pacing the cage

My sister, Jane. I got to see my sister, Jane, this weekend and while the circumstances were a bit tiring (illness, exhaustion, long periods of driving, not much sleep), the experience was uplifting. Jane related to me how she is feeling unsettled in her professional life, how being a teacher in the public school system feels out of sync with her soul, how she is working through a process of discovery - discovering what moves her, what alights her soul and enlivens her heart.

I've been tracking these wonderful women in my life - noticing how many women I love are finding themselves in the process of change. It begins with angst of some kind - an awareness develops that things don't feel good, something is off, not quite right. Maybe all the details of life appear to be okay but something is off. For some it could feel like something is missing. For others it could feel like they're not plugged into something bigger. For still others there could be pain, or even misery.

I was working with a couple in therapy last week. They were lamenting about their teenaged son who isn't demonstrating much motivation in his life, little energy is put forth into accomplishment or achievement. Both of these people worked their way "up in the world from dirt" - to quote. Now here is their only child seemingly oblivious to all their role modeling, encouragements, threats, bribes, and lecturing - to do something with his life. I asked them, cautiously, if they related at all to the notion of evolution or whether they believed the world was created in 6 days (it's hard for my own beliefs not to creep into the work somedays). They replied that they believed in evolution. I then asked them what they think caused those first few fish to crawl up on dry land, leave behind their home in the sea. They thought about it. They looked at each other. They looked at me. Then the husband said rather cautiously: "Something wasn't right in the water?"

There's another story which I learned as part of my contemplative education in mindfulness. In this parable, a lion is kept in a cage, pacing and roaring. For a very long time, she is fed as needed but she is not permitted to leave the cage. She is kept as part of a circus for people to see. One day the lion is rescued. The rescuers release the lion from her cage, expecting to see this mighty creature move freely, to run away, even to attack. Instead, the lion continues to pace the area around her, the area that once was maintained by bars but now is open space. And she continues to pace the cage that exists only in her mind and in her body's memory.

I often think about the inspiration to change, to unfold, to grow. I've thrown around the word "ripe" reflecting my attraction to the notion that change comes from a place of inner readyness - a readyness that might not be observable to outside eyes and which may be gestating below the surface. I kicked off this blogging process nearly 2 years ago at a time when my inner sensations and my external life circumstances were coalescing in what felt to be intolerable discomfort. I knew something was needing to change. I could see that what I thought were secure structures of my happiness (work, finances, relationships) were disolving before my eyes. Looking back, I guess I could have toughed it out. I could have tried to hook into the system around me in a new way - built a private practice as a psychotherapist in Boulder, looked for a new relationship, leaned into a community of friends there for whom I still care deeply. However, when I felt inside my body, there was no traction for the idea of reconfiguing "the show" in this way. Instead, I felt a combination of fear and excitement swimming around within a pool of stillness. I knew, inside, that the way forward was not a reconfiguring of the current storyline but a willingness to put one foot in front of the other in a direction that felt both enlivening and threatening.

Not a quick process, a long unfolding. Boarding the plane to Portugal this past January to begin a 3-month training in integrative bodywork was but one more branch of my expansion. Back in 2009, I never could have imagined myself taking this step. And from where I stand now, there's no way I can anticipate what is coming down the road. But feeling into the sense of 'something's missing' or 'something's not quite right' - listening to our insides, paying attention to the external flow - these are essential beats in the rhythm of unfolding. Sometimes life is tragically abrupt in the way change comes down the pike. Sometimes there's gentle movements, nudgings from within and without. Sometimes the bars that keep me feeling stuck cease to exist, except in my mind. And it's time. And it's scary. And it's still time.

My love, admiration, and affection to a bunch of folks with whom I walk in various ways and who inspire me: Sue, Winger, Anemone, Jane (x2), momma, the women at the shelter, Corry, Alexandra, Jenny, Jenny's grandmom, Laressa and Mr. B. And to Gazelle, Jane's horse, 365 days of pregnancy is more than enough!

leaving normal

For Christmas, Bradford bought me gift cards to spend at The Gap (or one of its affiliated stores) mostly because the state of my underwear is, well, let's just say is thin. I laughed when I was in Portugal, hanging my clean laundry out to dry because, if the sun was shining just right, I could make out the shapes of things on the other side of my suspended panties. Anything too athletic and my underwear just headed south, the elasticity to support the waistband long gone. But I digress.

As I was driving through a small, New Hampshire town between home and the site of the nearest Gap, I was remarking with sadness on the state of some communities in this part of the country - this once proud site of business, trade, industry, and commercial activity, looked desperate and abandoned. I then thought about how the face of my counseling clients has changed over the years. When I lived in Boulder, Colorado (surely voted at one time or another the city with the most gorgeous people on the planet) I worked at Monarch and my clients were affluent. While their issues and stories were no less painful, they were buffered by their financial solidity, able to pay $400 a day for help.

Mostly, the clients I get to sit with today just don't fit into 'pretty' - I sit with many people who live in the outlying areas of the American Dream. Not so gorgeous. Not so wealthy. Not so fit. Not so likely to be portrayed as a success. I was thinking of the stories I gather in a given week and some of them are edgey. I hear things that cause me to take a breath and swallow a bitter taste of judgment which rises in my throat. I notice harsh thoughts sometimes - how did you let yourself get to this point? why don't you do something to 'better' yourself and your life, your children's lives? why not get with the program and get on the conformity lifeboat with the rest of us?
At times I feel myself wincing. Underneath these experiences is a basic feeling of dread - fear of falling off the lifeboat, fear of losing my marbles, fear of being pushed to the margins and scorned. I think many people want to surround themselves with 'pretty' because it quells our inner disturbance that we might be 'not quite right.' Or maybe some of us like to 'help' those who are not-so-beautiful because we are reassured that we're okay ourselves. Who knows? Those answers live in the stillness and not too many of us touch into the stillness that holds our lives.

Driving through this one town, I noticed a strange figure in the distance, off to my left. Two people, one who caused my eyes to blink and re-focus. This figure was shrouded in a dark, hooded cape - the hood was peaked and, even with my refocusing attempt at clarity, I had the sense I was looking at the back of a character from Lord of the Rings. Driving by I wanted to look more closely, see the face and body of the soul in this strange, cloaking garment. And there it was, but too outside my realm of familiar - with a head too large for its body and a nose too large for its face. I use "it" because I don't know if I was seeing a female or a male. I type, ashamed but feeling a drive towards honesty and realness. I was simultaneously wanting a closer look and needing to turn away, repulsed, scared.

Traffic moved me forward and away. I realized that I didn't even see the second person other than registering them as a female. I was drawn into trying to understand what I had glimpsed: a birth defect? a disease of some sort? And then I began thinking about what it would be like to walk through the world with such an undisguisable deviation from familiar. What is it like to be so obviously far from normal? I noticed that I wanted more and yet I was terrified. I was both acutely attracted to and frightened of what this being evoked in me and what she or he carried for most of us. I wondered about the sharply-peaked cape and the magic and mystery wrapped therein.

And I continued with the movements of people in traffic with somewhere to go, myself on my way to The Gap.

Super Martha!

A friday night here in the metropolis of Wilmot Flat. Ben and I are holding down the couch as the sun setting in the western sky is cutting a breathtaking swath through the newly-hatched leaves of Spring. I'm feeling myself exhale a bit as I feel the closing of my fourth week of work as a therapist with Counseling Associates.

What's been emerging for me is an awareness that an old ghost continues to haunt me as I work with people. I'll explain.

I've been waking up a little bit as friends and family have been asking me how I am - I'm beginning to notice that this is such a complicated and huge question. Overall, I'm great. Frankly, I still feel incredibly grateful for things like laundry facilities and dishes that are washed rather than piled in the sink or on top of the stove (a la 'the ghetto' in Praia da Luz). I'm in awe of the unfolding life that permeates this season. I feel so lucky that I really enjoy my job, that I have a job, that the people are so..... so good - such warm and caring and funny souls. I'm delighted still sharing a home with Bradford and Ben (although Ben is revealing himself to be the ultimate 'designer dog' and had his 3rd trip to the vet's today because it's been discovered that he's "allergenic"! - poor boy. He has the only health care in the family.).

But a friend mentioned to me a week or so ago that she was watching the TV show "In Treatment" and she was curious what it must be like to spend much of a day sitting and listening to people who are suffering, lost, confused, and/or in pain. I was at a loss for an answer. The quick and easy response is: "You get used to it. You don't take it to heart. You keep a healthy distance so that you are able to be a source of clarity and perspective for people."

That's not true for me. Stuff hits me. I don't think I show it all the time but I think it accumulates somewhere in my psyche, somewhere in my soma, both bruising and bursting my heart. And so I pause, take a breath and check inside. I realize there's a little bit of disconnection or disassociation happening in me. I think I do this by the way I work through a daily schedule, checking off my client's from the list after our meeting, after I file their paperwork - readying myself for the next couch-inhabiter.

And every now and again a client presents a clear opportunity for my ghost to rise up and take the reins. Every once in awhile a client presents a set of circumstances or an issue and I see a doorway into a passage, through to a room where I might alleviate my own build-up of collected client debris. I look for the nearest phonebooth (not so easy to find in this day of cellphones but nonetheless) so that I can change into my superhero costume and rush in to save the day. If I can rescue them from their pain, clearly I can release myself from my own.

This week I was working with a couple who were struggling because each of them watched the other wrestle with life circumstances and felt helpless to make it better - a very nice pattern to see emerge in couple's therapy. And so we began to explore the difference between "rescuing" and "supporting" - worlds apart. Rescuing requires a cape of some sort and some kind of special superhero ability (my personal preference is my cutting intelligence and insight). It's a short-term intervention and the results, though seemingly uplfiting, are disastrous - essentially undermining the suffering party's resiliency as well as their ability to be in contact with themselves and another person as the pain of living rolls through. Supporting, on the other hand, is a demonstration of deep love, true compassion, and absolute courage. Supporting someone in pain or confusion requires that I stay present and roll through all of the sharp and tender places which arise for me as I resonate with another who is suffering. Stay open. Stay in contact. Breathe. And listen for the still and quiet voices from within to guide my interactions.

Attempting to "fix" or rescue someone from their experience it's like a drug for me. It allows me to alleviate my fear that I'm a ninkempoop at my job and it releases me from the bonds of humanness which, in my line of work, are replete with shitty feelings. I don't have the answers, really. Hell, I don't like feeling helpless either. Sometimes all I can think to myself (or say outloud) is "I trust you. I trust life. I believe in your courage as you breathe into these dark and scary places. And I believe in my abilty to stay with you."

I'm not sure that does anything to resolve the issue of how much debris I'm accumulating (or personal stuff I'm triggering in myself) through the therapeutic process but it feels more true.

And spandex just looks plain bad on me.

picturing changes

So, here are a few shots from the last couple of weeks.

Bradford in front of the 26' Uhaul as we prepare to leave Franconia.

A couple of shots from the new home.

Ben retrieving sticks from a trail system nearby that was established on an old railbed.

Pictures from our weekend hike up Mt. Kearsarge just across the road.