand the impact of their childhood?  I sincerely wonder that.  Or,  if you weren’t abuse does it even matter?  Is it possible that the absence of trauma in a childhood or that the benefits of having a parents that were “good enough” create more resilience and benefits then the destruction caused by the presence of neglect, abuse, and trauma? Do the ripple effects of early chaos forever reverberate throughout the lives of the survivors more significantly then the good that comes from it’s absence?  Intellectually I know the answer to this question.  Have you ever seen a MRI scan of a brain from a child who has been chronically abused and neglected.  I have.   And I will share it with you, it is from Dr. Bruce Perry, MD, Ph.D from the Child Trauma Academy.  On the left is the brain of a normal 3 year old child.  On the right is the brain of a 3 year old who experienced extreme neglect.     I first saw this image nearly a decade ago and it gave me great insight and compassion for the abused children I worked with, yet I did not have any clue that my brain had been effected too.

Now that I am more inclined to accept the reality that I was chronically abused (yes, I am still in denial and don’t entirely believe it) I can’t help but wonder what my brain looks like.  I have always thought that because I was academically successful, had a professional career, good husband who did not beat me, nice home, land, a dog and two seemingly happy children that it meant there should not be anything wrong with me.  When I emotionally struggled I felt the guilt and shame from it, believing that because anti-depressants didn’t work I wasn’t really depressed and that my problems were simply ones I chose to perpetuate.   It has only been in the last few years of therapy that I have begun to accept and understand that my childhood was worse then simply “not good enough.”  Clear as the daylight that rises before me as I write, I recall the first time my psychologist referred to me (at least to my face) as a “trauma survivor.”  I was livid.  Like an old light switch that gets worn out and flicks on with a gentle brush, my anger and extreme rage and panic flooded me.  I wanted to scream “WHAT?! I AM NOT A TRAUMA SURVIVOR! HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT ABOUT ME!” so intensely it was as if those very words flowed through my veins where the blood should bc.  Now that my switch has a little friction allowing me more control, I can reflect back on the constant state of rage and panic that I always felt.  My reaction to her statement was fueled by fear.  I didn’t want to believe I was one of “those” people who got angry for no reason, who saw relationships in concrete terms, either love or hate, never intermingled, who didn’t have the ego strength to endure the loss of love.  I didn’t want to be one of those people who hurt themselves when something went wrong, who was a challenge to be around and constantly needed attention and reassurance from others.  I didn’t want to be someone who was weak and would be judged or perceived as having a sense of entitlement or a desire for revenge because the world had wronged me. One of those edgy “trauma survivors” whose verbal attacks could cut a person down.  I didn’t want to be someone who was chronically depressed or dissociated or anorexic.  Or close to death.  But denial didn’t keep any of those things from becoming true.  My denial only fooled me.

As I write this my head slums down in shame which is hard to explain. I know that I am becoming something more and something different, and I have pride and confidence in the progress that I’ve made.  Had I not done the work to arrive at this point I could not reflect back on my past and identify moments where I could have been different or be able to recognize that I actually had options that I could have chosen only if. . . only if I had the right medication, only if I had known different, only if…only if…  It’s hard not to judge yourself for doing the best you can when in hindsight you realize it wasn’t good enough.  How does a person come to the point of acceptance when you grasp the intricate complication of so many “what ifs” and “could have beens” and then just let things go and simply move on?  I guess that is where the courage to heal is an accurate phrase.  I can no longer be the person I have been, I am too tired and too weak and filled with regret and remorse so fully that it overflows from me. I can not run the gauntlet again, not even one more time, so I’m getting off.  I’m choosing to stop running through the danger and just want to walk on solid ground, on a smooth and straight pebble path.  I see the damage I have caused unintentionally, yet callously to others and recognize that even though I fought it,  I emulate the people who carved and created me.  But change takes time and constant effort and intentional thought, discipline and practice. It frightens me because the degree to which I have been psychologically, neurochemically, physically, and spiritually scarred from my past is still unfolding before me.  I have no sense of security that I won’t dissociate when I am upset or frightened, and I still get scared so easily where I tremble and I cower.  I still feel so beaten by life that I climb in bed and curl up as tightly in a ball as I can, envisioning that as I do so I am pulling in my energy and light in an effort to conserve and consolidate what ever strength I have, resting until my reserves have been restored.  I still get lost and confused when driving home from therapy, as my mind goes on autopilot and tries to escape the reality that my life has been.  I still feel that instantaneous switching on of my anger and my rage and I still feel the pain from loss and rejection so intensely that it is unbearable where I can hardly breathe.  I still want to hurt myself, I still want to cry, I still want to starve myself and slowly fade away.  I still  think that I can not endure a single moment more of hurt or agony, but I remind myself of the analogy that emotions ebb and flow like tides . . . just hold tight to something solid and secure, sit in silence and endure the current lashing and eventually the tides will go out.

The Beauty of This Moment

Throughout out each day I try to be attentive, waiting for that electric feeling that passes through me, starting from the crown of my head and exiting out my feet, leaving its  remnants in my stomach, like a glacier carving out a valley and leaving behind a boulder.  That is how I experience my moments of inspiration when I know what I want to write.  This morning it is slow in forming and more like a fizzle than a thunder clap.  My mind feels like a radio searching for a station, scanning for the right song to match my mood, trying to find a channel with clear reception,  but the rain and grey clouds make it hard to hear.  With each thought or idea I feel my body tell me “no, that’s not it try something else” and then a “nope, that one won’t work either.”  I scroll my mental Rolodex of topics, shuffling through the cards within my mind  and nothing speaks to me.   My frustration mounts and I get angry with my situation.   I wish I were someone else or somewhere else, perhaps on a lake front cabin where the waves gently lap against the shore, or at the ocean with the sand beneath my feet with the wind blowing against my face, or upon a scenic mountain where the world appears so small beneath me.  As vivid as those scenes appear before my mind, nothing inspires me,  I am not embracing this moment, but instead am fighting against, like a salmon swimming up the stream against the current, feeling more fatigued with each inch I move  forward.  I can hear the symphony of birds outside my windows.   The songs of the perching birds, the warblers, sparrows and the nuthatches singing the harmony while the songbirds melodious tunes take the center stage.  The  rhythmic bellow of the raven keeps the pace and is followed by the rapid taps of the distant woodpecker.  How could such natural beauty not inspire me?  I look out my window and see the crab apple tree, shocked by how different it has become.  I wonder when it became so large and full, not just full of leaves from this passing season, but wondering how it’s grown so thick  and tall with so many craggy branches and my thoughts begin to drift to the impermanence of life.  Every thing changes and we can not stop it.  A prolific thought and  yet I’m uninspired.

I am flooded with a sense of failure and disappointment, so I sit in this moment, simply trying to embracing it.  Instead of fantasizing away the discomfort caused by the reality of my situation, I sit with it and explore it, what it feels like, as uncomfortable as this is.  How exactly does a person sit in silence and accept a moment they don’t like, feeling something they wish it would go away instead?  How do you settle for less than what you want and find a way to for it to be okay?  I wonder what is wrong with me that I believe that every second of my day should feel profound and full of purpose with copious amounts of meaning emanating  out of me.  Why can’t I just accept that sometimes the stream of life is simply only a trickle and embrace the awareness that its water sustains my life just the same as the water that flows from a raging river.  There is no difference between the drop of water in a stream that is nearly dry and the drop of water from an engorged river.

The ability to be content with the present moment is not one I posses.  Rare and fleeting are the instance where I can settle for less than what I want. I find it so hard to accept  only what I get.  As I look out at my yard I see the gravel driveway and the portion of the lawn where we’ve just excavated.  It is covered with dirt and mud and is rather unsightly.  But if I shift my view upwards I can see the golden and orange glow of the rising sun, breaching the thick canopy of deciduous trees and it is beautiful.  I can look to my right and see the way the sun has penetrated the forest and warms it wooded floor, gently coloring the cool earth with the brush strokes of its light, magnifying the contrast between the ferns and trees, amplifying their depth and textured browns and greens.  I realize that it isn’t that there is an absence of beauty for me to grasp, I simply need to narrow or shift my focus, telescoping my view onto a single flower petal if need be,  in order to find the brilliance that exists in this very minute, remind myself  of the beauty in this earth.

I Could Not Shut It Out

This morning as I lay in bed, I took my two hands and joined them where my palm meets my writs, my pinky fingers running along each other and I gently cupped my hands.  I placed them over my face like a mask, breathing in my own breath, trying to see if I could create nothing but blackness.  And I could not keep out the light.  When I tightened my fingers to make sure that no light slipped in between and rested them over my eyes, my entire hand would stiffen and unintentionally straighten a bit,  slightly widening the gap between my wrists and the base of my palms, lengthening the sliver of light that seeped in by my chin and my mouth.  If I tried to shut out that light by relaxing my hand and fingers to rejoin my wrists, then the gaps between my fingers grew and allowed more light to shine through them.

Perhaps it seemed this way because I was looking for the light instead of seeking the blackness.  Each time I removed my hands and repositioned them it appeared as if  I had an interval of success where everything seemed black, when my eyes had not adjusted to the change from light to dark and I saw no shards of light.  But as I stayed unmoved and unflinching, my eyes began to adjust and  light gradually appeared.  If I chose to only look for the darkness I would have thought that I succeeded because of those moments when I could see no light at all.  But slowly the light would appear.  The gaps between my fingers and hands remained unchanged, but my vision adjusted allowing me to see the light that was always there.  It’s all a matter of perspective.  Regardless of what it was I was truly looking for,  no matter how I tried, I could not shut out all the light.  A rather profound metaphor for life and for hope isn’t it?  Despite the darkness, even that which is self-induced, light can still exist, and if chosen, can still be seen.    Some times we must  simply sit in patience and in silence to regain our bearings and  allow our eyes to adjust so that we recognize that what at first appeared to be an absence of hope is really only our inability to see it, but it still exists.  Sometimes we must sit in the darkness and let our pupils dilate so that we can more clearly see what is in front of our face.

Similar to the parable of the mustard seed, it only takes a little hope to turn into something grand.  Smallest seed of them all, when sewn the mustard seed becomes taller than the tallest herb or plant, growing branches that reach up towards the sky and leaves that provide shade and shelter to living things around it.  If we allow it,  hope can be like that mustard seed, fragile and small at first, when gently nurtured and allowed to grow it becomes the thing that shelters and protects us.

Hope is always there.