Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The good enough mother
Once upon a time, back in the spring of 1978, I had a really beautiful dog named Summer. She was a purebred Viszla, amber colored short hair, amber eyes and a fluid, graceful gait. She was really neurotic and made my life hell when I left her alone. But when she came into heat in the early spring of 1978, suddenly, she wanted to get away from me as much as possible so she could get laid. I was in Grand Junction, Colorado one day, selling a Porsche 924 I had to right to own in the first place. I was trading it for a VW squareback which fit my situation a lot better. So Summer escaped out of the car and got laid like a million times by a lot of different guy dogs. I whistled and whistled for her and she finally came toward me, slinking low to the ground with her cropped tail as far between her legs as it could reach. She stunk of mongrel dog sex.
"Get in this car right now you little hussy," I hissed at her. She jumped in and curled up in a ball, exhausted from her afternoon of wild sex. I had problems of my own that spring. I was trying to extricate myself from yet another relationship with a narcissistic sociopath. This one was beating the crap out of me on regular occasions and since he was such a nice guy out in the world, nobody believed me when I told them he was a violent savage whose eyes changed form blue to black when the rage came on. I kept thinking I could love him enough to make him stop hitting me, but I realized that I might die after the third beating which resulted in a bloody nose and welts on my rib cage that made it hard to breathe.
Several weeks passed and Summer gave birth to nine puppies, all of whom represented aspects of all the males she gave herself to on that spring day in Grand Junction. Summer began to nurse them, but I saw the desperation in her eyes. She really wanted to kill them all but nature prevailed and she gave her swollen nipples to them with a great sigh of resignation. I couldn't tell her, "I told you so," at least out loud. She knew I was thinking it. Some of the puppies were frail. One even had some kind of weird disability, like doggie Down Syndrome.
I left town to save my own life when the puppies were old enough to travel. Summer had her bed in the back of my VW squareback which was made cramped and tight by all my belongings. We were headed back to California the quickest route possible, which from Telluride, Colorado, meant a trip through the desert plains of Utah and then the real deserts of Nevada. It was hot and the VW didn't have the greatest air conditioning. Summer was panting and the puppies were crying incessantly. I rolled down the windows in the back and kept looking in the rearview mirror at Summer, panting at an increasingly rapid rate and drooling, her eyes frantic and wild. Suddenly, she just had to go. Right there in the middle of nowhere, she just quit.
She leapt out the window while the car was going at least 50 miles per hour. I slammed on the brakes and saw gallop into the desert canyons. She just couldn't listen to one more whimpering puppy; she had no more milk to give, and not a single shred of patience left in her fragile, bony body.
I whistled and whistled in the heat of the Moab sun. Finally she answered, limping from the shadows of the badlands.She fell into a heap at my feet and I knelt and stroked her forehead. I told her we would just find the nearest place to put the puppies to sleep. "It's okay", I told her stroking that anguished head as she looked up at me with amber eyes full of remorse, "We sometimes think sex has no consequences, don't we?" For I too had my day of running screaming into the wilderness after discovering my desire for union resulted in a pregnancy I was not in the least bit prepared to undertake.
So I stole into an animal shelter with an armful of puppies and begged the person at the desk to take them from me quickly. The mother was not able to care for them and neither was I for that matter. And Summer was free.
I have a client with a disabled son and there is so little help for her nowadays. She is all alone in her house in an isolated subdivision nortn of Reno. Her son has a seizure disorder which has caused a significant developmental delay. He cannot be left alone because his seizures can come at anytime without warning despite anti-seizure medication. She re-married when he was about five and had another son with her current husband. Her days begin at 5AM when she gets up and steals a half hour of time on her treadmill. "My body isn't mine anymore," she laments. She has gained 60 pounds over the past 13 years. Her husband works in law enforcement and is gone 15 hours per day. Her attention is divided ten different ways every second of the day, especially in the summer when both boys are out of school. She also runs an in-home daycare because they need the income. Natalie, age nine months, arrives at 6AM sharp. She spends her days, reminding, directing, feeding, wiping, picking up, reminding, scolding, redirecting, feeding, wishing, longing, crying, monitoring a grand mal seizure, and hoping her husband doesn't leave her which he threatens to do because of "the retard," as he has come to refer to his step-son.
When I arrive, her eyes are frantic, like Summer's eyes. "Am I a monster for wanting to get rid of him?" she askes through tears of exhaustion. Her son is chronologically 17 but developmentally, he is about 8. He overhears his step-father's contempt and has recently reacted to it by having fits of rage at his inability to do what other kids do. When he rages, he tears at his own flesh and throws things, crying himself into exhaustion. His mother, strong and Amazon-like, holds him down so he doesn't hurt himself. She grits her teeth as tears roll down her face. His limbs are long, skinny and unweildy, like a newborn foal and he flails until he is limp.
She finds her little corners of sanity. She calls her mother to give her an occasional hour of respite. And she goes and gambles at the penny slots. She wants to ride her motorcycle, dress in leather, leave forever. She wants to disappear into the badlands and reclaim herself.
"This was what I used to be," she says showing me a picture of herself before the 60 pounds. her life is weighty and she swallows more than she can handle. She holds it all in her body and feels it sucking her downward into the undertow where there is no way out. Her soul paces like a wolf or a tiger in a zoo, and she pants, just like Summer did right before she went out the window of a moving car.
I hold her in the heat of the summer sun and we go outside to her little lawn in the back yard. I tell her to sit with me and we rock back and forth with our eyes closed. I tell her to imagine herself free. Anytime she wants, she can come here to this place of freedom; freedom from self-hatred and judgment she heaps on herslf for longing to be free, freedom from criticism, freedom from some standard or perfection imposed upon her by the culture or some socially constructed image of "the good enough mother." We don't talk often enough about the secret we keep so well hidden that we aren't sure we can really make it through mothering and that we hate it so much sometimes that we want to just run and run, far away into the shadows of the badlands where can can ride motorcycles, wear leather, swear, spit and not wear underwear. The dirty side where we don't measure up to anyone or worry about what he will say if the house is a mess or shame ourselves because we're fatter than we used to be because we've just swallowed way too much.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The good enough mother
Once upon a time, back in the spring of 1978, I had a really beautiful dog named Summer. She was a purebred Viszla, amber colored short hair, amber eyes and a fluid, graceful gait. She was really neurotic and made my life hell when I left her alone. But when she came into heat in the early spring of 1978, suddenly, she wanted to get away from me as much as possible so she could get laid. I was in Grand Junction, Colorado one day, selling a Porsche 924 I had to right to own in the first place. I was trading it for a VW squareback which fit my situation a lot better. So Summer escaped out of the car and got laid like a million times by a lot of different guy dogs. I whistled and whistled for her and she finally came toward me, slinking low to the ground with her cropped tail as far between her legs as it could reach. She stunk of mongrel dog sex.
"Get in this car right now you little hussy," I hissed at her. She jumped in and curled up in a ball, exhausted from her afternoon of wild sex. I had problems of my own that spring. I was trying to extricate myself from yet another relationship with a narcissistic sociopath. This one was beating the crap out of me on regular occasions and since he was such a nice guy out in the world, nobody believed me when I told them he was a violent savage whose eyes changed form blue to black when the rage came on. I kept thinking I could love him enough to make him stop hitting me, but I realized that I might die after the third beating which resulted in a bloody nose and welts on my rib cage that made it hard to breathe.
Several weeks passed and Summer gave birth to nine puppies, all of whom represented aspects of all the males she gave herself to on that spring day in Grand Junction. Summer began to nurse them, but I saw the desperation in her eyes. She really wanted to kill them all but nature prevailed and she gave her swollen nipples to them with a great sigh of resignation. I couldn't tell her, "I told you so," at least out loud. She knew I was thinking it. Some of the puppies were frail. One even had some kind of weird disability, like doggie Down Syndrome.
I left town to save my own life when the puppies were old enough to travel. Summer had her bed in the back of my VW squareback which was made cramped and tight by all my belongings. We were headed back to California the quickest route possible, which from Telluride, Colorado, meant a trip through the desert plains of Utah and then the real deserts of Nevada. It was hot and the VW didn't have the greatest air conditioning. Summer was panting and the puppies were crying incessantly. I rolled down the windows in the back and kept looking in the rearview mirror at Summer, panting at an increasingly rapid rate and drooling, her eyes frantic and wild. Suddenly, she just had to go. Right there in the middle of nowhere, she just quit.
She leapt out the window while the car was going at least 50 miles per hour. I slammed on the brakes and saw gallop into the desert canyons. She just couldn't listen to one more whimpering puppy; she had no more milk to give, and not a single shred of patience left in her fragile, bony body.
I whistled and whistled in the heat of the Moab sun. Finally she answered, limping from the shadows of the badlands.She fell into a heap at my feet and I knelt and stroked her forehead. I told her we would just find the nearest place to put the puppies to sleep. "It's okay", I told her stroking that anguished head as she looked up at me with amber eyes full of remorse, "We sometimes think sex has no consequences, don't we?" For I too had my day of running screaming into the wilderness after discovering my desire for union resulted in a pregnancy I was not in the least bit prepared to undertake.
So I stole into an animal shelter with an armful of puppies and begged the person at the desk to take them from me quickly. The mother was not able to care for them and neither was I for that matter. And Summer was free.
I have a client with a disabled son and there is so little help for her nowadays. She is all alone in her house in an isolated subdivision nortn of Reno. Her son has a seizure disorder which has caused a significant developmental delay. He cannot be left alone because his seizures can come at anytime without warning despite anti-seizure medication. She re-married when he was about five and had another son with her current husband. Her days begin at 5AM when she gets up and steals a half hour of time on her treadmill. "My body isn't mine anymore," she laments. She has gained 60 pounds over the past 13 years. Her husband works in law enforcement and is gone 15 hours per day. Her attention is divided ten different ways every second of the day, especially in the summer when both boys are out of school. She also runs an in-home daycare because they need the income. Natalie, age nine months, arrives at 6AM sharp. She spends her days, reminding, directing, feeding, wiping, picking up, reminding, scolding, redirecting, feeding, wishing, longing, crying, monitoring a grand mal seizure, and hoping her husband doesn't leave her which he threatens to do because of "the retard," as he has come to refer to his step-son.
When I arrive, her eyes are frantic, like Summer's eyes. "Am I a monster for wanting to get rid of him?" she askes through tears of exhaustion. Her son is chronologically 17 but developmentally, he is about 8. He overhears his step-father's contempt and has recently reacted to it by having fits of rage at his inability to do what other kids do. When he rages, he tears at his own flesh and throws things, crying himself into exhaustion. His mother, strong and Amazon-like, holds him down so he doesn't hurt himself. She grits her teeth as tears roll down her face. His limbs are long, skinny and unweildy, like a newborn foal and he flails until he is limp.
She finds her little corners of sanity. She calls her mother to give her an occasional hour of respite. And she goes and gambles at the penny slots. She wants to ride her motorcycle, dress in leather, leave forever. She wants to disappear into the badlands and reclaim herself.
"This was what I used to be," she says showing me a picture of herself before the 60 pounds. her life is weighty and she swallows more than she can handle. She holds it all in her body and feels it sucking her downward into the undertow where there is no way out. Her soul paces like a wolf or a tiger in a zoo, and she pants, just like Summer did right before she went out the window of a moving car.
I hold her in the heat of the summer sun and we go outside to her little lawn in the back yard. I tell her to sit with me and we rock back and forth with our eyes closed. I tell her to imagine herself free. Anytime she wants, she can come here to this place of freedom; freedom from self-hatred and judgment she heaps on herslf for longing to be free, freedom from criticism, freedom from some standard or perfection imposed upon her by the culture or some socially constructed image of "the good enough mother." We don't talk often enough about the secret we keep so well hidden that we aren't sure we can really make it through mothering and that we hate it so much sometimes that we want to just run and run, far away into the shadows of the badlands where can can ride motorcycles, wear leather, swear, spit and not wear underwear. The dirty side where we don't measure up to anyone or worry about what he will say if the house is a mess or shame ourselves because we're fatter than we used to be because we've just swallowed way too much.
"Get in this car right now you little hussy," I hissed at her. She jumped in and curled up in a ball, exhausted from her afternoon of wild sex. I had problems of my own that spring. I was trying to extricate myself from yet another relationship with a narcissistic sociopath. This one was beating the crap out of me on regular occasions and since he was such a nice guy out in the world, nobody believed me when I told them he was a violent savage whose eyes changed form blue to black when the rage came on. I kept thinking I could love him enough to make him stop hitting me, but I realized that I might die after the third beating which resulted in a bloody nose and welts on my rib cage that made it hard to breathe.
Several weeks passed and Summer gave birth to nine puppies, all of whom represented aspects of all the males she gave herself to on that spring day in Grand Junction. Summer began to nurse them, but I saw the desperation in her eyes. She really wanted to kill them all but nature prevailed and she gave her swollen nipples to them with a great sigh of resignation. I couldn't tell her, "I told you so," at least out loud. She knew I was thinking it. Some of the puppies were frail. One even had some kind of weird disability, like doggie Down Syndrome.
I left town to save my own life when the puppies were old enough to travel. Summer had her bed in the back of my VW squareback which was made cramped and tight by all my belongings. We were headed back to California the quickest route possible, which from Telluride, Colorado, meant a trip through the desert plains of Utah and then the real deserts of Nevada. It was hot and the VW didn't have the greatest air conditioning. Summer was panting and the puppies were crying incessantly. I rolled down the windows in the back and kept looking in the rearview mirror at Summer, panting at an increasingly rapid rate and drooling, her eyes frantic and wild. Suddenly, she just had to go. Right there in the middle of nowhere, she just quit.
She leapt out the window while the car was going at least 50 miles per hour. I slammed on the brakes and saw gallop into the desert canyons. She just couldn't listen to one more whimpering puppy; she had no more milk to give, and not a single shred of patience left in her fragile, bony body.
I whistled and whistled in the heat of the Moab sun. Finally she answered, limping from the shadows of the badlands.She fell into a heap at my feet and I knelt and stroked her forehead. I told her we would just find the nearest place to put the puppies to sleep. "It's okay", I told her stroking that anguished head as she looked up at me with amber eyes full of remorse, "We sometimes think sex has no consequences, don't we?" For I too had my day of running screaming into the wilderness after discovering my desire for union resulted in a pregnancy I was not in the least bit prepared to undertake.
So I stole into an animal shelter with an armful of puppies and begged the person at the desk to take them from me quickly. The mother was not able to care for them and neither was I for that matter. And Summer was free.
I have a client with a disabled son and there is so little help for her nowadays. She is all alone in her house in an isolated subdivision nortn of Reno. Her son has a seizure disorder which has caused a significant developmental delay. He cannot be left alone because his seizures can come at anytime without warning despite anti-seizure medication. She re-married when he was about five and had another son with her current husband. Her days begin at 5AM when she gets up and steals a half hour of time on her treadmill. "My body isn't mine anymore," she laments. She has gained 60 pounds over the past 13 years. Her husband works in law enforcement and is gone 15 hours per day. Her attention is divided ten different ways every second of the day, especially in the summer when both boys are out of school. She also runs an in-home daycare because they need the income. Natalie, age nine months, arrives at 6AM sharp. She spends her days, reminding, directing, feeding, wiping, picking up, reminding, scolding, redirecting, feeding, wishing, longing, crying, monitoring a grand mal seizure, and hoping her husband doesn't leave her which he threatens to do because of "the retard," as he has come to refer to his step-son.
When I arrive, her eyes are frantic, like Summer's eyes. "Am I a monster for wanting to get rid of him?" she askes through tears of exhaustion. Her son is chronologically 17 but developmentally, he is about 8. He overhears his step-father's contempt and has recently reacted to it by having fits of rage at his inability to do what other kids do. When he rages, he tears at his own flesh and throws things, crying himself into exhaustion. His mother, strong and Amazon-like, holds him down so he doesn't hurt himself. She grits her teeth as tears roll down her face. His limbs are long, skinny and unweildy, like a newborn foal and he flails until he is limp.
She finds her little corners of sanity. She calls her mother to give her an occasional hour of respite. And she goes and gambles at the penny slots. She wants to ride her motorcycle, dress in leather, leave forever. She wants to disappear into the badlands and reclaim herself.
"This was what I used to be," she says showing me a picture of herself before the 60 pounds. her life is weighty and she swallows more than she can handle. She holds it all in her body and feels it sucking her downward into the undertow where there is no way out. Her soul paces like a wolf or a tiger in a zoo, and she pants, just like Summer did right before she went out the window of a moving car.
I hold her in the heat of the summer sun and we go outside to her little lawn in the back yard. I tell her to sit with me and we rock back and forth with our eyes closed. I tell her to imagine herself free. Anytime she wants, she can come here to this place of freedom; freedom from self-hatred and judgment she heaps on herslf for longing to be free, freedom from criticism, freedom from some standard or perfection imposed upon her by the culture or some socially constructed image of "the good enough mother." We don't talk often enough about the secret we keep so well hidden that we aren't sure we can really make it through mothering and that we hate it so much sometimes that we want to just run and run, far away into the shadows of the badlands where can can ride motorcycles, wear leather, swear, spit and not wear underwear. The dirty side where we don't measure up to anyone or worry about what he will say if the house is a mess or shame ourselves because we're fatter than we used to be because we've just swallowed way too much.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Western medicine....We will make you sick (if you want)
Clinical Staffing, July 19, 2010...Kimball walks in late as usual, because she would rather be out running on this beautiful day. Meets Dr. W., psychiatrist from the University of Nevada, Reno. Kimball has the presence of mind to make sure her cell phone is on "silent." I ask Dr. W if it possible to diagnose a child of 12 with schizophrenia. I ask this because of a case I have taken on, mentioned in my last blog, involving a 12 year old girl. Her mother talks about her thusly, "Oh yeah...she's schizophrenic AND bipolar AND ADHD." I suspect Munchausen by Proxy becaus ethe mother has the system wired. The mother has simply given up and I, in my idealism, am certain this misperception of herself can be fixed. The mother needs to be sick, and she needs her daughter to be sick, and so far, psychiatrists from the county have cooperated nicely. This kid has been on Lithium, Depakote, Abilify and Zyprexa interchangeably for several years. She doesn't really know who she is. She's been told who she is, but she really isn't sure. Her definition of herself gels only in a quiet stare into her lap. "I'm crazy." she says, scraping at the blue nail polish on her chewed nails.
"Well...rarely." says Dr. W. "In fact, NAMI is looking for case study subjects right now because childhood schizophrenia is very rare." I am not seeing symptoms of schizophrenia in this child I see on ce a week way out in the desert. Instead, I see a child with a marvelous imagination who is desperate for human contact. She hears voices, but her mother actually hears voices as well. And it's not like the voices are harmful, just dead relatives who want to stay in touch. She tells me that her grandmother appears at her door every now and again just to say hello. I am more curious than alarmed. Her grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee. Lithium and Zyprexa silence the voices. Yay for Western white medicine. Medical community colludes with mother in giving up on herself and her children. Therapist wants to know more about the mother's spirit animals and what the grandmother says when she comes out of the desk at night. Therapist secretly wants to work at strengthening the mother's connection to her ancestry thereby eliminating the need to "be sick." Therapist wants to go to the psychiatrist who prescribes unececessary meds for little girls and smack her face until it's purple.
My son needs a lot of dental work. No dentist in the area will agree to a payment plan. I cannot afford to spend $4,000.00 on dental work and neither can he. At 22 years of age, he does not qualify for state medical benefits, nor could he be on my insurance because he is not in college. And at 22, he makes all of $12.00 per hour, which is barely enough to live on never mind medical expenses. So Transitional Age Youth (TAY) as they are called in psychological research are the most underserved population in this nation. Young men and women from 18-25 are more likely to go untreated for medical, dental and psychological problems than any other sector of the U.S. population. These young people will replace us when we are all dead if they live that long. They may be toothless, diseased and slightly off center, but they will replace us. those who serve the underserved are few and far between, especially in affluent communities like the Lake Tahoe area communities. There is a three month wait list at Placer County Public Health Clinic for those needing dental work. The wait list in Nevada County is about the same. My 67 year-old sister recalled a time when her children were young that she paid her dentist $10.00 per month so her children could receive dental care. She wonders why I can't just set that up now. "Are you for real?" I ask her. I decide to try, so I call 17 dentists in the Tahoe area. Not one is willing to work out a payment plan because they don't have to. Why take the risk when you can have guarantees? Oh I don't know...maybe because it's the humane thing to do.
My dad used to make house calls on snowshoes when I was a kid. I know that getting paid was important to him, but it never seemed to take precedence over caring for the people he would run into at the grocery store. Maybe that's why we never had much money.
My ex-husband, bless his heart, took care of people when they were having hard times. He had his own physical therapy clinic and pretty much did what he wanted. He'd see people who couldn't pay but could get him free basketball tickets or a year's worth of free ice cream for his kids. He sold his clinic to a corporation because he thought it would be easier just to be a PT and not an owner. I was helping him manage and we decided that our PT aides should get paid more because they were so valuable to us. He wanted a dollar more per hour for each and the corporation balked. Since he sold the clinic on an earn-out agreement ($80k over three years if he made EBITDA), he stood to lose a lot. But when the corporation told him he couldn't pay his aides a dollar more per hour, he told the regional director to go fuck himself and walked out. He left $160,000 of potential gain on the principal that people deserve to make enough to live on and the corporate belly should shrink in order to support that.
I loved him for that. There were plenty of things I didn't love, but I really loved him for that. And I loved my dad for that, too. He cared for people first and that is the mark of a healer whose heart is in the right place. I have never forgotten that.
"Well...rarely." says Dr. W. "In fact, NAMI is looking for case study subjects right now because childhood schizophrenia is very rare." I am not seeing symptoms of schizophrenia in this child I see on ce a week way out in the desert. Instead, I see a child with a marvelous imagination who is desperate for human contact. She hears voices, but her mother actually hears voices as well. And it's not like the voices are harmful, just dead relatives who want to stay in touch. She tells me that her grandmother appears at her door every now and again just to say hello. I am more curious than alarmed. Her grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee. Lithium and Zyprexa silence the voices. Yay for Western white medicine. Medical community colludes with mother in giving up on herself and her children. Therapist wants to know more about the mother's spirit animals and what the grandmother says when she comes out of the desk at night. Therapist secretly wants to work at strengthening the mother's connection to her ancestry thereby eliminating the need to "be sick." Therapist wants to go to the psychiatrist who prescribes unececessary meds for little girls and smack her face until it's purple.
My son needs a lot of dental work. No dentist in the area will agree to a payment plan. I cannot afford to spend $4,000.00 on dental work and neither can he. At 22 years of age, he does not qualify for state medical benefits, nor could he be on my insurance because he is not in college. And at 22, he makes all of $12.00 per hour, which is barely enough to live on never mind medical expenses. So Transitional Age Youth (TAY) as they are called in psychological research are the most underserved population in this nation. Young men and women from 18-25 are more likely to go untreated for medical, dental and psychological problems than any other sector of the U.S. population. These young people will replace us when we are all dead if they live that long. They may be toothless, diseased and slightly off center, but they will replace us. those who serve the underserved are few and far between, especially in affluent communities like the Lake Tahoe area communities. There is a three month wait list at Placer County Public Health Clinic for those needing dental work. The wait list in Nevada County is about the same. My 67 year-old sister recalled a time when her children were young that she paid her dentist $10.00 per month so her children could receive dental care. She wonders why I can't just set that up now. "Are you for real?" I ask her. I decide to try, so I call 17 dentists in the Tahoe area. Not one is willing to work out a payment plan because they don't have to. Why take the risk when you can have guarantees? Oh I don't know...maybe because it's the humane thing to do.
My dad used to make house calls on snowshoes when I was a kid. I know that getting paid was important to him, but it never seemed to take precedence over caring for the people he would run into at the grocery store. Maybe that's why we never had much money.
My ex-husband, bless his heart, took care of people when they were having hard times. He had his own physical therapy clinic and pretty much did what he wanted. He'd see people who couldn't pay but could get him free basketball tickets or a year's worth of free ice cream for his kids. He sold his clinic to a corporation because he thought it would be easier just to be a PT and not an owner. I was helping him manage and we decided that our PT aides should get paid more because they were so valuable to us. He wanted a dollar more per hour for each and the corporation balked. Since he sold the clinic on an earn-out agreement ($80k over three years if he made EBITDA), he stood to lose a lot. But when the corporation told him he couldn't pay his aides a dollar more per hour, he told the regional director to go fuck himself and walked out. He left $160,000 of potential gain on the principal that people deserve to make enough to live on and the corporate belly should shrink in order to support that.
I loved him for that. There were plenty of things I didn't love, but I really loved him for that. And I loved my dad for that, too. He cared for people first and that is the mark of a healer whose heart is in the right place. I have never forgotten that.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Has anyone seen "Healthcare Reform?" Blessed Rain....I have not seen it...
I dread Fridays in rural Nevada and I am trying not to. I try to tell myself I am doing some good in the world but I don't believe myself. Somehow, all my calm, zen-like feelings around generating goodwill and cultivating generosity evaporate when I am worried about covering my basic expenses. I should trust the goddesses more, but I keep falling off that wagon too. I meditate each morning, but on this morning,even as I chant RAMMMMM calling upon this ancient God to center me, I keep wandering away worrying about whether I am crazy for trying to actualize health care reform in my own way since I am seeing damn little evidence that it's happening anywhere else. Example 1: My son (now 22) has a rotting tooth that is causing him great pain. He doesn't make enough to pay for dental care, his employer does not offer insurance benefits, and dhe oes not qualify for state or county assistance. No dentist in town is willing to take payments. I wonder if they know that people aged 16-25 are the most underserved population in this country when it comes to health care? These are young adults who, unless they are in college or in the military, most often go without health insurance or access to healthcare. Yet these young adults are our future. Example 2: I am a 52 year-old professional woman who should be making tons more money with healthcare benefits.Instead, I choose to light my own path which means I will not be able to afford health insurance because I don't make enough money. God help me if I have a terrible accident right now because I am not eligible for any state funded insurance and I can't afford regular insurance. What I can afford carries with it a $5,000.00 deductible so what's the point?
Anyway, on the journey out into the desert, I listen to Pema Chodron talking about awakening Bodhichitta. In the path of the Bodhisattva (warrior for the way of the peaceful heart)one must practice awakening all the time. I chose this path of giving myself to those most in need and I chose to offer healing therapeutic service to people according to the Buddhist Paramita of generosity. But I don't feel very generous today. I feel stingy. Like Ebenezer Scrooge. I feel scared that I won't be able to pay my rent and other living expenses. In between steering my galloping brain back to center, I curse myself for not being more practical and smart like my half-sister Joan who at 67, worked like a Trojan for thirty years, carefully squirreling away her savings and now has a well-earned healthy retirement. I will probably be more like our dad who was an idiot with money and worked until he was 80performing medical procedures with antiquated skill and questionable cognition.
I travel into the desert to see families who request therapy or who are told they have to have it by some other agency (usually Child Protective Services)and I am paid only for the time I actually see clients; I am not paid for travel time (except mileage)or time for completing paperwork. If I show up to see a client for whom I have driven 70 miles and they choose to blow me off, I don't get paid. The Paramita of generosity is really only a Paramita when it stretches you and awakens you into the spirit of giving without strings attached. Strings like hoping you might get some kind of reward for being a really good girl, or hoping that maybe someone will want to give something back. It's just giving because that's what the world needs most. Okay....deep breath...let's try this again.
Today, I drive out into the desert and the temperature soars almost to 100 degrees. I am not looking forward to seeing Mae's daughter. First of all, some psychiatrist has given this child a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder AND AD/HD. She is medicated with Lithium and Abilify and a few other drugs. I didn't think schizophrenia could be diagnosed until a person was at least 18 because it seems to manifest right around that age. But the mother is adamant. She seems to need her daughter to be mentally ill. "She hears voices. Has since she was real little." I gently introduce the possibility of a very active imagination. Mae takes a deep breath and looks at the dragon statues she has lined up on her bookshelf.
"Well I see my dead mother a lot. She lives in that desk over there." Her ashes are kept in the desk in the living room. It seems that Mae's Cherokee roots might possibly be shining through the wall of medicalization. She adjusts her position on the stained, sagging sofa and brightens up. "Yep, all of us women in this family hear voices and see things that ain't there. I know stuff before it happens and my oldest daughter is the same way. I have conversations with my mother all the time."
There is a loud clap of thunder outside. Mae whoops with delight and smiles. "Oh man I love thunder and lightening!" She notices my necklace of Tourmaline crystal. "You like crystals? You know how to re-charge 'em?". I tell her no. "Well you put 'em in a shell like maybe an Abalone or somethin.' You gotta do it in the new moon an' then you let em sit there for thirty days until the moon is new again. And don't let nobody touch 'em!"
Mae's youngest daughter puts on her bathing suit and goes out to dance in the rain. Mae leads me into a cluttered spare bedroom filled with dusty china dolls and collections of what appear to be rocks. She carefully opens a little cabinet on the wall, and takes out beautifully polished crystals of amethyst, jade, tourmaline, rose quartz and opal. She understands the healing power of all which makes me wonder why she relies on Western medicine to treat her for gout. Her 12 year old daughter, the one who allegedly has schizophrenia, is fascinated and asks question after question, one in particular about the crystal ball which sits in Mae's shelf covered in two inches of desert dust. Mae answers irritably. "You wanna have yer fortune told? Well ask yer Aunt Maude!Now quit interruptin'!"
She blows dust off stone after stone revealing the pearlescence of each one and then works her way over to her cluttered closet where she pulls out a deerskin dress with a fur-lined hem. "This was grandma's dress. And I got the moccasins too...right here" She digs out a pair of curled leather moccasins from her crowded closet.
She has pictures and statues of wolves all over her walls and shelves coated with duts intermingled with the crystals and other artifacts of her Cherokee heritage. "The wolf is my spirit animal," she says fingering a dusty photo of a wolf pup she raised.
"What is my spirit animal mommy?" her daughter asks, desperate to engage in something that gives her a sense of belonging. "Oh hell I dunno. You gotta go through a whole ceremony to find that out. Like this here eagle feather was presented to me by a medicine man when I went through ceremony." She carefully lifted an eagle feather down from its dusty place on her shelf. "I always knew it was wolf though."
Was I doing "therapy?" It didn't seem like it. I was the learner and Mae was the knower.
I took her daughter out into the rain. Blessed rain which cooled the earth and brought the smell of sage and grass so fully into my senses. Blessed rain that reminded me that the desert has beauty. We just have to look a little harder, like Mae when she made all those tirps out to the old Rawhide mines and the old abandoned mines outside of Fallon and looked for treasure in rocks that appeared to be so dead on the surface. Undderneath the graying, pocked crusts, were treasures of unfathomable beauty, with more aspects that the human eye could ascertain. Ancient and pulsating with the energy of millions of years of extreme heat and cold, they radiate beauty from behind such plain and simple exteriors.
Blessed rain that kisses the parched earth and liberates the scent of life in the sage and grasses. Blessed rocks that hold the energy of life itself. Nature teaches me today that nothing can be ascertained and appreciated without the patience to liberate potential.
Anyway, on the journey out into the desert, I listen to Pema Chodron talking about awakening Bodhichitta. In the path of the Bodhisattva (warrior for the way of the peaceful heart)one must practice awakening all the time. I chose this path of giving myself to those most in need and I chose to offer healing therapeutic service to people according to the Buddhist Paramita of generosity. But I don't feel very generous today. I feel stingy. Like Ebenezer Scrooge. I feel scared that I won't be able to pay my rent and other living expenses. In between steering my galloping brain back to center, I curse myself for not being more practical and smart like my half-sister Joan who at 67, worked like a Trojan for thirty years, carefully squirreling away her savings and now has a well-earned healthy retirement. I will probably be more like our dad who was an idiot with money and worked until he was 80performing medical procedures with antiquated skill and questionable cognition.
I travel into the desert to see families who request therapy or who are told they have to have it by some other agency (usually Child Protective Services)and I am paid only for the time I actually see clients; I am not paid for travel time (except mileage)or time for completing paperwork. If I show up to see a client for whom I have driven 70 miles and they choose to blow me off, I don't get paid. The Paramita of generosity is really only a Paramita when it stretches you and awakens you into the spirit of giving without strings attached. Strings like hoping you might get some kind of reward for being a really good girl, or hoping that maybe someone will want to give something back. It's just giving because that's what the world needs most. Okay....deep breath...let's try this again.
Today, I drive out into the desert and the temperature soars almost to 100 degrees. I am not looking forward to seeing Mae's daughter. First of all, some psychiatrist has given this child a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder AND AD/HD. She is medicated with Lithium and Abilify and a few other drugs. I didn't think schizophrenia could be diagnosed until a person was at least 18 because it seems to manifest right around that age. But the mother is adamant. She seems to need her daughter to be mentally ill. "She hears voices. Has since she was real little." I gently introduce the possibility of a very active imagination. Mae takes a deep breath and looks at the dragon statues she has lined up on her bookshelf.
"Well I see my dead mother a lot. She lives in that desk over there." Her ashes are kept in the desk in the living room. It seems that Mae's Cherokee roots might possibly be shining through the wall of medicalization. She adjusts her position on the stained, sagging sofa and brightens up. "Yep, all of us women in this family hear voices and see things that ain't there. I know stuff before it happens and my oldest daughter is the same way. I have conversations with my mother all the time."
There is a loud clap of thunder outside. Mae whoops with delight and smiles. "Oh man I love thunder and lightening!" She notices my necklace of Tourmaline crystal. "You like crystals? You know how to re-charge 'em?". I tell her no. "Well you put 'em in a shell like maybe an Abalone or somethin.' You gotta do it in the new moon an' then you let em sit there for thirty days until the moon is new again. And don't let nobody touch 'em!"
Mae's youngest daughter puts on her bathing suit and goes out to dance in the rain. Mae leads me into a cluttered spare bedroom filled with dusty china dolls and collections of what appear to be rocks. She carefully opens a little cabinet on the wall, and takes out beautifully polished crystals of amethyst, jade, tourmaline, rose quartz and opal. She understands the healing power of all which makes me wonder why she relies on Western medicine to treat her for gout. Her 12 year old daughter, the one who allegedly has schizophrenia, is fascinated and asks question after question, one in particular about the crystal ball which sits in Mae's shelf covered in two inches of desert dust. Mae answers irritably. "You wanna have yer fortune told? Well ask yer Aunt Maude!Now quit interruptin'!"
She blows dust off stone after stone revealing the pearlescence of each one and then works her way over to her cluttered closet where she pulls out a deerskin dress with a fur-lined hem. "This was grandma's dress. And I got the moccasins too...right here" She digs out a pair of curled leather moccasins from her crowded closet.
She has pictures and statues of wolves all over her walls and shelves coated with duts intermingled with the crystals and other artifacts of her Cherokee heritage. "The wolf is my spirit animal," she says fingering a dusty photo of a wolf pup she raised.
"What is my spirit animal mommy?" her daughter asks, desperate to engage in something that gives her a sense of belonging. "Oh hell I dunno. You gotta go through a whole ceremony to find that out. Like this here eagle feather was presented to me by a medicine man when I went through ceremony." She carefully lifted an eagle feather down from its dusty place on her shelf. "I always knew it was wolf though."
Was I doing "therapy?" It didn't seem like it. I was the learner and Mae was the knower.
I took her daughter out into the rain. Blessed rain which cooled the earth and brought the smell of sage and grass so fully into my senses. Blessed rain that reminded me that the desert has beauty. We just have to look a little harder, like Mae when she made all those tirps out to the old Rawhide mines and the old abandoned mines outside of Fallon and looked for treasure in rocks that appeared to be so dead on the surface. Undderneath the graying, pocked crusts, were treasures of unfathomable beauty, with more aspects that the human eye could ascertain. Ancient and pulsating with the energy of millions of years of extreme heat and cold, they radiate beauty from behind such plain and simple exteriors.
Blessed rain that kisses the parched earth and liberates the scent of life in the sage and grasses. Blessed rocks that hold the energy of life itself. Nature teaches me today that nothing can be ascertained and appreciated without the patience to liberate potential.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Rescuing Psychotherapy - July 2010-White Woman Boots
The vessel has been built and has been pushed into the water. Sierra Agape Center was incorporated on May 13th but I only just got the notification. It is early July and I am trying to balance my work in this community with contract work that earns a steadier income. The contract work takes me into the homes of families who have little money and whose children often speak the language of despair. As the unwitting carriers of the trouble for the whole family, they behave accordingly and of course, are then identified as "the trouble." I travel in my little car around Reno and out into the desert into the towns where white people have left their usual mark upon the Native Americans. The shacks pushed into dried up corners called "reservations" where I feel a palpable emptiness for which I always feel partially responsible. Surprisingly,the families warm up to me after only an hour or so. Postures soften as I acknowledge my whiteness and ask permission to enter into the protected areas of the family's history. I suspend everything I am told about each family by social workers, child protective services and probation officers; it's always the same slant. They often speak of the children as if they are disease carriers who have no right to be obstinate, angry and defiant. They speak of twelve year old girls as if they are the creators of destruction in their families without considering the amounts of garbage they are forced to contend with as a result of their parents decisions to use drugs, to choose violent partners or who are not equipped to offer loving, supportive guidance to the children they produce often from multiple fathers and mothers. The children are taken into the grim reaches of county or state mental health and socials services offices and issued diagnoses, given psychotropic medications, and sentenced to therapy to improve their behavior. As one of the therapists assigned to cases like these, I walk tenderly, realizing that I will look into the eyes of children and adolescents who feel silenced, and whose hearts and stomachs hold unarticulated rage and hurt at being identified as "the trouble." And I will look into the eyes of parents whose shame or lack of insight prevents them from seeing how much sense it makes that their children are angry, depressed and teetering on the edge of implosion. My daily practice of meditation may be helping me sit steady as an old oak as I listen to a 31 year-old Mexican woman, pregnant for the third time speak to her barely 13 year-old daughter. Her daughter was removed from her home because of her meth and alcohol use which resulted in a DUI. Her son, then 4 and her daughter, then 10, were both removed and placed in foster homes. Her daughter has been back home for two weeks. The mother does not understand why her daughter, now physically developed beyond what 13 year old girls looked like before hormones were injected into our food sources, is angry and beligerent. She threatens to pick up the phone and call the CPS social worker and have her daughter dragged off to a holding facility for foster children. I watch the girls eyes fill with tears as she struggles to maintain the facade of anger and toughness behind which she feels at least some power over herself. "Go ahead, I don't care," she says chewing on a plastic bottle cap. The girl's eyes are heavily made up. She wears multiple pieces of decoration pierced through her ears, nose and bottom lip. Her mother blames the girl for having sexual intercourse with a man twice her age and for giving blow jobs to guys in movie theatres, calling her a 'ho. I take a breath and speak, trying to channel what this barely out of little girl-hood teenager must be feeling. I remind the mother that twelve year-old girls cannot make informed decisions and "choose" to have intercourse with older men even if they think they can. They are victims of sexual assault, coercion and rape. They do not know how to say "no" to offers of attention in any form is what they are so hungry for. I check in with the girl to see if she resonates. Am I echoing her or am I echoing myself? Or both? Do we, despite the abyss in age and ethnicity between us, share at some bone deep level the same pain and emptiness? She catches my eye and I see myself. She sees herself in me and she allows a slight smile.
On the other side of "planet therapy," in a town far away, I see a white, upper middle class family who has a facade of its own now crumbling into ruin. Once financially solvent, this family is now looking into the unfamiliar chambers of bankruptcy court. Although the SUV's and boats are still in the driveway of their luxurious home, the appearances defy the realities. Their 16 year-old son, the eldest of their four children, a star skier and the pride of the family made a u-turn when he was about 13 and began to deviate from his proscribed path. He kept it well hidden that he was molested by a coach as boys often do. Instead, he began to find ways to get away from the thoughts and memories. His favorite way was to smoke a lot of marijuana. His family, disappointed and dismayed that he seemed to be self-destructing and ruining his chances to become an Olympian, did what most parents do when they feel loss of control. They tightened up and cracked down in a frightened and frantic effort to keep him from klling himself. More structure, anything to stop the behavior. Predictably, the more they tightened, the more angry and defiant he became. The secret he kept began to bloat with its own toxicity and like a virulent, vicious tumor, it wound its way into the boy's mind, his stomach, his heart and his soul. His behavior became darker and infected the family to the degree that they just wanted him to go away somewhere and be healed of his addiction and behavior.
Several visits to juvenile detention centers, various camps, treatment facilities, begging, pleading and a succession of therapists only had the effect of intensifying his desire to avoid reality. In my visits with children and adolescents who have spent time in juvenile detention centers, none say their experiences taught them how to love themselves more or how to love others, envision a future free of violence and drugs or be a part of transforming a world that has silenced them and crushed their imaginations. While there are some adolescents whose lives have been so informed by insitutionalization that they may never habituate to anything else, I have only seen those whose toughness and anger belie hearts aching for some softness and a place to let their guard down. Each boy on my caseload, all of whom are on parole from places like China Springs or other juvenile detention facilities far out in the deserts of Nevada, tell me they want to be of help to younger boys headed down the same road. In the words of one who first saw the walls of a juvenile prison at the age of twelve and is now 18, "I feel real protective, you know. I wanna tell 'em, you know, it ain't cool to be locked up. It's not what you think. It's bad man...you don't learn nothin' in there except to be more angry...how to kill or be more like...violent...you know?"
Yes, I know.
On the other side of "planet therapy," in a town far away, I see a white, upper middle class family who has a facade of its own now crumbling into ruin. Once financially solvent, this family is now looking into the unfamiliar chambers of bankruptcy court. Although the SUV's and boats are still in the driveway of their luxurious home, the appearances defy the realities. Their 16 year-old son, the eldest of their four children, a star skier and the pride of the family made a u-turn when he was about 13 and began to deviate from his proscribed path. He kept it well hidden that he was molested by a coach as boys often do. Instead, he began to find ways to get away from the thoughts and memories. His favorite way was to smoke a lot of marijuana. His family, disappointed and dismayed that he seemed to be self-destructing and ruining his chances to become an Olympian, did what most parents do when they feel loss of control. They tightened up and cracked down in a frightened and frantic effort to keep him from klling himself. More structure, anything to stop the behavior. Predictably, the more they tightened, the more angry and defiant he became. The secret he kept began to bloat with its own toxicity and like a virulent, vicious tumor, it wound its way into the boy's mind, his stomach, his heart and his soul. His behavior became darker and infected the family to the degree that they just wanted him to go away somewhere and be healed of his addiction and behavior.
Several visits to juvenile detention centers, various camps, treatment facilities, begging, pleading and a succession of therapists only had the effect of intensifying his desire to avoid reality. In my visits with children and adolescents who have spent time in juvenile detention centers, none say their experiences taught them how to love themselves more or how to love others, envision a future free of violence and drugs or be a part of transforming a world that has silenced them and crushed their imaginations. While there are some adolescents whose lives have been so informed by insitutionalization that they may never habituate to anything else, I have only seen those whose toughness and anger belie hearts aching for some softness and a place to let their guard down. Each boy on my caseload, all of whom are on parole from places like China Springs or other juvenile detention facilities far out in the deserts of Nevada, tell me they want to be of help to younger boys headed down the same road. In the words of one who first saw the walls of a juvenile prison at the age of twelve and is now 18, "I feel real protective, you know. I wanna tell 'em, you know, it ain't cool to be locked up. It's not what you think. It's bad man...you don't learn nothin' in there except to be more angry...how to kill or be more like...violent...you know?"
Yes, I know.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Rescuing Psychotherapy - Month I
Orphans really do brim over with opposite viewpoints. The idea behind Sierra Agape Center for Soul-Tending is to make it simple for people to talk through the problems of life with a person who isn't wedded to any kind of outcome; for example, winning your love or becoming your best friend or your savior. The idea is that you call up and say, 'I need some help,' and you get it. You don't need to qualify or state-funded medical benefits or worry about whether your insurance will cover it, in fact, insurance isn't accepted. The likelihood is (if you are like many people who seek counseling) that your problems won't really fall into a disease category, but if insurance is billed, you will be required to have an illness and I would have to fit you into a disease category. The idea behind Sierra Agape Center is to give you improved and broader vision so you can see how much sense it makes that you are depressed, anxious, angry addicted given your history and given the culture in which you live. Which doesn't mean you should just accept how you feel and move on; it means that you can learn to see yourself and make friends with yourself or possibly even fall in love with yourself, warts and all, in a way that does not categorize you as "ill" or "diseased."
And you pay for these kinds of services based upon what you can afford, by donation, much in the same way you donate to any source of spiritual nourishment. I seriously question whether tax dollars should be allocated toward providing counseling and/or addiction services for people. I wonder if perhaps communities who value the availability of such services need to support them to the degree that it is a problem in their community.
Not many people these days can afford to pay a therapist $80-$250.00 per 50 minute hour for counseling. For many people, therapy drops very low n the priority list when finances are tight and when finances are tight, the need for counseling increases because of all the stress associated with being financially strapped. Why does mental health counseling drop on the priority list while maintaining medical insurance for physical problems tends to stay at the top?
Part of the reason for Sierra Agape Center's existence is to explore the parity issue between mental health and physical health which has always been a struggle. Does psychotherapy really belong in the medical model? Problems of the soul cannot easily be quantified or measured in terms of cause an effect relationships as problems with the physical body can be measured.
The relentlessly faithful orphan imagines a place where all the archetypes spanning the human psyche are welcome. She imagines a kitchen where meals can be prepared and offered to anyone who is hungry. She imagines a place where people can find shelter from the assault and battery of a culture enamored with financial success and consumerism, a place to find rest and feel valued for the stories they carry from past history and to express how their stories have colored and shaped their lives. She imagines a place where potentential is measured by the breadth of a smile or the courage to explore.
This orphan girl wants to cultivate the idea that soul-tending doesn't have to be science and that psychotherapy is a different kind of medicine.
And you pay for these kinds of services based upon what you can afford, by donation, much in the same way you donate to any source of spiritual nourishment. I seriously question whether tax dollars should be allocated toward providing counseling and/or addiction services for people. I wonder if perhaps communities who value the availability of such services need to support them to the degree that it is a problem in their community.
Not many people these days can afford to pay a therapist $80-$250.00 per 50 minute hour for counseling. For many people, therapy drops very low n the priority list when finances are tight and when finances are tight, the need for counseling increases because of all the stress associated with being financially strapped. Why does mental health counseling drop on the priority list while maintaining medical insurance for physical problems tends to stay at the top?
Part of the reason for Sierra Agape Center's existence is to explore the parity issue between mental health and physical health which has always been a struggle. Does psychotherapy really belong in the medical model? Problems of the soul cannot easily be quantified or measured in terms of cause an effect relationships as problems with the physical body can be measured.
The relentlessly faithful orphan imagines a place where all the archetypes spanning the human psyche are welcome. She imagines a kitchen where meals can be prepared and offered to anyone who is hungry. She imagines a place where people can find shelter from the assault and battery of a culture enamored with financial success and consumerism, a place to find rest and feel valued for the stories they carry from past history and to express how their stories have colored and shaped their lives. She imagines a place where potentential is measured by the breadth of a smile or the courage to explore.
This orphan girl wants to cultivate the idea that soul-tending doesn't have to be science and that psychotherapy is a different kind of medicine.
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Orphan Roars- memories of Childhood at Blyth Arena
When I was a little girl growing up in Squaw Valley, I spent my winters on skis and my summers on my ice skates, that is, when I wasn't on my horse's back exploring new places to swim or have picnics. The Blyth Arena in Squaw Valley is no more having been allowed to fall into ruin in the 1980's and collapse to the ground. It is now a parking lot and a nouveau Vail Village. Blyth Arena was a marvelous place with one open side facing the mountains and its huge Longines sound systems, clocks and scoreboards on each end and its massive suspension or "tensile" roof specially designed for snow loading designed by a Finnish architect. The exterior suspension beams of Blyth Arena were painted a blood orange color and its north facing exterior had hundreds of paned windows interspaced with solid panels depicting each country's coat of arms. There were huge statues of speed skaters at each corner of the promenade. Inside, there were rows and rows of seating all the way up to the ceiling and you could run around and play hide and seek for hours in the old Press Boxes all the rooms where people once met to discuss important Olympic developments.
In the summers following the 1960 Olympics, Blyth Arena was used for conventions, rodeos and even a circus one year. The biggest convention, which we called The Radio Church of God (actually the Worldwide Church of God) held its annual convention at Blyth Arena. We were always glad when the hundreds and hundreds of people left so we could go ice skating again. In the mid 1960's James Grogan and Barbara Wagner, two bronze medalists from the Games who then married, developed an elite skater's program that attracted propsective Olympians from all over the United States. Ever since I'd put on a pair of figure skates at the age of four and learned to skate out at Boca Reservoir, I wanted to skate more than anything in the world. But my father wanted me to be a ski racer and although I obeyed when he sent me off to summer dry land training with Tom Kelly and Peter Klaussen, all I could do while we were climbing up the mountains lured on by bags of lemon drops, was daydream about when I could go skating again.
I begged my dad for lessons and was lucky if I got one or two here and there. I had an old pair of Hyde skates that were dull and clumpy compaired the brilliant white Harlicks and Rydells worn by the beautiful girls who skated with Jimmy and Barbara Grogan. I had one skating dress I'd gotten out of the lost and found which was too big for me, but I wore it anyway. I pretended I was skating in front of my parents and danced around my bedroom to music I wanted to skate to.
Jimmy and Barbara were kind enough to let me skate in the summer ice shows which were held every week, but I was only allowed to skate in the group presentations, never in a solo which I wanted so desperately that I was not ashamed to beg for a chance every single day until Jimmy began to dodge into the men's room when he saw me coming. Still, even though I was only allowed to skate in the "follies" parts of the shows, I worked very hard to perfect my role and to stand out in some way. And because I wanted so much to be a part of the elite skaters, I got up at 5AM each day and walked down to the ice rink to practice my school figures and work on my jumps and spins in the freestyle sessions.
I longed for my parents to come and watch me and when the ice shows began with Jimmy's voice booming over the Longines speakers, "And now ladies and gentlemen, we present our fabulous "Ice Factory!" But they were never there. I scanned the seats hoping that they might come and be proud of me, but in this dream, I was alone. I was in love with the idea of mothering the way Mrs. McKinstry mothered her daughter Juli to be the beautiful skater she was. Mrs. McKinstry rented a big house every summer and lots of the girls stayed together there. She must have sensed my need to be included and invited me to come and stay overnight sometimes. My nights in the house with the girls I so admired made my fire and passion to skate burn inside my heart more strongly, and I vowed to work as hard as I could so I could be one of them.
I had one pair of old skates, one skating dress and I begged for every lesson I got but I do not recall feeling thwarted in my romance with skating because of my lack of equipment; I felt more pain in the ribs of my very being that my parents did not encourage me to use my wings in the way I wanted to. I continued to suffer through ski racing try-outs only to be the laughing stock of my peers because I failed to stay on course and would end up in the trees wishing I could just disappear forever.
The gift from those years was tenacity and comfort with the Orphan's Journey of going it alone. As an only child, most of my playtime was solitary and I tended to have one or two friends who were like me in terms of their nature and constitution; girls with whom I could share the darkest secrets of feeling like a misfit.
The longing was and still is very intense for loving support and for just one person to affix my wings securely onto my back, and give me a kiss; then with the words, "There now...these wings will work just fine. All you have to do is trust them." And then, with a gentle shove off the precipice and into the abyss, I fly.
I am almost 52 now, and have decided that I no longer can afford to be a slave to my fear. There is no other but me who can mother me into trusting my wings. When I deepen into the memory of walking down to Blyth arena in the dark summer mornings, I remember feeling longing for my mother to be there to give me hot chocolate like Juli's mother did, but that did not stop me. Now, with my life more than half spent, I intend to be radically faithful and true to my Orphan heart which aches for freedom to fly.
In the summers following the 1960 Olympics, Blyth Arena was used for conventions, rodeos and even a circus one year. The biggest convention, which we called The Radio Church of God (actually the Worldwide Church of God) held its annual convention at Blyth Arena. We were always glad when the hundreds and hundreds of people left so we could go ice skating again. In the mid 1960's James Grogan and Barbara Wagner, two bronze medalists from the Games who then married, developed an elite skater's program that attracted propsective Olympians from all over the United States. Ever since I'd put on a pair of figure skates at the age of four and learned to skate out at Boca Reservoir, I wanted to skate more than anything in the world. But my father wanted me to be a ski racer and although I obeyed when he sent me off to summer dry land training with Tom Kelly and Peter Klaussen, all I could do while we were climbing up the mountains lured on by bags of lemon drops, was daydream about when I could go skating again.
I begged my dad for lessons and was lucky if I got one or two here and there. I had an old pair of Hyde skates that were dull and clumpy compaired the brilliant white Harlicks and Rydells worn by the beautiful girls who skated with Jimmy and Barbara Grogan. I had one skating dress I'd gotten out of the lost and found which was too big for me, but I wore it anyway. I pretended I was skating in front of my parents and danced around my bedroom to music I wanted to skate to.
Jimmy and Barbara were kind enough to let me skate in the summer ice shows which were held every week, but I was only allowed to skate in the group presentations, never in a solo which I wanted so desperately that I was not ashamed to beg for a chance every single day until Jimmy began to dodge into the men's room when he saw me coming. Still, even though I was only allowed to skate in the "follies" parts of the shows, I worked very hard to perfect my role and to stand out in some way. And because I wanted so much to be a part of the elite skaters, I got up at 5AM each day and walked down to the ice rink to practice my school figures and work on my jumps and spins in the freestyle sessions.
I longed for my parents to come and watch me and when the ice shows began with Jimmy's voice booming over the Longines speakers, "And now ladies and gentlemen, we present our fabulous "Ice Factory!" But they were never there. I scanned the seats hoping that they might come and be proud of me, but in this dream, I was alone. I was in love with the idea of mothering the way Mrs. McKinstry mothered her daughter Juli to be the beautiful skater she was. Mrs. McKinstry rented a big house every summer and lots of the girls stayed together there. She must have sensed my need to be included and invited me to come and stay overnight sometimes. My nights in the house with the girls I so admired made my fire and passion to skate burn inside my heart more strongly, and I vowed to work as hard as I could so I could be one of them.
I had one pair of old skates, one skating dress and I begged for every lesson I got but I do not recall feeling thwarted in my romance with skating because of my lack of equipment; I felt more pain in the ribs of my very being that my parents did not encourage me to use my wings in the way I wanted to. I continued to suffer through ski racing try-outs only to be the laughing stock of my peers because I failed to stay on course and would end up in the trees wishing I could just disappear forever.
The gift from those years was tenacity and comfort with the Orphan's Journey of going it alone. As an only child, most of my playtime was solitary and I tended to have one or two friends who were like me in terms of their nature and constitution; girls with whom I could share the darkest secrets of feeling like a misfit.
The longing was and still is very intense for loving support and for just one person to affix my wings securely onto my back, and give me a kiss; then with the words, "There now...these wings will work just fine. All you have to do is trust them." And then, with a gentle shove off the precipice and into the abyss, I fly.
I am almost 52 now, and have decided that I no longer can afford to be a slave to my fear. There is no other but me who can mother me into trusting my wings. When I deepen into the memory of walking down to Blyth arena in the dark summer mornings, I remember feeling longing for my mother to be there to give me hot chocolate like Juli's mother did, but that did not stop me. Now, with my life more than half spent, I intend to be radically faithful and true to my Orphan heart which aches for freedom to fly.
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