When the River Meets the Sea -Re-Vitalizing the Voices of Teenagers

When the river flows into the sea, it becomes part of something greater and the sea welcomes its arrival for this is the reunion, where the river sacrifices itself to become part of the infinite. The river disappears into the depths where there is no certainty of a destination, only a journey. As parents, we are connected by our experience of parenting with all its joy, all its mystery, and the times we are fearful and uncertain. Our children are their own beings, with souls that are being colored and carved by their experiences. We are their shepherds; we are their beacons, but they are not us and they do not belong to us. We are charged with being witnesses of their journeys to the sea where they will become part of the greater consciousness of the world soul. However, it seems our teenage children are trying to tell us something about how we are doing in our role as shepherds. The leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults between the ages of fifteen and twenty five is suicide, which should be shaking us awake from any illusions we might wish to maintain.

This age range represents a pivotal time heavy with cultural expectations for maturity juxtaposed against the realities of each individual teenager’s emotional capacity. Teenagers try to match what the culture expects often at the cost of their self-esteem and sense of self-acceptance. Many teens struggle with body image, sexuality, economic disadvantages and learning problems, depression and severe anxiety, and they often cannot imagine talking about such problems in a way that will provide relief or resolution. The ones who cannot withstand the pressure they feel from peers, parents, the schools and the culture often drop out of school, use substances to cope with emotional pain, join gangs or, as we have all witnessed lately both here in Truckee and all over the United States, more and more teens are choosing suicide as the only way of ending their struggle.
During this time in their lives, teenagers balance expectations of the culture, schools, parents and themselves to choose the paths they will take as adults. American boys are required by law to register for the draft when they reach the age of eighteen. With a war going on, registering for the draft and contemplating possible death in a country thousands of miles away has the potential to be terrifying, yet our culture does not address all the implications of this requirement, selecting only to valorize voluntary military service as a means of achieving success or increasing self-esteem or guaranteeing a college education, if a soldier makes it home again. Many arrive home in pieces, their tender psyches reeling to return to the place left far behind on the threshold between childhood and adulthood.

For teens who leave the school system or who drift after graduating high school with no clear plan for the future and few resources, the world can seem overwhelming and inhospitable. There is little time to dream, imagine and to retreat, perhaps cocooning into a chrysalis for a time to let the lessons sink in. There is only the harshness and rigidity of a frenzied pace to know more, be more and do more. Despite the rumbling in their stomachs, their aching heads and emptied hearts, they press on because they are on this speeding conveyor belt with no “off” button within reach. Teenagers in our culture are a silenced population. They are given no clear role or voice during their most critical developmental years in shaping the world they will inherit; we offer them no part in political decisions that will impact them as adults and we do not give them enough voice in forums where decisions that will impact their lives are made.

The fact that bullying has become an epidemic is not surprising considering that children and teenagers embody and express what adults do not. We are a nation of fearful consumers and ravenous competitors, our eyes turned outward for food that never satisfies the deepening starvation for connection with each other. Our children receive the anxiety like radio waves, and they respond to the frenzied pace with the language available to them, usually behavior. We diagnose it rather than paying attention to what it says about the state of our culture. We identify them as the patients rather than examine ourselves and the world we have brought them into.
According to Angela Diaz, M.D. MPD, director of the Mt. Sinai Adolescent health Center in New York, the population of teenagers between sixteen and twenty four is the most underserved in the United States in terms of health care, preventative care, mental health services and dental care. They are legally adults at the age of eighteen, but unless they are in college, the likelihood is that they will get jobs that pay little more than minimum wage which is barely enough to live on and which do not offer medical benefits to employees. The mental health system has coined the term “transitional age youth” to describe the population of young adults who are suspended in the nether-region between college and adequate earning capability. Minimum wage jobs are inadequate in meeting basic needs let alone health care needs. These are just a few of the barriers that millions of teenagers who will inherit our country are up against.

Our educational system has put its resources and focus on preparing students to pass aptitude tests and less on developing imagination, creativity and the ability to navigate the complex problems of living in this competitive culture beyond high school. Most teenagers I come into contact with express significant fear about what happens when they turn eighteen, especially when they are average or below average in terms of academic performance and uncertain as to whether they want to go to college.

For teens with emotional problems stemming from lack of access to stable caregiving, economic stability and medical care and who have experienced trauma as children, the legal system becomes the de facto parent. Children who break school rules or the law due to violent behavior, drug use or truancy are placed either in foster care or juvenile detention. Many cycle through these systems over and over again until they reach the age of eighteen. Without experiences of loving, caring stable homes, or parents with whom they can speak honestly, these children are released from the juvenile justice system at the age of eighteen and are expected to go out in the world and live according to the laws and expectations of a culture they are unfamiliar with. Some will make it into college or vocational programs against all odds, but most do not. These are the young adults this society fails to recognize and offer resources for healthcare, social support and life skills education in a supportive, safe and nurturing environment.

Although none of this information may apply to you and your teenager(s), the possibilities for any teenager to fall through the cracks and land in the juvenile justice system, homeless or drug involved are statistically higher than they ever have been. That is why it is critically important for parents and teenagers to learn how to talk about the fears and challenges of growing up and out of the family and into the world. Statistically, male teenagers complete suicide more than female teenagers and the reasons for suicide remain the same as they were ten years ago. The CDC cites depression as the main cause and the leading mental health websites (www.nami.org, www.nimh.nih.gov) talk about treatment but do not go into the root causes for depression of which there are many. Because suicide is the leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 15 and 24, it is important for anyone who comes into contact with teenagers to learn the signs of depression and then to be able to effectively gather the people and resources together to be the shepherds and witnesses they need us to be.

The leading root cause for depression in teens has been called “failure to connect,” by the psychological community. Statistics evaluating depression among teens show that if there is just one person, not necessarily a parent, but a coach or a teacher or an extended family member, with whom they can speak openly and feel safe and who can offer them support and unconditional love and care, it often makes the difference between rebounding from depression or not. Other causes for depression include lack of acceptance by peers which includes bullying and violence, failure in school, substance addiction in the family, and sexual abuse.

Because no community is exempt from this epidemic, with smaller communities often being more at risk due to fewer resources or lack of awareness, For Goodness Sake in Truckee is collaborating with me and with teenage representatives from the community to develop a group forum where their voices will predominate. They will be the visionaries and creators of a forum where they can discuss and develop their ideas about where change is needed and how to effectuate it. This proposed group for teens and young adults be created by them and will be guided by their voices. In this forum, our adult voices will not prevail, but by invitation, we will be a witnesses and servants to the imaginations and creativity of our children.

For more information, please email either Andy Hill at For Goodness Sake at Andy@goodnesssake.org, or myself at kcpier@sierraagape.org.

Or call For Goodness Sake at 550-8981

Dog Girl- A Story About Bullying

Before I entered the main hallway of Ellison Middle School in 1971 as an eighth grader, I thought my shag haircut was cool. I wanted to look like Shirley Jones, the mom in The Partridge Family television show. And I wasn't terribly concerned about the speed at which my breasts were developing; I hurried them along as quickly as I could with the aid of training bras. My mother asked me what I was training when I ask her for one. Mostly, they served as containers for the Kleenex I filled them with. I loved my mother and spent a lot of time with her, not because she made me, I wanted to. She'd spent much of my childhood very ill and in the hospital, so I wanted to redeem every second that was lost. I smoked cigarettes, but only the ones with pretty decorations on the filters. They were called "Eve" and I preferred menthol. I thought smoking automatically made me a part of the cool kids so when I lit up in the girl's bathroom with all the other girls, I expected acceptance.

I did not look like any of the other girls, but I didn't think it would invite rage and contempt. My hair wasn't long and parted in the middle, I didn't wear dungarees that dragged on the ground, I wasn't ready for make-out parties and drinking Boone's Farm Apple Wine until I puked on the front lawn.

The first time I hit the concrete floor because a locker door was opened suddenly in my face was surely an accident. The kid said he was sorry, even though he was laughing. And the first time I walked onto the school bus and the entire bus began to bark and howl like dogs, I looked behind me to see if a dog followed me onto the bus. And then I realized they were barking at me. A foot shot out into the aisle and I fell, spilling the contents of the pretty new purse I got from the five and dime onto the floor. As I gathered my books and my makeup and the piece of toast I was saving for a morning snack, I felt the wet splatter of someone's spit on the back of my neck.

"SIDDOWN!!" the driver yelled at me. "We can't move until you siddown!" I tried to find an empty seat, blinded by tears and finally located one next to a fat girl. I was so skinny that I fit next to her even though she almost took up the whole seat. I held onto the side of the seat for dear life so I wouldn't slide off.

Of course I cried. I thought crying would let the kids know that they were causing me great pain and humiliation and that they would then stop. But it seemed they enjoyed watching me fall apart so they turned up the volume on the barking and howling. Each time I entered a classroom or got on the bus, the herd of bullies mobilized and descended on me to tear me to pieces. "Ugly dog! You SUCK!" shouted the boys. "Fucking ugly flat-chested DOG! You're so ugly you should kill yourself so we wouldn't have to look at you!!!"

How I wished I could die. I thought of how sorry they would be if I died. I imagined them all standing around my coffin as it was lowered into the ground. And sometimes, in the tiny moments I felt angry instead of sad and desperately lonely, I imagined all of them lined up in a row as I walked down the line slapping each of their faces as hard as I could while they were made to stand there and take their due punishment.

I went to the school counselor's office to tell her what was happening. None of the teachers stopped it other than to say something like, "Settle down and let's open our textbooks to page 197." The counselor gave me very helpful advice which was to ignore them. "Remember...sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." If only I could have understood how not to be hurt not just by mass rejection, but by being someone so deserving of hatred. How did I become so easy to hate? Was it my hair? My pants? The shape of my nose or the fact that I loved my mommy and it wasn't cool to love your parents back in 1971?

I began to throw up in the morning. My mother rose up against the principal and the school truant officers who began to call and come to the house when I couldn't bear to go to school anymore, threatening to put me in juvenile detention. "She's not going to your school because it's a horrible place and I intend to sue you for every cent you've got," she would shout from behind the kitchen door. She was weakened by years of illness, depressed over being left for a younger woman by my father, and addicted to narcotics. She was still strong enough to be my most ardent and fierce protector, but didn't always handle these kinds of situations with the acuity and effectiveness she once would have. But she was all I had. She sheltered me and told me we would just sneak away to a place where I would never have to face those kids again.

I knew we couldn't just sneak away. And I knew they would be back the next day if I didn't go to school. So I just threw up and then got on the bus hoping I wouldn't throw up again before we got there. So I stopped eating breakfast. And I stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria, because the whole cafeteria barked at me, so I found a rarely used bathroom next to the gym in which to eat my lunch and smoke one of the pretty cigarettes I brought in my skirt pocket.

One day, I was bracing myself to enter math class and endure yet another round of barking and being told how pathetic my breasts were and how my face was so ugly that it made a dog's asshole look beautiful and one of the worst offenders came out to the hall where he saw me hyperventilating and leaning against the wall.

"We just wanted you to know how sorry we are for the way we have been treating you," he said smiling. "And we have a gift for you." Silly me. I thought maybe they were going to give me some flowers or maybe a box of candy. He took me by the hand and I blushed as if I'd just been asked to dance. And we entered the classroom where I was presented with a large box of Milk Bone dog biscuits. I looked desperately to the teacher to protect me as the eruption of barking became deafening, but he too was laughing, unable to contain himself. I wasn't one of his favorites because I was always behind, confused, dazed and drowning, afraid to ask for help.

So I disappeared into a dark place inside myself. We did move away and I never bothered to enroll in ninth grade. I crossed the street whenever I saw teenagers and carried that fear with me into adulthood. I returned to school halfway through my tenth grade year but dropped out again at the age of sixteen, unable to tolerate my chronic anxiety. By that time, I had developed a strong phobia of schools in general and was so far behind that I felt I would never catch up anyway.

My mother died two weeks after I turned sixteen and I found myself on my own shortly thereafter. My father chose his girlfriend when she gave him the ultimatum, "It's her or me." If not for a few people only a few years older than me who helped me grow comfortable in my battered and thin skin, I might never have survived adolescence. And when I learned to see beauty in my uniqueness as I once had before Ellison Middle School, I decided I could return to school and make up for what was lost. I discovered that my peers celebrated differences much more than they did in middle school and high school. Gradually, I was able to enter a classroom without acute nausea and a racing heart.

When my children went to school and were subjected to bullying and teasing, it was difficult for me not to react with all the pain and rage I once felt as a newly minted adolescent. But I did not half-consciously say stupid shit like, "Oh just ignore them...remember...sticks and stones..." I went to the school and sat down with my children and the principals and teacher and the bullies if I could manage to get them in the same room with me, and with the warrior bursting in my heart, I refused to tolerate it. Not for one second.

When adults create a hostile work environment by harassing other employees, it is grounds for termination. It should be no different in a school, where learning was once considered almost a sacred privilege. Adults in this culture do not do the best job of modeling celebration of diversity particularly in the corporate, military and educational systems. The archetype of Destroyer is invading our most fragile population and we cannot afford to be passive in bringing the Destroyer to peace. This is the responsibility of every child, every parent and every teacher who sees predatory behavior being perpetrated on another child.

In lieu of truth... we choose to hide. In Memory of Austin Roberts

A local Truckee boy just barely into his seventeenth year throws himself off a bridge in a location where he is unlikely to survive. He knows he will hit pavement because he has probably thought about where and how so many times. Maybe he imagined it over and over again because he wanted to be certain there was no chance he would live. Those of us who have had suicidal thoughts as our occasional or steady companion in the darkest of dark times consider the finer details of carrying it out. "Will I live if I do it this way? And if so, who will bear the burden of my survival? I may be a quadriplegic who must be looked after twenty four hours a day if I live. No...that will never do. I must be sure I die."

I attended his memorial service today which was called a "celebration of life." A celebration of life seems far more appropriate when the deceased is 95 years old and life has been lived to its fullest potential, or when a disease has chosen the time of death. When death by suicide remains the only choice for ending suffering, a celebration of life seems a denial of what was true. This young man screamed for a message to be heard. Did anyone hear him? What was it that haunted him day and night? What made life so brutally painful that he chose to jump off a bridge in broad daylight on a Friday just a few days after his seventeenth birthday? And why is it that the topic of conversation at his memorial service was his preference for pasta without any sauce and the kind of socks he wore? When a teenager dies by a choice he makes after years of suffering shouldn't we be holding his suffering and at least making it a primary topic of discussion at his memorial service? Should we not embrace and tenderly hold his suffering as part of our own? Shouldn't we be talking about the bullying in schools that we close our eyes to and simply write off as 'stuff teenagers do'? What about the pressure he might have felt from our culture's relentless infatuation with academic test scores and grades? Shouldn't we be asking his friends what really happened and did we do them a terrible disservice by asking them to keep it light at his memorial service?

From where I stood, it seemed his church wanted memorial attendees to remember his smile and his wit and his love for video games. Maybe his parents preferred to keep the rest of the story private and I honor their need for privacy in this time of great pain. Yet his story and his pain is also ours. While I want to remember this young man for his wit and his quirks and his choice of socks, I also wanted us to talk about the wounding caused by cruelty perpetrated by teenagers toward their peers, and the real harm it causes, especially to those more fragile than others. There was no mention of the darkness and struggle he must have awakened to each day, no mention of the tension he held in his heart that found no relief, even in the love his family had for him. I wonder what this young man really wanted us to know about what it was like to live in his skin. Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of growing up and being out in this world where the competition leaves little room for those who cannot toe the line when the clock turns eighteen. And there is no medicine to change who one really is, gay or straight, addict or straight edge, black, white and every color in between, Christian, atheist, Jew or Muslim. And when there is no soft place to be who one is, no embracing of difference and diversity, the softest place to land is death. Even when the landing is solid pavement.

Really? You're going to F**k with me about this? More from "The Good Enough Mother"

She gets up at 4:30 to have her half hour on the treadmill in her living room. The house is still asleep, thank the good Lord (if there is such a thing). Then she has to get in the shower, get dressed and start making breakfast before her daycare kids arrive at 6AM. She took on more because they need the money. Some weeks they only have fifty bucks to feed a family of four and it just won't do at all.

In her sacred half hour, she dreams. Step by step, her shoes hit the strip of rubber on the treadmill and she breathes in a predictable rhythm. Her boy is a few months shy of eighteen and she knows she's in for a fight to get him placed in a group home. He is part of her, flailing arms, limbs that won't behave and big geen eyes fringed with thick black lashes. Seizures grip him in the night and she wakes up to make sure he hasn't bitten through his tongue. She tenderly changes the sweaty pajamas, cleans up the pee and slobber and tucks him back in. His clothes hang off a body misshapen by scoliosis and he struggles to stand up straight. When he's excited, he shakes his hands as if he might be ready to reach for the controls of his favorite video game. Sometimes, she wonders whether she wants her freedom from being a 24/7 caregiver or whether she feels she must give him up because her husband has threatened to leave her if she doesn't find placement for him the second he turns eighteen.
"Maybe I'll just take him and we'll leave. I handled him just fine before I married my husband. Seems like now I'm dealing with trying to make things okay for him and trying to take care of my son too. But I really am so tired..."

She fantasizes about leaving him on the doorstep of the government agency whose mission statement is to serve families with disabled children but whose actions fall far short.

"Here is is," she imagines saying. "You won't place him. Well fuck you. He's yours now. He's homeless cuz I got nothin' left." She says this to me while we sit on her sofa as all the babies nap to the sound of Sugarland on the radio. It's our little secret that she wants to run far, far away.

"He wet the bed three times over the last two days," she says. Her eyes fill. Then the phone rings and she picks up. It's the orthodontist's office calling about what they can't or won't do for her son who has a snaggle tooth that needs to be pulled or it will abcess.

"He is disabled, THAT'S why he's on Medicaid," she says rolling her eyes. She is used to fighting this fight day in and day out to get medical services, supportive services and other kinds of assistance for her boy. "We have really good insurance through my husband's work. But his secondary is medicaid. You don't bill them? Well then refer me to someone who will...You don't do that? Well who can...I have to call Medicaid to find a preferred provider? I already did and nobody...You're sorry? Really? Well why is this so difficult to bill the primary and then bill Medicaid for the difference? No I am not going to pay out of pocket...Can't you tell me who will just pull the goddamn tooth and bill the insurance? Yeah...okay. Fine. I will do it myself."

She hangs up and looks at me. "This is what I do eevery day every time he needs medical attention. You would think in this country that a child would not have to go without medical care. But it's always a struggle."

She dreams of days on a lake. She dreams of starting a business. She dreams of dressing up in leather and riding her Harley. "I have lots of ideas," she says. "But they die when my treadmill stops."

She has that frantic look again. "I am eating too much again," she says. "I once spent my days in the gym. I worked there and I worked out. I was so ripped. A guy with some big bodybuilding competition even offered to sponsor me and I said no. Can you believe I said no? How different would MY life have been."

I look at her and remind her that she is the most astonishing example of strength and patience I have ever witnessed. I could no more do what she does in one day than I could fly to the moon. We talk about hunger and how to feed it. Right now it's with food. So what...when her time comes, food will be the last thing she will feed that hungry soul with. But once in a while, she can feed that hunger by standing up and maybe issuing a definitive statement to her husband when he complains that the furniture is dusty or that there is a ring around the tub. That's when she rises up and puts her hands on her hips. She looks down at him while he sits on the sofa in judgment of her mothering, in judgment of how she won't have sex with him on account of her being tired all the time and how the tub needs a scrubbing. And she silently walks into the kitchen. And then the sponge flies across the room past his face followed by a plastic bottle of Soft Scrub. She breathes out and shakes that honey blond hair out of her face and moves like a panther through the living room and into her bedroom to her closet. She digs around way in the back and something rattles. It's the buckles, all ten of them. She puts on those leather pants and the matching jacket without a word. And when all ten buckles are buckled, she walks past him out to the garage where her motorcycle waits. And she mounts it like an Amazon and rides into the night.

Hanging On

I hang on
when I really need to uncurl my fingers
and let my self fall
like a red scarf in the desert wind
floating fearlessly against the sandstone canyon walls

I hang on the hook like an old pink coat
with a frayed neckline
where you put me
when you have something better to wear

I sway slightly when you walk by
hoping you might choose me this time
I lean against the wall
brushing my threadbare hemline
against the tops of your boots

Just noticing the rough leather
against the softness of cashmere
and remembering the smell
of your skin on my pillow

One day you will take me off the hook
and wear me as if it was our first dance
and for the moment I forget
that you will hang me up again

It's just the perfect dance
round and round like a red scarf
floating upon the trustworthy wind
toward the sun and the moon

Until you decide it is time to stop
and I dance on alone
upon those waves of desert wind
against the sandstone canyon walls

Garmin ForeRunner 405 Causes Woman to Fly Into Murderous Rage

Lurch gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405 sometime in the spring of 2009. I should never have agreed to be Lurch's girlfriend, we were better off as friends. But I was out of my mind with heartache when I decided to try. I thought maybe I needed a man who wasn't interesting and exciting. Lurch was neither. Predictable and mechanical, he works like one of those oil drilling machines near Bakersfield. Up, down, up down, get the oil, up, down, here is my oil, in a rhythmic fashion with a very predictable yield. Sex was similar which is why we only had it once, and even that single episode lasting eight minutes and thirty two point five seconds brought my dinner up to my throat.

Lurch likes to measure everything, a pastime that makes him delightfully happy and which I hate with a screaming passion. The ForeRunner 405 he gave me with such high expectation that I would love it, was like wearing Big Ben on my wrist. It was supposedly genious enough to tell me how far, how fast, where, when, what and how I was doing every single second of whatever physical activity I was engaged in. I didn't even take it out of the box for two months because I knew I would hate it. I just want a watch with maybe two buttons at most. A start/stop button and a button to reset it is plenty for me to manage.

Lurch also gave me a hanging toiletry bag because he had one made my the Swiss Army people and I coveted it because the bottles all stood up straight inside of it and you could tell which was the shampoo and which was your lotion and it had lovely little toothbrush holders. But he gave me a cheap one he found at a sidewalk sale which was just a lousy excuse for a toiletry bag and I just resented him for it. And he gave me a car cover because he had one and his main priority aside from measuring every inch and every detail of his daily runs was keeping his car clean at all times. I hated this thing he paid $500.00 for because it took forever to unfold and secure onto my car which didn't mind being dirty. I didn't mind either and I always had better things to do than wrestle a car cover over my car at 6PM when I got home from work and was ravenously hungry and annoyed with pretty much everything including Lurch.

I had passive agressive responses to these gifts that Lurch so proudly gave me. He called every night at exactly 8:00PM and his first question was, "Have you learned how to use your Garmin yet?" And I took a fiendish sort of delight in replying, "No...I couldn't carve out the four and a half hours it would take to learn how to use it today and I've used up all my vacation time. Maybe in a couple of years when I'm done with life as I now know it, I will take it out of the box and read the manual which requires a degree in computer science."

Besides, I was not sure I liked him enough to accept a gift worth over $300.00 especially if I wasn't planning on sleeping with him, and spent a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I could not sleep with him. In fact, that is where most of my vacation time was spent, and I came up with brilliant reasons for why I could not have sex with him. But I digress...

When he asked if I was using the car cover, I told him my car preferred a heavy coating of grit and mud since she was a tough girl and not a sissy who was afraid of a little dirt.

So anyway, I finally took the ForeRunner out of the box after about two months as I said. It was so complicated to understand that I cried and had a tantrum right in front of an elementary school trying to use it for the first time. I had only about 40 minutes to go for a run and I spent about 32 minutes trying to pull up all the right menus using the watch's bezel. I think I dropped to the sidewalk in tears and cast a spell upon Lurch in that moment.

When the ForeRunner did work, it often gave me information I did not want. If I ran for two and half hours on hilly terrain, I wanted it to tell me I burned 6,000 calories because it sure felt like I burned enough to justify three martinis and half a chocolate cake. Instead, it would tell me I only ran ten miles and burned 600 calories. Again, on the sidewalk on my back sobbing and cursing Lurch for giving me this horrid device.

On long bike rides, it would go blank in the midst of what was intended to be an 80 mile ride. I was then left to my imagination which is not particularly concerned with being precise; it prefers to embellish based upon perceived effort. The ForeRunner was supposed to measure distance and time, but would decide it did not want to measure these elements on a particular day and would decide instead to beep every time I turned left or right and would tell me how far away I was from San Bernardino. In century rides, it would quit for no apparent reason, or freeze which made me furious. When I couldn't have the most essential data, I became very anxious and realized in these moments that it was all Lurch's fault that I was becoming like him.
I decided to call Garmin and lobby hard for a replacement or a simpler device which would not require an advanced degree in computer science. It turns out that the wait time was at least 45 minutes for customer service so I emailed instead. A representative named Aaron wrote me a two page email describing what he thought the problem was and how I could troubleshoot by plugging in the USB wireless transmitter and then making sure the watch was set to ANT+ settings. And then there was a long list of things I had to do to update the software and then go through the troubleshooting procedure. I became fatigued and felt my bloodsugar drop to dangerous levels when I read Aaron's list of procedures, so I emailed him and told him I would prefer to pay the $79.95 to have Garmin do all this stuff. He was resistant to this idea and encouraged me to take a week off from work to learn these procedures for updating the software and testing the device using my heartrate monitor and engaging in activities I would normally use the watch for. This would have required a prescription for a benzodiazapene and additional medical insurance in case a had a stroke while cursing my way through this procedure so I emailed him again begging him for the address to the repair department. He emailed back and told me this was a complicated procedure because of the distance between the repair department and the financial department. The repair department is apparently in Kansas and the financial department is in Norway, and the two don't communicate other than by steamship. So my check for the repair would have to be sent to Norway via Iceland and when received, they would send an albatross to Kansas with verification that my check had been processed. Then the Kansas repair team would immediately fly into action to repair the device and would ship it back to me via Volkswagen to California since devices shipped by air tend to mess with the settings. I also told Aaron that the watchband had broken and would need a new pin. He informed me that this would be a simple matter of sending away for a new pin to Thailand for an addition $19.95 shipping not included. I should receive my device back by Christmas of 2012 at which point, I would need to send it back to Kansas to update the software again.

Lurch spends his life doing stuff like this which is why I grew more and more intolerant of him. It was simply a match made in Hell, that's all. His job, for which is highly overpaid, is to measure race courses and order Porta-Potties and he has it down to a science. He never tires of running his same route day in and day out with his Garmin measuring each and every step and he delights in knowing that he shaved off .00045 seconds off his time from last Wednesday.

I left Lurch and took the ForeRunner with me, but I wish I hadn't. I returned the toiletry bag and the car cover though.

What Love Isn't

Love is not closed
When the arms fold in and the shoulders enclose the heart like wings protecting a wet bird against a bitter wind,
Love will fly itself above the clouds where it hovers like a hummingbird near the sun,
parting the clouds for you if only you will just look up and offer your heart to its warmth
Love isn't here
or there...
It isn't sitting in a cage waiting to be tossed a bone
It doesn't pace the floor waiting for you to come home
It does not rage or scream its disappointment
It weeps softly looking up at you from its place near the sofa
where you left it right next to your suitcase full of fear.
It does not care whether you missed a spot or colored outside the lines
It only notices the colors
Love pours itself into every empty space
even the ones you thought you hid so well
It does not worry that you're leaving and may never return
And it does not disappear without a trace
It goes with you and dances all around you
lapping at your feet and running on ahead a bit so you'll know the way
It stays right beside you even when you're too busy to notice

Enforced Therapy - Works as well as enforced health care

A patient walks into a doctor's office because his boss tells him he has to go and get checked out for blurred vision. It's affecting his work performance. The patient is told by the doctor that he is diabetic and must go on insulin and quit drinking. The patient refuses to do either one. Can the doctor force him to quit drinking and take insulin? Can his boss? The answer is no. The patient still has the right to refuse treatment. Can his boss fire him? Only if his health condition prevents him from doing his job and when he has been offered resources and assistance to correct the problem.

This therapist walks into a home because she has been told to do a mental health evaluation on an 18 year-old boy. His evaluation and subsequent services if indicated, will be paid for by your tax dollars. In this case, the boy is on parole and the court has ordered therapy. I do the evaluation and the young man denies any symptoms indicating mental illness or suicidal or homicidal intent. I ask him if he wants therapy and his reply is: "Fuck no. I want to get me a job and get the fuck outta here. I mean no offense ma'am, but I don't need no fuckin' therapy."

Can I force him? If the court orders him to therapy as part of his parole requirements, I suppose THEY can force him and I become a part of that because I have been assigned the case. Will he engage in therapy and benefit from it? Probably not. I can have a conversation with him about his past and his family of origin, I can dig for problems and probably find some if he chooses to share with me, and I can probably identify some areas where he could use a little soul work, but the bottom line is, if he chooses to shut down, it's game over. He will have a bitter taste in his mouth for a long time about "therapy," and if he ever does need it, he probably won't seek it out because his first experience with it was force fed.

Your tax dollars might as well be flushed down the latrine. And if you total up the amount of money spent on cases just like these, it adds up to millions of dollars.

The solution? The state and county government budgets should be adjusted such that providing mental health services are offered only to those who seek it out. It can be offered to anyone by Child Welfare Departments, Juvenile Justice and other branches of human services, but ultimately, it should be the client's choice to accept it. Same as health care. And that is the ONLY instance in which I think mental health care should have parity with physical health care.

Fired

It must have been the recommendation that she have her daughter re-evaluated by a psychiatrist and that she be unmedicated for a week or two beforehand. As her daughter's caregiver, she receives money each month because her daughter has been given a pretty severe diagnosis. I wasn't seeing symptoms of schizophrenia and it is exceedingly rare for a child to be given that diagnosis. So I consulted a psychiatrist who affirmed that schizophrenia is extremely rare in children and followed his recommendation to ask the mother to have her daughter re-evaluated.

I left the house for the last time on August 3rd after an intense session where I thought perhaps some headway was made (see the blog entry entitled, "Dear Dad....")but I received a call the following week that the mother did not want me at her home again. My first thought was about her daughter, who at the age of twelve, has already thought about suicide. She speaks with the spirit of her father who committed suicide five years ago. She wants more than anything to have a bond with her mother, but has thus far been unsuccessful in her attempts to create one.

And then I thought about how the mental health system, funded with our tax dollars, passively supports this type of abuse. A child can be given a diagnosis for mental illness because a parents reports symptoms and behaviors and the treating psychiatrist can issue a diagnosis without thoroughly questioning all those who are involved in the child's life. This mother knew how to report symptoms and she knew her daughter would not argue on her own behalf; to do so would mean serious trouble at home when nobody was watching. True that this child had behaviors that were troubling in school, e.g., attention seeking from boys and bullying them if they did not give her attention and refusing to do her work,but I wanted to explain these behaviors thusly:

The child lost her father and her mother is so caught up in her own physical problems and her world of being "the sick one," that she sought attention in bizarre ways, entirely understandable given her circumstances. Her mother had not invested time in teaching her to cultivate her self-esteem and to get noticed because of her artistic ability or her amazing imagination. When this child was hungry, she snuck food because she was forbidden to help herself. Though money for food is scarce in this household, the starvation went beyond hunger for food. This child knew her hunger and fed it by taking anything that might feed it including food, her mother's nail polish or the attention of boys in her class.

I have done my part as a therapist to enable a system that makes children the bearers of mental illness when it should be attributed to the family system, the juvenile justice system or the educational system or all of the above. And I am unwilling to continue my participation despite the fact that this job is my main source of income right now.

Over the past three months, I have declined in my health and consumed too much chardonnay to medicate my shame over participating in a system that uses taxpayer dollars to impute mental illness to children because it's convenient or financially beneficial for their parents or the school or the system itself. I crawl through my front door after a day of being a mental health prositute feeling that I have no energy to give to what I really love. I love nothing more than offering what I have to people who want to explore, discover and learn in partnership with me. And I love to write. Writing is my way of connecting with the world. As Gloria Steinem said, "When I am writing, it is the only time I feel I do not need to be doing anything else." For me, writing is a joyful immersion, the way I play, and the way I engage with a larger audience.

The reckoning with the voice of my heart, which asks me in a beseeching and sometimes frantic tone, "What are you DOING?!" has gotten louder the more I do this type of work. And I can only answer that I have once again given in to my fear of not succeeding in what really gives me joy. I read the first three pages of Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way," and realized that I needed to stop doing everything that felt wrong immediately, regardless of whether it seemed not to make financial sense.

When fear threatens to level me, as it seems to do about every other day, I strain to see through this forest of thorns, and it's all I can do to hang on until the thorns give way to the softness of grass and sunlight. I heave myself onto the grass and ask for peace. I wonder if I have lost my mind and the answer is probably yes. I have not lost my heart though.

As I leave this child with the imagination of the world inside of her, I pray she will find some rest in her own ancestry where imagination was treasured, not mis-cast as mental illness. And I pray that in my brief time with her, perhaps there was one sentence or one moment that she can hold onto that planted a seed of belief in her potential.

Mrs. Farr’s Fifth Grade-Tahoe Lake School 1968

For some children, the classroom might be the only place they feel normal. It was that way for me. Home became so slippery and unpredictable; none of the clocks seemed to say the same thing and the lovely routine and delight in knowing when things are going to happen was gone. Life became especially frightening when I was a fifth grader and my mother became very ill, spending many weeks in hospitals far away on the threshold of death. I found relief at Tahoe Lake School which was my second home from 1963 until 1970. I knew that at fifteen minutes to nine, we said the Pledge of Allegiance and then we sang “My Country ‘tis of Thee” and then someone took the count for hot lunch and for milk only. I knew that at 10:30, we had morning recess and at 11:45, it was time for lunch. And I knew what was for lunch because the menu was handed out for the whole month and I kept in in my desk. I knew that we had spaghetti or pizza on Wednesdays, usually sloppy Joes on Mondays and fish sticks on Fridays. I never ate anything except the cornbread or mixed fruit on the brown plastic three-compartment plates except when we had fish sticks, then I ate all my lunch. I just loved that I knew what we were having every day. And I loved that the same kids and the same teachers were there every year. I couldn’t wait for fifth grade so I could have Mrs. Farr.
Mrs. Farr wore dark glasses all the time for reasons I never asked her about. Most of us thought it made her seem a little scary because we couldn’t tell if she was looking at us. They were shaped in the 1960's exaggerated cat eye style with a little smattering of rhinestones at the outer corners which served as the only frivolous decoration in her ensemble. Otherwise, she wore light lipstick, not the frosty colors that were all the rage back then. Her dress was usually a skirt to mid-kneecap with a matching blouse buttoned right up to the throat and pinned with a lovely pin or a scarf, opaque hose and flat, sensible shoes. She had gray hair that she brushed right from the cowlick forward and to the sides tapering around the back in a perfect oval curled slightly under. I adored her. It was my mission to please her, so I was quick to ask if I could stay after class to be the blackboard monitor, cleaning the green surface with the big eraser and drawing fresh lines with a line maker that held three pieces of chalk or straightening all of the desks into perfect rows. She taught us about things that meant a lot to her like learning the names of different types of trees indigenous to the Lake Tahoe area, perfect printing, Native Americans and Mexico, and how to fold a piece of paper into sixteen perfect squares for doing math problems.
She had reverence for trees and defended them when they were under threat as if they were her children. There was a huge Jeffrey Pine that stood right in the middle of the street in Tahoe City and on numerous occasions, it was proposed that the tree should be cut down because drunken tourists kept driving into it. And on numerous occasions, Mrs. Farr would storm down and stand right in front of the tree and scold the construction worker who held his chain saw ready to murder her favorite Jeffrey Pine. More than likely, he was once one of her students, and he backed down, knowing better than to argue with his teacher. She won many a stay of execution for the tree, but after she died, they cut it down because drunk drivers continued to run into it and no reflective lighting or protective fences seemed to reduce the number of annual casualties.
Mrs. Farr read to us or told us stories each day after lunch and I looked forward to getting lost in hearing of her adventures in Mexico with children who had no access to schools. Mrs. Farr spent many summers in Mexico building schools and teaching children. We became accustomed to saying “Good Morning” and “Good Night,” in Spanish and we learned the Mexican National Anthem which we sang for our parents at the winter assembly.

She told us stories about her girlhood growing up near the shores of Lake Tahoe where her parents had settled before the turn of the century. Her knowledge of Tahoe history was voluminous, and she always had some interesting little additions that hadn’t made it into the history books. She gave me my first insight into the injustices done to the American Indians by white people. She read the book “Ishi, Last of His Tribe” about a Yahi Indian whose tribe was eradicated along with so many other tribes by white gold seekers and devout believers in their inalienable right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness no matter whose toes were stepped on or whose ancestry was erased. She also told us the story of the Donner Party and of the starvation and death the travelers endured on the shores of Donner Lake, perhaps a Divine intervention in balancing the horrid scale of genocide brought upon American Natives by white skinned people in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
I went to Girl Scout Camp at Donner Lake in the summer. It was hard to imagine people starving and suffering in the same place I sang campfire songs and ate S’Mores until I was nauseous. She told the story with passion and stopped numerous times to answer our questions, just as my father did when he told stories. I wanted to be just like her and my desire to do well in school returned because Mrs. Farr gave me a reason to care. She cared for me at a time when life seemed so cruel, but never made an issue of it in front of anyone. She knew I was struggling and took me to lunch at Pedro’s Mexican Restaurant in Reno with her husband on Saturdays sometimes. She sent me cards in the mail where she wrote comforting messages to me in her perfect printing and signed them, “From Your Secret Pal.”

She let me go to the bathroom as often as I needed to (which was very often). All I had to do was wink at her and raise my hand ever so slightly and she would nod, allowing me to go without humiliating myself by raising my hand and waving every fifteen minutes. The medicine I took made my pee turn orange and I had to drink so much water to keep infections from coming back that I peed all the time, so the system with Mrs. Farr worked better than my old method of holding it until I leaked because I was too embarrassed to raise my hand.
Her attention to me made my shame about disappointing her twice as bad, so I only did it a couple of times. Perhaps the most shameful moment came when she caught me drawing a larger than life but otherwise anatomically correct penis on her blackboard at lunch time. I was responding to a challenge by my friends who told me I was too much of a teacher’s pet to render this particularly daring anatomical part on Mrs. Farr’s blackboard while she ate her lunch. When she walked in unexpectedly, I froze with my chalk in mid-stroke having just put the finishing touches on my work. The others were asked to leave and I was escorted by Mrs. Farr out into the hallway where I received three swats on my buttocks with her oak paddle. I then had to clean the blackboard with water each day for a week. I think she was trying not to smile when she saw what I had drawn on the board next to a Robert Service poem. But it was hard to tell what she actually felt with those dark glasses she wore.
There were people who came into my life for a single moment or for a period of a few months in my childhood years who made me feel special enough not to give up on myself. Mrs. Farr fed my hunger by knowing me secretly and quietly. The breath of love was ever so soft and sweet as she walked past my desk looking at my work. She awakened my desire to be a scholar again and again when it went to sleep in the fog of despair, and she blew on the little embers she saw in me whenever she sensed I was allowing it to die. She was the angel who pulled me from the heavy sleep of sorrow and showed me that the sun still came up and dried the dew on the little purple flowers in the meadow as it could also dry my tears. I felt belonging in her room where our paper mache volcanoes stood neatly in a row and where it smelled like her hand lotion near her desk. Sometimes, I took the sleeve of her soft wool sweater and held it to my cheek before I left the room for lunch.

Home Loan Schmodification - A True Story about “Home Retention Programs” and other madness in Sierra County, California

I will begin this story by acknowledging a truth. I should never have signed my name on the loan documents for my house in Sierraville, California, population 200. The biggest clue, when I went in to Eagle Mortgage in Truckee, back in February of 2007, was all the moving boxes around the office. "We're relocating," the loan officer said with the smile of an executioner delivering a last meal. Nonetheless, I sat down and signed papers the loan officer had so casually filled out with a "stated income" attributed to me of $9,000.00 per month, which was the amount I needed in order to qualify for this loan of nearly $300,000.00. But with my sweaty hand sliding down the pen, I signed them anyway. Talk about magical thinking...I imagined that maybe if I became a best-selling author and became a regular on Oprah, I could make that much money each month.
As a marriage and family therapist, I could not imagine earning that much unless I charged my clients $500.00 per session which I suppose some actually do. I decided to get a job with Sierra County as a senior mental health therapist in addition to working in private practice in order to afford my house payments of $2,000.00 per month. It was still unrealistic even with two jobs. The ink had not yet dried on the loan documents before Eagle Mortgage went out of business.

It was two years hence that I realized I was in such a hole that the only way out was to sell the house. I'd put over $60,000.00 into it which I knew I would never see in a sale. The confluence of trying to work full time with Sierra County Health and Human services under absolutely horrible working conditions, complete my PhD course work and keep my nineteen year old son from self-destructing, resulted in a major physical and emotional collapse. I left my job too physically ill and mentally battered to work, and crawled my way through the last quarter of my PhD course work with the aid of heavy anti-depressant medication, sleeping medication and daily therapy. Even then, there were many days I wished for death to take me.

My experience with Sierra County Health and Human Services was so insidiously violent that I still become nauseous when I reflect on it. It began about a month after my first day in September of 2007 when sat in my supervisor's office expecting to be given some direction on how to do the multiple jobs I was given outside of my job description. I was expecting to be given support and direction by this woman who was not only the Assistant Director, she was also a licensed member of my profession who knew the ethical codes around the supervisor/supervisee relationship. Instead of supervision, I received a detailed account of her affair with the county auditor and her impending marital break-up. Not only that, she took some sort of hideous delight in disclosing deeply personal information about other employees with the county. My heart sank as I realized her disclosures would forever poison our relationship. And I knew she would come to regret her frequent episodes of what I experienced as emotional rape and she would then make my life in my job unbearable, which she proceeded to do. And there was no remedy for me; the person with whom she was having the affair was the designated county official for handling complaints of abuse or exploitation by supervisors. My complaints to the director, the union and Sierra County were also dismissed. I was told basically not to make waves and just "let it roll off." I wish I had whatever personality trait is required to allow such abuse to "just roll of," but since I stand for protecting people against abuse of any kind in my work as a therapist and as a supervisor, I found it impossible to condone and began to suffer some severe psychological and physical effects. I still wonder how an agency whose mission it is to serve people in their physical and emotional struggles could abdicate its responsibility to protect its own employees for the sake of maintaining the status quo. I surmised that the director of this agency needed to remain in the good graces of the county auditor because he managed the money she needed to run her programs; how could she reprimand his lover?
Unfortunately, as I crawled away from Sierra County Health and Human Services with barely a shred of my sanity, the housing market simultaneously took a swan dive into the toilet.
I decided to be proactive and called the Bank of America in April of 2009 and warned them that I would no longer be able to make the $2,000.00 monthly payments as of June and requested assistance under Obama's Economic Recovery Act programs. After an hour and fifteen minutes on hold, the Bank of America told me they could not help me with a modification or any of the services offered under Obama's Economic Recovery Plan until I was at least eight months in arrears.
By June of 2009, I was well enough to work again and found a job with Inyo County for which I was hired. But because of California's budget problems they could not give me a hire date. It took me another two months to find a job which required a move away from the mountains to San Diego and a pay cut of about $15,000.00. The wait time between jobs created made my financial hole so deep I couldn't see the bottom. Eight months and a Chapter 7 bankruptcy later, I again applied for assistance with BAC's "Home Retention Team." I was given reams and reams of paperwork to fill out which I enthusiastically completed. Any phone call with BAC involved at least a 45 minute wait time on hold where I heard repeated messages "We're here to help! Want to avoid foreclosure? Bank of America has many programs for homeowners! Please stay on the line and our next available representative will be happy to assist you!"

In October, when the weather turned cold, I called a friend who is a home inspector and asked him to go to the house and turn off all the water. I also called the Sierraville PUD to make sure the water was turned off at its main source. The house was left in beautiful condition when I said goodbye to it in September. In the months leading up to my departure, I put money I really didn't have into a new fence, repairs and weekly yard work so the house would have every possible chance of selling.
"Goodbye my beautiful home," I told her kissing the front door. "If I can't have you, maybe a nice family will love you the way I did."

In February, when the house still had not sold despite a sell price of $150,000 less than the purchase price, I drove up from San Diego and out to the house with my real estate agent to speak to a prospective buyer about a short sale. We could not budge the front door despite the key turning easily in the lock. When I went around to look in the window, I noted what appeared to be a sheet of ice on the living room floor and furry stuff growing between the laminate floor boards. I forced a window open and crawled inside. I heard the sound of water gushing from the downstairs bathroom like a creek. I rushed to the hemorrhaging pipe and turned it off and knelt upon the water soaked floor surveying the damage like a person at the scene of a horrible automobile accident. I stopped the bleeding but it was too late. This beautiful woman of a house was near death and I could do nothing now except try to stop further injury to her battered body.
I swallowed back vomit as I phoned State Farm Insurance who told me my policy had "accidentally" been cancelled in September when I called to request a renter's policy for my place in San Diego where I was working. It was the agent's error, but since I accepted the refund money, thinking it was a refund from a different policy, they refused to accept any responsibility. It was a quick, unapologetic phone call from a State Farm adjuster who told me I should have been more responsible. I could not argue; she was right, I should have checked into it further. My only defense was the fog and heaviness that comes along with depression which often manifested in sleepwalking through my days. I was barely over the lip of the worst of it and setbacks sent me tumbling back into immobilizing, withering inertia.
The Bank of America issued its own policy administered by Balboa Insurance Company out of San Diego. I was so dumb with depression that I just assumed that was all part of the Chapter 7 proceedings and didn't bother to check out why Bank of America was issuing a homeowner's policy when I already had one through State Farm (or so I thought). When I made phone calls to the bank or to my bankruptcy attorney, it was all I could do to have a coherent conversation without unraveling into tears.
I drove back up from San Diego in March of 2010 to meet the independent insurance adjuster from Eagle Adjusters in Reno. He seemed incapable of doing his job as the contractor I brought with me noted. We walked through the house which stunk of black mold and was littered with dead flies. I wandered the rooms, once so beautifully decorated and cared for. I wondered if I could just live here anyway. If I died from the black mold, I might not even notice, but at least I could die knowing I had not abandoned a home that felt like my mother.
I waited and waited and waited for Balboa Insurance to issue some sort of disposition as to the adjuster's findings. Serv-Pro out of Reno had already gone in and done some of the tear out and clean up in the house but on April 11th, they informed me that Balboa Insurance was denying any coverage and the work had to stop. Balboa Insurance stated that the policy did not cover black mold nor would it cover any tear-out of asbestos. The house was built in 1853. Its walls and floors contain asbestos and the black mold was a direct result of the burst water pipe. Essentially, they were stating they would do nothing at all.
So the house stood in limbo, unsellable and uninhabitable from February on. I received one written notice in April from Balboa Insurance stating they were awaiting the adjuster's report before issuing a decision on coverage. I made repeated phone calls and left messages for the claims adjuster, all of which were unreturned until I left a message threatening to contact the company's CEO and issue a formal complaint with the insurance commission, which I did.
Meanwhile, the Bank of America, parading its "Home Retention Programs" as an accessible and user-friendly program to assist people like me in retaining their homes, continued to send me reams and reams of paperwork to complete. I happily completed all of it and turned it around with lightning speed, thinking they were really going to offer me a way to at least hang onto the house for long enough to sell it when the market reversed its death drop.

In late May, I received a phone call from another independent adjuster from Eagle Adjusters in Reno who said the previous adjuster dropped the ball and never sent anything into the insurance company at all. So he was hired to re-open the investigation and promised to be thorough and prompt in getting the necessary documentation in to Balboa Insurance Company so that the house could hopefully be brought back to life. In its current condition, it was not even a candidate for a short sale because of the black mold. That was late May. I am writing this on August 13th. On this day, I decided that I would spend a little money I managed to save up on having the grass cut and a lock put on the outside of the sliding glass door.
So I contacted my neighbor, Sara Wright about checking in on the house and recommending a person to do the yard work. She told me she could barely stand to look at the house because it had been so neglected. My shame deepened. I simply had no money to do anything. She recommended I call LaVerne Diltz who at 80 years old, still seems to have it in him to cut grass for folks on his riding mower. Since the grass is knee-high now, it needs a powerful machine to do the work. When I phoned Laverne, he informed me that he'd seen a notice in the legal section of the Mountain Messenger that my house was going to be sold at auction on August 19th.
I heard nothing from the Bank of America about its intention to auction the house; I was under the impression I was working with them to retain it until the insurance company did what they are paid to do which is repair damage to people's homes when unforeseen accidents occur. Once fixed, it would be worth more than the land it sits on and some nice family would come along and buy it at a really decent price. That idea made my heart feel less beaten and broken.
Upon hearing this news from LaVerne, I called the foreclosure department to inquire as to the validity of this news which they affirmed. They were indeed planning to auction the house on August 19th. When I asked whether they planned to inform me, they told me they were under no legal obligation to inform me of their intention to auction the house since it was in foreclosure status.
"But what's the point of going through all the trouble of doing a loan modification if your intent is to auction it anyway?"
The woman answered, "Are you living in the home?"
Exasperated, I told her I was not because the home was uninhabitable. I then launched into the story of what happened for what must have been the 50th time. I also told her I wondered why an insurance company the Bank of America was paying was doing absolutely nothing to make the needed repairs to the house. She was impotent in being able to address this issue nor was she interested in taking any action as every one of the dozens of Bank of America representatives I had spoken to over the previous months had been. She simply said, "Well, we are under no legal obligation to inform you of our intent to auction the property. Loan modification reviews do not prevent foreclosure."
Perhaps they have no legal obligation to inform homeowners that their homes are going on the auction block, but I wonder if corporations like Bank of America or Balboa Insurance or State Farm Insurance feel any ethical or human obligation to keep homeowners informed and apprised of their options and rights. And a little compassion wouldn't hurt either.
As I heard this news, I was driving out to Fallon to the reservation where there is no love put into any of the homes and no life in the land around them. I thought of how crushed I felt when I left my job at Sierra County and how utterly crushed a defeated I felt now as I drove to try to offer a family my services as a therapist. As I pulled onto the dusty road of the family’s home where I was expected to offer family therapy for a full two hours, I swallowed back tears. My pen exploded, leaving blotches of black ink on my hands and clothing and I was out of tissue. Somehow being in this place at this moment in my life seemed almost poetic; the Native American people whom I was about to serve have suffered hundreds of years of abuse and indifference. As a white woman, I have not even begun to touch that experience.
The callousness way in which corporations treat human beings who are losing their homes is literally heart stopping. I can only refuse to take on the same poisonous attitudes of corporations and employers whose stated missions to serve others do not even come close to their actual behavior which is self-serving, profit-centered and amoral.
My house will be auctioned off and my endless chest compressions and resuscitative efforts to revive her will cease. I have accepted full responsibility for overestimating my ability to pay for this house and although my heart weeps for so much at this time, I know that I put all the love and tenderness into a home that cradled many dreams. My reasons for writing this are almost entirely selfish. I lament not having the tenacity to stand my ground when Sierra County Health and Human Services should have taken responsibility to correct a blatant breach of ethics and justice. With a little advocacy and remediation, I may have been able to remain at my job and continue paying for my house, at least until the market rebounded a little. I am angry that this matter was not handled by the director in a manner fitting her position which would have been to remove her assistant director from her position and put her in some other position where she could not cause such harm. I am angry that when I presented this issue to a member of the county Board of Supervisors, nothing was done to see that my position was protected. It seems this is not an uncommon practice among employers in small counties and rural areas. The single most important redemptive experience in my employment in San Diego (which was also with the county) was that behavior such as I experienced in Sierra County would not be tolerated for a second.
The unselfish reason for writing this is to share my experience so that others in similar circumstances know they are not alone and we need to take a stand. I am disheartened and angry that these alleged "Home Retention Programs" appear to be nothing of the sort as many people have told me. In closing, I see more clearly that the problem with this country can be distilled down to a lack of love and lack of attention to each other and to ourselves. Our country suffers from the disease of indifference and an attitude that people are disposable. Reversing the momentum of this monstrous behavior requires unity and courage to speak out and to refuse to be cut-off, put on hold, bounced around and told we have no rights. This applies to the attitudes encountered in the public school systems, government and in our interactions with multi-national corporations whose syrupy sweet mottos belie their “we don’t care, we don’t have to,” behaviors.

The Wheelbarrow of Life - Could be related to something therapeutically valuable...

Today I fondly remembered my shiny blue wheelbarrow that I purchased from Home Depot in August of 2007. I also purchased a Honda lawn mower with Smart Drive which makes it easier for dainty females (and men who might not be very strong due to age or infirmity) to steer and push lawn mowers through grass that should have been mowed a week or two ago. And I purchased one of those weed whackers with the green string that could kill you if you are not wearing the appropriate safety gear, such as a suit of armor, goggles and army boots. When I loaded my beautiful blue wheelbarrow with stuff, I usually overestimated the amount with which I could safely travel across the yard because I did not consider myself a helpless and dainty female. I considered myself tough and resiliant despite the fact that I worried about how awful my toenails looked when I wore sandals. I loaded it with branches, weeds and bear crap; lawn clippings, unwanted thistles and rocks, and proceeded to push with all my might to "the pile." I was thinking this "pile" might somehow evolve into a wellspring of life-giving compost, just like the compost bins my brother in-law Richard created in his yard. Almost anything was compostable in Richard's bins and they often issued a nice plume of steam which meant the bacteria were having mad sex all the time and the ecosystem was fairly bursting with life. The earth will be saved all because of Richard's efforts and I meant to emulate him as much as possible.

But my wheelbarrow only had one wheel and I was only one small woman and despite my imagined power, I lost control of it because of my tendency to overload it. I tried to stop it, but its momentum gathered and it headed for the creek just as the lawn mower had when I left it idling for a moment while I caught my breath. It was my own damn fault; I'd waited too long to mow and I was mowing grass that exceeded my determination. My blue wheelbarrow spilled its contents all over the nicely mown grass all the way down to the creek and I had to wade in to retrieve it hoping the paint wasn't scratched.

My wheelbarrow was often loaded with shit from bears, dogs and deer until I began to treat the bear and deer shit differently than the dog shit. The bear shit was a symphony of berries and apples and I asked myself what Richard would do. I actually abbreviated that thought to "WWRD." Instead of loading the wheelbarrow with poo, I just got my shovel (also purchased at Home Depot), and used the "scoop and fling" method, which was kind of fun. I flung the bear and deer poo into the landscaped areas that I paid far too much money for so that the ecocycle could continue. Bear and deer shit, when airborne, distributes very well and all areas of the garden and landscaping benefitted from this method. That shit is loaded with bacteria plants can use. They recognize the code and they dance with delight as they are showered with berries and "bearly" digested apples.

The dog shit was different. That shit is just plain foul because most people feed their dogs from bags and the food is made of ghastly mixtures of things, just like what Kentucky Fried Chicken or McNuggets are made of. The farts alone from this type of product can kill a human when no other ventilation is available. So I threw the dog poo into the garbage. I am sure that two years hence, it still festers in the dump trying desperately to decompose along with Twinkies, Kotex products and Pampers.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes...the wheelbarrow of life. So today, when I fondly remembered my shiny blue wheelbarrow and the various things I chose to load it with, I thought of how I often load my life with things I think I can push but inevitably end up feeling exhausted, tits up in the creek, wishing I could just take a nap right then and there and stop working so hard to push things that don't really matter.

And I thought of how nice it feels to have a balanced load. I thought of the wisdom in throwing things out that simply do not belong in my life and the lightness I feel when I can offer things to nature that need to be recycled. I do not need to keep more than a few pairs of shoes; I only need one car and one bike. I don't need to stock up on things in case the world ends because if it does, I would rather just perish along with everything else.

I find that these days, I live life as if I might die tomorrow. I love deeply and I love with devotion; I don't hold back anymore and I take risks even though the fear makes me cry. And I let go of what doesn't really make sense to tote around.

If Not Now - an update on Sierra Agape Center

Placing an ad in the AT&T Yellowpages last March was nearly the most challenging thing I have ever tried to accomplish. Almost as challenging as trying to get the lead role in my nursery school play. I still resent being miscast as a shepherd when I should have been Mother Mary and having to wear a dishtowel around my head.

Anyway, it seems At&T was not particularly excited about Sierra Agape Center for Soul-Tending whose mission is to make therapeutic healing services available to people who cannot afford to pay the typical fees for psychotherapy. I decided to offer my services based in the Buddhist Paramita of Dana. There are eight Paramitas, each building upon the next, all intended to extend or open one beyond what is comfortable. Dana is the Paramita of generosity, which in its true meaning, is meant to challenge people to give up what they think they need and give more than they think they have.

I had to make numerous phone calls and leave several warrior-like messages in order to execute my business with AT&T. I don't think they really wanted my business even though I paid all my bills last year. I filed a Chapter 7 which was evident when they looked up my credit report, so I was written off as a bad risk. After my repeated phone calls and messages, I think they went so far as to categorize me as just another crackpot with a weird new idea. But persistence paid off and I finally received a return call from a weary representative who took my order but not without a prior warning that I would not be extended any credit and that I would need to pay in advance for my advertisement. In typical Orphan fashion, I marshalled my dignity and proudly offered my debit card number for my humble space in the AT&T Yellowpages.

Sierra Agape Center was a seed I was too weak to cultivate back in 2007 when I spent far too many hours alone in my old house in Sierraville having conversations with mice. I felt rumblings and callings to change the way in which my profession operated, which became more audible once I began my quest for a PhD in Depth Psychology, but the load of work and school and a badly broken heart left little energy for developing a shift in the way I practiced psychotherapy. Depth Psychological thinking and practice involves a sort of slow process of disrobing and then peeling one's own skin off until nothing is left but raw flesh and bone. It is an alchemical journey of opening door after door after door and greeting the thin line between the underworld and the world in which we live, which is like dancing on the sliver of a new moon. The choice is then to close one's eyes and leap into the abyss, hopefull landing in the small boat which carries you through the night sea journey, or the journey of the soul's whim and beckoning. There is nothing to hold on to, and one's vision no longer belongs only to the eyes, for all the senses are engaged, and the world becomes a landscape of shadows and vales where knowing by seeing is no longer dependable.

In this night sea journey, I was reduced to rubble and had intimate conversations with the question of life or death. When I stirred from this sleep, and found myself still alive, I decided there was no point in living anything less than a truly authentic life. For me, this meant challenging the prevailing paradigms in which psychology is taught and practiced. It also meant living with an undefended heart in all situations whether it be work, play or love. Love was and is especially challenging because I tend to embody the archetype of the Orphan whose shadow aspect is of longing, suffering in love, and of being bereft. However, the lighter side of this archetype is resourceful, abundant and capable of massive love and compassion. I would prefer to embody that. Liberating this aspect requires an undefended heart and moving against the tide of fear of loss.

It is not easy by any means, and will be a daily practice for the rest of my life. Although Sierra Agape Center is my heart's quest, I still struggle with the intertia of fear and the shadow Orphan's tendency to curl up under the roots of a big tree and sob with despair over how harsh the world can be. I still shrink into shyness and frailty at the thought of trying to promote my mission and pitching my ideas to potential grantors because it all seems so complicated. I often feel like Dorothy the Small and Meek trying to convice the wizard to send me home to Kansas when I need to feel and behave like Helen of Troy.

And then there is the reality of paying the bills. My colleagues ask me if my clients pay when given the option to donate what they can and what is affordable. I am delighted to report that all but one or two gladly pay what their pocketbooks can comfortably part with. I am genuinely touched by their devotion to themselves and to spending time with me. Those who say they have no money usually do not return for more than a second session. I am still suspending any solid conclusion as to why that is, but it seems that the majority of clients who seek me out really want to be fair and they are genuinely motivated to learn what they can from the experience of soul-tending. Others may not be quite ready for such a journey.

I could not survive on donations only at this point and am seeking sources of funding to increase my capacity to serve, but I am finding that I love this work more than I ever have. When I doubt myself, I turn my eyes inward to face my heart which asks simply, "If now now, then when will you trust in me?"

Enough about therapy...let's talk about my petunias

I like to surroound myself with beauty and color. I do not have a garden which is a good thing because it would die a horrible death from neglect, overfeeding or underfeeding of fishy smelling stuff that promises to make up for all one's horticultural deficits. So I have planter boxes and little pots in which I have planted petunias and lobelia. I really took a risk and mixed in some kind of pansy looking thing in some of my wooden pots. And because I am very much for sustainable living in any form, I also planted some cilantro and and basil, imagining myself cutting the leaves with my Martha Stewart shears and creating wonderful soups and sauces. I even have my gardening tools all arranged in a cute little basket out on my front steps so all the neighbors can see how devoted I am to my horticultural development.

So I happily placed my wooden pots of newly planted petunias mixed with pansies and lobelia on my porch. It looked so inviting and welcoming that I could hardly wait to drive into my driveway each evening to see the burst of color coming from the rectangular redwood planter boxes on the porch railing and the little pots along the side of the house leading to the front door filled with basil, cilantro and deep purple petunias.

You cannot imagine my dismay when I opened my front door one morning to take the garbage out. I always have a mild anxiety attack on Monday mornings when it's garbage day because I know he will be here any minute and I must have the recycle bag out and the actual trash out by 7AM or he might pass me by. And then he would think of me as just another lazy female who cannot be bothered to remove her own garbage receptacles from the bear box and place them on the street for easy pick-up.

So I always make sure I haul them out there even when wearing my most hideous pajamas.

Anyway, I opened the front door and looked forward to gazing upon my beautiful basil, cilantro and petunia pots only to discover that they had been ravaged. Nothing but stems remained of my horticultural children. There was but one small leaf remaining of my basil and barely a leaf of my cilantro. My petunias had been eaten down to leaves only, nary a blossom remained.

The culprit? An adorable little bunny rabbit who lives under the house. How could such an adorable little creature do such heinous damage? I was confounded,thinking that bunny rabbits only ate carrots and other vegetables like they do in movies. But petunias? And basil and cilantro? Was I dealing with a bunny rabbit with culinary dreams and a palate like Julia Child's? Mais il est tres impossible!!

But it was true...

My only recourse was to call Richard. Richard is my brother in law, who is not only a horticultural wizard, he also counts birding, mediation, qi gong, wine tasting and home construction among his many gifts.

"Have you tried elevating the petunia pots above bunny rabbit reach?" he inquired, as if I had not already thought of this tactic.

"Why yes, Richard, I have considered that option," I said. "However, I am looking for just the perfect object or system for this purpose and have thus far been unsuccessful. I saw two white bar stools at the thrift store which would have served the functional purpose, however, white bar stools did not fit in with the rustic decor I had in mind."

He was without any other suggestions which was dissapointing because I was certain he might have invented some sort of elixer that was non-poisonous yet extremely foul and objectionable to keep his own herbs and petunias safe.

"Well Richard, don't you use some kind of spray or deterrant for critters that eat your flowers and other important plants such as your cannabis?"

"Yes, but my problem is not bunny rabbits, it's snails. And I retard them."

"What do you mean 'retard'? Do you mean salt? Pouring salt on them?"

"Well, yes. 'Retard' is just the polite word for it."

"So you dissolve the snails with salt," I affirmed.

"Yes...I dissolve them. It is better than using other types of snail retardant products wihich tend to prolong the suffering," he said.

"Sort of like love," I said. "Better to use salt and dissolve the entire fucking thing immediately rather than using some other kind milder poison like lying or something..."

"Well I never thought of it that way, but yes."

"So Richard...I was thinking that if I put carrots in the pots, the bunny rabbits would eat those and get really full and then they would not be hungry for my petunias or my basil. What do you think of that idea?"

"Hmmm...well I suppose it's worth a try. It's just that they might tell all their friends and relations that you're serving carrots and you will be buying a lot of carrots which is okay because you can buy them fairly inexpensively."

"Well I think I will try that approach and see if it works."

Richard was supportive and enthusiastic about this unique way of handling the problem. If the carrot method fails, I will be revisiting the bar stool idea.

"Dear Dad, Today I am going to tell you...

...how I feel inside because mom never understands what I feel like deep down inside of my heart. I feel like I have so much madness and sadness boiling and festering inside of me that it is so bad. One time or maybe even a couple of times, I wished I was dead. There I said it.

I hope someday, my madness and sadness will turn into joy and happyness."

This letter was written by a twelve year old girl whose father committed suicide when she was eight years old. She has not been successful at connecting with her mother who is so consumed with her own problems that she cannot see beyond herself.

I have written about her before, this girl who dreams of becoming a flying dragon, or Pegasus the winged horse, or whose dream upon her thirteenth birthday is to become a shape-shifter. Her imagination sees beyond the world we apprehend with our concretized eyes and ears, and yet this wonderous love and reverence for imagination is perceived as mental illness and she is issued a diagnosis. She is prescribed medication that dulls her senses and subdues the images of her dreams and her imagination so that she does not create problems in school, or for her mother, who tires of her endless questions about the landscape she sees when she closes her eyes and the spirit of the wolf in her Cherokee ancestry.

Today she sobs uncontrollably in front of her mother and me when I read her letter out loud to her dead father. She is so hungry to connect with something that validates what her soul already knows. She lives in the realm where image and dream are reality and the world just gets in the way. Carl Jung would have taken her into his arms and wrapped her in love, assuring her that her intuition is indeed the authentic voice, a voice many of us ignore or silence because of its ill fit with constructed reality. He would have told her that she shares a special place among many poets, artists and dreamers who have been condemned as "insane," throughout the last three centuries.

She rocks herself back and forth as tears fall like a river. "Mom, you are not being the wolf spirit! Wolves are our feminine spirit animals and you are not being that to me!" she cries gazing up at the photo of the wolf on the wall.

I glance at her mother who for once is not yelling or criticizing. When she attempts to yell in defense, I hold my hand up in a gesture of silence, allowing her daughter to continue.

"I just need you to love me like my dad loved me mom! He was the best dad ever in the whole world....even the whole universe!"

Her mother defends, "You barely ever saw him! He was never here!"

My eyes fill and I try to hold her daughter's experience of her father while also containing her mother's perception of his absence.I explain that her daughter is cherishing a memory that offers a glimmer of the sweet love she craves. Whether her memory is factual is immaterial; it is the longing for love and connection that matters. It is simply expressed as the idealized love she experiences when she remembers her father.

Her mother escalates, raving about how her daughter steals food in the middle of the night, how she steals her jewelry to wear in front of the mirror just to see what it feels like.

My voice is almost a whisper. "She longs for you. Her stealing is symbolic of a hunger she is trying to feed. It is not for food or jewelry or money; it is simply this; She wants you to teach her about what you know very deep inside from long ago, about wolf spirits and dragons. She wants to feel a kindred with you, not with me or a case worker or social worker...just you."

I swallow hoping she will not turn away and tell me to leave her house immediately.

"You must teach her to love her imagination. You know perfectly well she is not insane or mentally ill. Our culture has segregated imagination and dream to fit a construct created by people who benefit by such things as diagnosing people with mental illness, namely the medical community."

She nods her head in affirmation. She recalls her own dreams and a dream journal she once kept, now tucked away on a shelf covered in dust. I notice that all her crystals and mandalas have been dusted since my last visit.

I let my breath out and her daughter looks into my eyes. I tell her, "You must be careful about whom you share these visions of yours. Not many will appreciate and understand what you know and see. You must learn to be the shape-shifter you wish to become on your thirteenth birthday, which means you must speak whichever language works in the reality you are in. Do you understand?"

She nods and says, "yes." her mother nods "yes."

She tells me about a recurring dream she has of a sea gull eating her older sister. The bird is red and blue, red symbolizing anger and evil, blue symbolizing calm and peace. She says the bird becomes more red with each recurrent dream and she is unable to speak or do anything to save her sister. She feels powerless against this force of evil and wonders if there is some power that she can access from her ancestry to save her sister.

She asks her mother if there is such a power in her ancestry. A power that she can access to reclaim peace and serenity. Her mother nods that indeed, such a power exists.

"When will I know it?" she asks her mother.

"You will know. It is not something that happens at a certain age; it happens when you are ready to know it," her mother says.

I sit in the room surrounded by dusty pictures of wolves, of grandmothers dressed in deerskin, and shelves of stones and symbols where meaning still lives among the symbols of American life.

I have only one or two hours per week and only so much energy in this tired body to give.

"Do you believe dreams come true if you imagine hard enough?" she asks me as I prepare to leave.

"Oh I absolutely believe that we have not even begun to know the power of our imaginations," I say and hug her goodbye.

If I did not believe in miracles, I do not think I would survive one more second in this work.

"Oh please, oh please," I pray as I get in my car to make the long drive home. "Let this mother and daughter find one another..and make it soon."

And now for my next act...

Therapist leaves an apartment after visiting a mother and daughter. Therapist decides she can no longer participate in this charade where children are assigned mental illness because its convenient for their parents. Therapist wonders about the ultimate consequences of simply being truthful about who the patient really is and refusing to pretend she is "doing therapy" with people who don't want it or need it. Therapist envisions herself working as a housekeeper at the Hyatt where nobody speaks her language and never being heard from again.

Therapist has a fantasy between Reno and Truckee while stuck in construction traffic:

"So, Lola, I'm thinking that it isn't actually your daughter who could benefit by therapy." Lola sits on her sofa in her living room which is so clean that I feel I should suspend myself over the furniture so I don't make a dent in the upholstery. All the items in her refrigerator face the same direction. The towels are folded, but she re-folds them every few minutes and scolds her daughter if one is incorrectly folded. She smiles at me after I tell her this.

"Oh?" she says forcing a worried smile.

I tell her that her daughter doesn't actually have a discipline problem. I tell her that it's too much to ask of an eight year old to organize all her dolls so that they face a certain way, that every piece of lint is picked up of the carpet and to make sure every book is in alphbetical order. And I tell her that this level of regimentation and pressure on her daughter will result in horrible disaster,I would guess right around 12 or 13, when she realizes she can loosen her chains and run away into the arms of her dark side. There, she will explore her own underbelly in ways her mother never thought possible even when she herself was a crack addict living on the strip in Vegas, cocktailing to feed her habit. This little girl of hers, now so clean and tidy, not a hair out of place, will suddenly turn and become very messy somewhere inside. Maybe a raging eating disorder? Anorexia to act out her starvation and to manifest how the quest for perfection has dried her out and made her wither inside. She will get smaller and smaller, closer to death, disappearing from this noisy world of folding towels perfectly and peering fearfully from her perch of perfection into the abyss of disapproval. Or maybe she'll burn and cut herself, marking herself as a separate being from her mother. She will carefully take the cigarettes and leave perfect circles on her arms and legs, alternating them with careful carvings which she will leave in her flesh, each one telling a story of unspoken rage. Or she might curl up inside and retreat, becoming withdrawn, closed and dark, like a snake preparing to shed her skin. She will be dusky and silent and in time, she will be unable to distinguish between reality and unreality. Or perhaps she will turn on all her faucets full force, spewing psychic blood and vomit everywhere, thereby reminding her mother that the dark side never goes away. One cannot exorcise it with three hours per days of Bible study, or take a dust cloth and polish and polish and polish hoping the shine will hide the shadow. She will be everything her mother is fearful of and she will not be discreet. She will smell like every dirty mattress she sleeps on with men she doesn't know and she will only live at night. By day, she will sleep it off somewhere while her mother paces and calls the police to find her...again.

Who the F**k do I think I am? And who do THEY think I am?

Yesterday was my day at a half-way house in Sparks. It occurs to me that every time I have to go there, I am not sure what it is I am supposed to do. I was given the instructions to "go there and do therapy," with whomever happens to be thrown into the mix that week. All the residents are boys 18 or older who have been released from kiddie prison. The "house managers" are a couple who seem only to be present to put food in the fridge and monitor the rules, which include curfew and cleaning chores which appear to me to be absent altogther.

These boys do not run to greet me exclaiming, "Oh goody, it's therapy time!" They are polite and they cooperate with me, but they are all understandably guarded and most definitely not really that interested in exploring their deepest emotions. They do not show outward signs of any mental illness, most have conduct problems arising out of horrible childhoods and institutionalized life. They all have parole officers and some have a crew of so-called treatment providers to help them launch into adulthood without boomeranging back to prison.

This half-way house is dismal. It's dirty, it has no soul or warmth, and the house managers are not interested in participating in any way to help me know what exactly it is that I am here for. I just know I have been instructed to "do therapy." I feel like a surgeon who gets scrubbed and shows up to the operating theatre ready to work. There is a patient on the table and the surgical teams says, "Just do surgery." "On what?" I ask. "We don't know...but do surgery." I ask the patient, "Do you know why I am here? Does anything hurt? Do you have a tumor I can take out?" The patient says, "No nothing hurts and I don't think I have a tumor. They just told me I need surgery."

I tear off my latex gloves. "Goddammit," I curse and leave the theatre, pissed off that I have wasted an entire afternoon preparing.

I walk into the half-way house after getting a phone call from Derwood the house manager who tells me I need to be there as soon as possible because he needs to go somewhere. And could I please change my schedule around to come earlier because it isn't convenient that I am coming later in the day. "I arranged it this way because Jose works until 4PM." I tell him. "Oh well that changed and he now has Wednesdays off." "Well people need to inform me of these changes," I say brusquely.

I leave a message for Edward, whose role I am uncertain of. He seems to be a case manager of sorts who is there a lot of the time. I have told him before that I can't really "do therapy" with people who don't want it. In fact I won't. It's a waste of time and tax payer money and it's unethical to excavate a person's psyche against their will. The boys are in the half-way house for up to three months to learn basic life skills, to get treatment for emotional and mental health problems if they need it, and to re-integrate themselves back into society. They are expected to find jobs or get into school, save enough money to get a place to live and obey all the rules of the house while they are there. One boy has Asperger's Disorder which is a form of autism, not quite as severe, but still, most with Asperger's have difficulty understanding social cues. They are eccentric and odd in their behavior, which isn't a bad thing, it just puts people off if they don't know. Although he is very bright, he has the classic spectrum of behaviors I would expect which means he is an anomaly here in this half-way house. He has weird tics and habits, which include binge eating because he has no impulse control; excessive masturbation because he sits in his room most of the day with his computer and nothing to do, and intrusive behavior with other boys, who, having just been released from prison, have no patience and no way of understanding him.

When Edward presents me with this set of problems with this boy, I tell him that he will not respond to traditional therapy because he does not know me or trust me and he will deny that he has any problems with food or masturbation. He casually told the other boys that he would like to have sex with the house manager's Chihuahua but she was too small. He eats without attending to cues that he is full and is unconcerned that he is eating other people's food. He eats until he vomits. Edwin would like me to perform some kind of therapeutic magic. I envision myself a surgeon again in the operating theatre. "Just remove whatever it is that causes him to want to have sex with the dog," the team tells me. My first thought is of course to go right to the most obvious source.

I tell Edward, "This client does not feel comfortable enough with me yet to have discussions about deviant sexual behavior and its consequences. Therfore, I suggest that you, as the person he feels most comfortable with, tell him that having sex with animals or any other living thing without consent or cooperation is against the law and unless he wants to end up in prison where he'll get plenty of non-consensual sex, he'd better knock it off. And furthermore, the kid needs to get off his ass and do some hard work for about eight hours a day; then he'll be too fucking tired to sit in front of his computer jacking off." Edwin blushes and shifts around in his chair. He wasn't expecting me to say "jacking off," I could tell. "And as far as the eating behavior, the medicine slows his metabolism and increases appetite which is even more reason for him to quit sitting around, so I suggest you get him into a fitness program as well. Got it? That's my "therapy."

I leave the operating theatre.

I walk into the grungy, disgusting kitchen where the other boys are searching for something edible. "So, Lozado, I hear you fucked up and didn't come home last night," I say. Edwin complained that he wasn't following house rules. Lozado is a tough kid. I weigh about 110; he weighs about 160, all muscle, teeth and memories of knife fights. But his eyes soften when I catch them. "Yeah...I was trying to get home but my bus transfer expired," he says in his gang-twang Mexican tinged English. We sit down on the dirty sofa. His father was deported the other day and he is uncertain that his mother will be able to pay rent. She has three other children including a daughter who at fifteen, has just aborted her second pregancy. Nobody is sure whether she did it on purpose, it happened in a bathroom at the mall. I ask him if it helps to talk. "No, talking don't really help. It just makes it worse," he says wincing. He talks anyway though. He talks about how the food is disgusting here; Derwood makes rice and beans without any flavoring. The kitchen is disgusting and there is never any food. "Let's go look," I say. We take a tour of the rotting food in the fridge and the layers of scum on its shelves. Tins of catfood with crusted edges, containers of putrefying salad dressing, the stench of soured dairy products make my stomach turn.

Lozado and Fish, the other boy,newly out of prison, are preparing to make chicken. The mother in me arises and the therapist leaves my body. I notice the fouled sponges and dish scrubbers sitting by the sink. "Those will kill you," I tell them. Don't use those to wipe counters or dishes, they are loaded with bacteria. Lozado says, "I usually try to find a rag and some bleach." I want to hug him for knowing this. "Good!" I exclaim, now fully engaged in kitchen coaching. We look at all the food that should be tossed. "Do you think Derwood would kill me if I threw all this shit away?" I ask. They laugh. I realize that what is needed here is a sense of community and a cooperative environment where evryone feels valued. "Does Derwood involve you guys in deciding the menu for the week and preparing meals?" No he does not. He makes the same fuckin' thing week after week. The cupboards are filthy. I see two boxes of the cheapest and least nutritious cereal there is, a container of white flour, a couple of cans of what used to be corn before it was robbed of its nutritional value by processing, and some Top Ramen, which has the nutritional value of a cardboard box.

So who am I now? Not a therapist. I am a mother who wants to create a home place. I imagine these boys would love a chance to particpate and decide about meal planning and preparation. I promise Lozado I would bring my cleaning gear and some real Mexican spices next week. He smiles. "Thanks. I feel better now," he says.