Soul Mosaic

Before I get into the “Teshuvah time” that I mentioned in the last post, I need a moment to talk about “dreams.”

Buried alive

For a lot of 2017, I was really busy. Between my treasured work teaching kids in a science museum, and helping with visits to see Mom, I was finishing up my book about another love – my fifty years of visits to Colonial Williamsburg, the reconstructed Revolutionary War capital of Virginia.

But in the quiet moments…things were coming alive. Things that had waited a lifetime, but that were growing impatient. And while my days might be too busy to allow many random thoughts to creep in, the nights were another matter.

For a lot of my early adulthood, I hadn’t had a lot of nightmares, maybe because my daytimes were enough of ones themselves. Still, there were some — memories of abuse, and they were never pleasant.

After my father died, they increased. And about the time I decided to undertake this deeper therapy, they showed up with a vengeance, becoming a regular occurrence.

They were ugly…really ugly. Disturbing, shame-filled portrayals of “something” that was buried alive within me. Sometimes, I would thrash around and talk in my sleep. My husband was aware that it happened, though he couldn’t make out what I was saying, given my CPAP mask. Except for one night very recently, when I yelled REALLY loudly…something I’d never done before. But I’ll get to that later.

He just said that the sounds coming out of me, and through that mask, had an “otherworldly” haunting quality. Which was appropriate since those dreams were filled with the ghosts of my past. It was my subconscious trying desperately, I think, to “flush the cesspool of my memory” and process things still trapped and unfinished.

The person in the journal pages

To write about the emotional therapy of the years from 2017 on, I want and need to be mindful. I have a wall chart full of the issues that were surfacing, and a list of themes I kept revisiting. I don’t just want to throw them all out haphazardly, but rather, reflect on them so I can tell a coherent story for all of us, myself included.

As I think back over these last few years and try to remember the specifics to share, my memory simply says: “It’s been painful, long, deeply emotional, and worth it.” Duh.

So I realized I needed to take some time and go back through my journals for these years. And hands down…that person in the journal pages tells a much richer tale of where I was at, what I was thinking about, and in much sharper detail than my memory.

While the early one in 2017 was more sparse than the later ones because I was still, in a lot of ways, emotionally unaware, it still contained enough information to get this journey started. So I’ll start that with a journal “warm-up,” a preview or “sampler buffet” of things to come….

The binder buffet

When I look at that journal now, I see it was often more abbreviated than I would have wished for. Comments were less elaborate and more cryptic in nature. But nevertheless, there were clues of what I was starting to feel.

Those journal pages were like charts from a volcanic seismograph — blips and peaks of new activity cropping up within me. They pointed to the fact that my “long-dormant volcano within” was coming alive. But the signs were still subtle enough for me to miss them. It would take a couple more years of therapy work, and my mother’s death, before gases would belch forth, and lava would finally shoot out. Reading the pages now, though, I can see the cryptic warnings seeping out in the words.

And then, a miracle occurred?

So the question remains. How does a caterpillar go from this…

…to this?

Yes. We all know the basics – the caterpillar hatches from an egg, eats leaves and gets fat, then weaves a cocoon around itself. Then it “sits inside the cocoon” for however long each species needs, until one magical day, a beautiful butterfly (or a moth) cracks open the dried cocoon husk and emerges. Then it pumps fluid from its abdomen to inflate its wings, rests for a couple of days while they dry, then it spreads them wide and flies off to mate and lay new eggs that will hatch into new caterpillars. Seems straightforward enough.

But. HOW does that tube of mostly mushy guts with legs BECOME that butterfly? What SPECIFICALLY happens inside the darkness of the cocoon? Do the legs fuse to become a head and body? Does the outside skin form the new wings? And where do all those gooey insides go?

As many years as I’ve been on this planet, it took me until recently to actually stop to consider the question: “Exactly HOW does that caterpillar TRANSFORM to a whole new body structure?”

I always knew “something” happened. But it had never occurred to me until very recently to dig deeper and not just write it off as “and then a miracle occurred.”

Just like it wasn’t until the last few years that I finally realized I needed to dig deeper into myself as well. Maybe some miracles might be found there, too?

That is the quest of this book section – find the riches of my “Undiscovered Country.” And there is only one entrance to that country: transformation.

Tools for the garden

My husband reads all my posts, something I deeply appreciate. After the last couple, he noted that he could see I am “searching and gathering.” Searching, because right now I have more questions than answers, and gathering the things that I think will help me find them. As usual, he nailed it. Unlike the previous section of my life story, a more straightforward process, this is the part that is the “fumbling through darkness.” So I need all the help I can muster for it.

One particular Mother’s Day, my husband wrote a note about the “gardener I have been through life.” He observed that years ago, amid the chaos of my life in that house, I had started tending a vegetable and herb garden. I dug out the space, planted, and weeded to coax new life from the soil. And he said that, now, I am doing the same with my life.

I loved that comparison, and I agree. In writing this book, I’ve been l laboring to spawn a rebirth from the old soil of my past. A harvest of insights may emerge in their own time, but I must actively work that soil to reach them.

So, aside from right mind and attitude, what else do I need to do this? And why?

The words come last

It might seem odd that when talking about the tools to write a book, words, questions, story, and writing process are actually at the bottom of the list. Maybe that’s because before you get to the words – the communicating of answers and wisdom – there are so many “non-verbal” steps needed.

In the previous post, I spoke of the tools from Buddhism for a proper mindset for this work. I want to elaborate a bit about one of them: “Right attitude.”

The blue breaking through the storm

“I deliberately stress the word “survive” in relation to the stages of recovery. For me, personally, the greatest “Ah-HA!” of the book came in the section where Jen, walking on a beach alone, deals with the possibility that she, herself, is not broken, as she has defined herself throughout her healing practice. ‘Not broken or unbroken: rather, intact and imperfect. Wounded, sore, struggling, scared, funny, hopeful.’“

Jen Cross, from Writing Ourselves Whole

I LOVED this passage when I read it. Her description of herself: HOPEFUL….FUNNY…INTACT AND IMPERFECT….NOT BROKEN. What a powerfully refreshing new view of oneself after trauma.

So many of us view ourselves as broken, dirty, useless, and worthless because of the things that were done to us. We blame, denigrate, and loathe ourselves. And as the final icing on the cake, we see ourselves as broken. That makes it sound like there is no help, no hope, and no point in even trying. Just hang a sign that says, “Damaged beyond repair.”

Yet her statement totally changes the emotional colors of that picture! Instead of a black sky with no crack of light or any hope of a brighter horizon, her description is like those streaks of bright blue peaking out amidst the storm clouds. No, we’re not perfect. But then who is? And maybe we still have so much that is worthwhile. I just love it.

“Life presents you with a text, but it is your meditations upon that text which give it meaning and relevance.”

From 350 Healing Light Meditations: Daily Wisdom from Kabbalah by Rabbi Meilech Leib DuBrow (2 Tishrei)

Daring to question…

There is no question that I have a right to my pain, anger, and sorrow. As my therapist noted one day, “You come by your trauma honestly.” It was her way of saying that I need make no apologies for the PTSD I live with, or feel like a failure because I have had to struggle my whole life to catch up to others. There was a lot done to harm me.

Daria Burke, in her book Of My Own Making, said that sometimes being hailed as an abuse survivor triggers a deep ache in her. As she notes, “survival…is not synonymous with wholeness. We don’t survive whole.” And she is right.

Survival didn’t necessarily benefit us by “making us stronger,” as society likes to say. I particularly hate that trite expression. Along with, “It was part of the plan.”

A speaker, one time, trying to demonstrate the “irrevocable harm” of racism and abuse, did a very simple but powerful demonstration. He took a pristine sheet of paper and crumpled it up. Then he opened it and forcefully smoothed it out several times. Certainly, he was able to make the paper lie flat. But as to removing the creases in the paper once it was crumpled, it was impossible. That paper was never going to be pristine again. That is the damage done by hate and abuse. You will reclaim a lot, but there are things that will remain forever.

So many times my husband would hug me, look at me with love, and tell me how precious I was.

I would recoil. That word…PRECIOUS…I could barely stand to hear it, much less consider it applicable to me.

“Precious” made me ill and afraid.

The emotions with no words, just paint

Right now, as I write this post, I have reached the place of embracing my anger and claiming my agency. It’s taken a lifetime to get here. And it is only recently that I’ve arrived at this place.

What was I like before this? And what finally got me to this point?