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
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, August 23, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, August 13, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, August 9, 2010
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?"
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?"
Thursday, August 5, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
"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."
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."
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