 |
| Jim and myself with our sons Brian and Kevin, 1983 (Matthew was born in 1987.) |
For My Beloved Family
Often we may have no idea how our words impact others. I'm sure that this was true of my close friend, Ann Baker, 40 years ago. It was only later that I realized how much courage and love that it took for her to be honest with me. And I will be eternally grateful.
Thank you, Ann.🙏
I still remember the time. It was 8:37 on that dark night of February 8th, 1983. Ann and I had carpooled and gone out for dinner together. Then, afterwards in the Albertsons parking lot where we met and as we briefly sat together in my car before going our separate ways, Ann said to me, "Molly, Jim is an alcoholic."
It may seem so small. But it was not. Unknown to me at the time, that was the moment when my whole life began to change. That was a moment I will never forget. And my gratitude to Ann, and the Grace that flowed through her, will live on in my heart for the rest of my life.
* * * * *
It wasn't that I hadn't known that I needed help before that fateful night four decades ago...
It was actually my mother who, in a panic, made that first therapy appointment for me when, in the summer of '69 and shortly after graduating from high school, she found a boy in my bed around 1:30am. (Long story) I realized early the next morning that she'd made an appointment for me at 9am to see Jean Hewitt, who had been my brother's therapist when he was 14. Apparently my mother, in sheer horror, had called Jeannie at her home at 2am to ensure that I would be seen right away. And what began as a therapy session grew into my relationship of many years with Jean Hewitt, who I came to see as my "surrogate mom." Yet Jeannie was herself active in her alcoholism and could only take me so far in my healing journey. But we did love each other. And I was starving for love...
Then, and not long after the boy in my bed incident, I was 19 when my mother stood there telling me yet again of her great suffering at the hands of her mother. And she went on to passionately tell me that she would never, never!, do to me what my grandmother had done to her. As I listened in silence, not daring to say anything contradictory as my narcissistic mother sought consoling and sympathy, what I actually thought was (1) that my mother had long been doing to me exactly what her other did to her, and (2) I was thinking about suicide. I kind of made a pact with myself that if I ever woke up one day and realized that I had been acting like my mother that I would simply kill myself. However, a few years later my twin brother committed suicide, thus ruling out that I could ever do that to anyone. And especially after having children.
I also knew as far back as my late teens that I needed therapy. It took me until I was 26 to pick up the phone and schedule to become part of a women's therapy group through Lutheran Family Services. This was huge for me. And scary. Vulnerability was not my strong suit. Yet, I could feel how this therapist really heard me ― she understood how crazy my mother was! She got it... and, at that time, more so then I could begin to grasp myself. I still remember how the therapist told me that I "would need to grieve your mother like a death." This was two years after my dad's sudden death, which I had not grieved. Two months later my brother committed suicide. And I left the group.
Everything was too overwhelming. Trauma is like that.
So I was out of therapy and, unknowingly, into my addictions and sidetracked with things like focusing on my first husband, who definitely had issues. My next foray into therapy was when I took us off to couples counseling to get Jim fixed. And after two months I thought we were ready to go on our merry way.
And I got pregnant. Only my plans for a smooth pregnancy got waylaid when somehow I ended up reading Nancy Friday's book My Mother, Myself. Panic! I was going to be like my mother! And I returned to therapy during that pregnancy, and then quit again when my son Brian was born.
After my friend Ann Baker first told me that she thought my husband "had a drinking problem" in 1980, and following through with Ann's suggestion, I decided to give Al-Anon a try. But in the one meeting I went to they talked about God and there was no god for me then because my brother had killed himself despite all my desperate prayers. So I walked away from Al-Anon.
At the same time, I had also brought up the possibility that Jim might have a drinking "problem" with the therapist we'd seen before. We were back in couples counseling because Jim's issues weren't going away. (I had a little bit of denial about my own.) The therapist asked a few questions of me and of Jim, and then said that he didn't think my husband had an alcohol problem. End of discussion. Whew, I was relieved!
On top of my resistance and fear and deeply buried trauma, the
therapists who I saw in those early years were also unaware,
uneducated, and silent about addiction. And I don't remember anyone
talking about addiction as being a symptom of trauma.
This is just a small glimpse of some of my brief counseling and 12 Step experiences. Between 1969 and 1983 there were several attempts to stick my big toe into the water. But I always retreated. And got pulled back into the plethora of addictions, distractions, and other unhealthy coping skills that I used to try to cope with a world of pain that I had stuffed down as deep as I could.
* * * * *
Unlike when my dear friend Ann first attempted to speak honestly with me in 1980, three years later she didn't use the words alcohol "problem." On that night 40 years ago used the word alcoholic. And I absolutely could not shake her words.
I was haunted. Thank God/Goddess/Mystery.
Soon afterwards I drove myself to an Al-Anon meeting, my second. I had to find out if Ann was right. Was I married to an alcoholic?? I was freaked out by that question as I sat outside the Al-Anon meeting in my car watching people walk into the church and all while thinking ― I'm not one of those people, those people who know alcoholics.
I entered the church anyway. And I stayed. And 16 months later I fell through the floor of my home Al-Anon group into the AA meeting in the basement below. Not only did I know alcoholics, not only was I married to an alcoholic, not only had I grown up with the alcoholism of both my parents ― but I was an alcoholic myself! Wow. Sometimes life takes incredibly unexpected turns!
Unknown to me on that cold, dark February night, Ann's words to me triggered the very beginning of profound change. The whole world as I had known it began to fall out from under me. This was a world that needed to go. And I had entered into a journey of cycles of death, wandering, healing, rebirth.
What was different this time ― beginning on February 8th, 1983 ― is that I never let go. I never let go.
The Way It Is
There's a thread you follow. It goes among
― William Stafford
* * * * *things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Over these past four decades, tragedies did indeed happen. There was chaos, confusion, clinging to what didn't work, letting go, dying/rebirth, questioning and humility, loss and struggle, thawing out and learning how to feel rather than be disassociated and addicted, and returning again and again to I don't know mind ― which keeps me open and willing to continue and learn and evolve, and no matter any initial resistance I may have.
At the same time, this amazing path with heart has also gifted me with increasing clarity and connection, empathy and compassion, awareness and wonder, beauty and joy, mindfulness and deep healing, tools to work with triggers, tenderness and love, and blessings way too numerous to begin to count or name here. I continue to be in awe of how profound it is to shift generational trajectories from ones which restrict and constrict and harm to pathways offering authenticity, truth, connection, joy and love.
And this was truly among my greatest motivations and intentions ― to do everything that I could to break the cycles of addictions, suffering, and trauma for myself and my precious children. So beginning in 1983, I never let go of the thread, even when it was so hard to hold on.
The path of gradual awakening from a lifetime and generations of slumber, of unaddressed and unhealed trauma, of mistaken beliefs and perceptions, of disassociation and disconnection, of separation from within ourselves and life ― this is also a difficult and courageous journey. And it is made more so because, even for those who grew up in healthier families, there still remains the toxicities that are woven through our culture masquerading as normal and just the way it is.
Despite all the many forms of harm which wound us and that are so common in American culture and beyond, it is my belief that we all carry something within us that is Sacred ― something which in some way can serve to compel us to explore new frontiers that end up taking us way outside of the familiarity of our comfort zones and ingrained belief systems. I experience this as Grace, Mystery, God/Goddess.
Sometimes it is exactly what begins as crisis and everything falling apart that ends up opening doorways in our lives and in our hearts that had been shut off, closed down, and outside of conscious awareness.
This is what began to open for me on this day 40 years ago. At the time, it just felt like hell and something that I had to get figured out and under control fast. And, of course, it is human to not want to be shaken out of our unknown slumber into the reckoning that something is off, really off, and needs our attention. Now. We want to get past the extreme discomfort. Yet there are no quick fixes. Many of us wander for some time before the path becomes more clear...
Or we turn around and remain stuck in the old familiar patterns and beliefs ― and the pathways of healing and transforming our suffering continue to elude us because we want to go over or under or backwards... but not through. Believe me, I get it. It is scary to open our eyes and hearts and need what we need, feel what we feel, see what we see...
And certainly we live in a culture which rarely goes deep and which too often shies away from stories and experiences of connection, truth, and love.
Just imagine if the norm were instead to be exposed to real human stories, real human struggles and strengths, real vulnerability and compassion, truth and authenticity, beauty and joy, wisdom and love ― regularly. Just imagine.
Which is why our home is filled with books and flowers. And why I write. And why poetry and art and nature and loving family and friends and so much more enrich my life daily. We all need each other.
* * * * *
Much has changed over these past 40 years. I've certainly come to realize how beliefs in individualism and the experience of separation fuels "othering" and all forms of separation, shame, addiction, violence, and trauma. But this is not how we need to live. There is another way.
We can move more and more deeply from I to the consciousness of We. There is so much inequity, separation, and suffering that I recognize today can be radically shifted, healed, transformed as we grow in the awareness that we are interconnected, that what hurts one of us, hurts us all. We all need and belong to each other.
And under all of our flailing about and symptoms of our wounding and trauma is the beauty of our true nature. Recognizing this beauty, this sacredness of our holy selves, has helped save me. I haven't been on a self-improvement program. I've simply been on a journey of becoming who I am. And recognizing who you are. And it's why I love to take photographs of humans. I see my beauty and I see yours.
We are all connected, all related, all family. We are all sacred.
I did not know any of this through the first many years of my life when I could not be vulnerable or trust anyone, when all I knew was how to dissociate and push everything down with addictions and distractions. I had no idea how to experience any depth of peace, connection, love. I was so checked out that I didn't even know how much fear I lived with. Instead I had an image to manage. Authenticity, a journey of healing and awakening, the Sacred that is woven through and connects us with all of life ― all this was completely foreign to me.
Then I began to experience the world as I'd known it falling out from under me. Addiction, trauma, divorce, 9-11, and more were intensely frightening, painful, and disorienting times in my life. And there were times when I needed to identify myself as an "Al-Anon" or spouse of an alcoholic, as an alcoholic, as a child of alcoholic parents, as a trauma survivor. And each experience, each trauma and loss, needed to be recognized, embraced, integrated, healed, transformed.
And this is a lifelong process. Which I am grateful for. Today, it's not that I have to do this work in an ongoing way of peeling back layers of illusions. No, I get to do this work. I get to heal and evolve. I get to have this rich and blessed life. Because what I carry in my heart matters. What we all carry in our hearts and souls matters.
Again, we need each other. Suffering alone is so painful. So painful. And it is epidemic in our culture. We can see the symptoms of this all the time. There is such great need for individual and collective healing, connecting, awakening.
And when we can reach out to someone who is safe and who loves and cares about us, there is this healing balm that may not remove the pain, but the suffering diminishes. And the warmth of being listened to and witnessed without judgment, of connection and compassion, of acceptance and equanimity, of tenderness and love spreads through our bodies and ripples outward.
I no longer refer to myself as an alcoholic or trauma survivor or any other label that once were deeply important to me. It was integral to my healing and to cultivating a strong path of sobriety to embrace these parts of who I am and my life experience. But I have no fear of relapse. None. Because what underlies all addictions is unhealed trauma. And I've been healing mine for many, many years now. It is also true that I wouldn't trade in consciousness and love for the fog and suffering of addiction for anything.
It is also true, as my therapist reminds me, that we all have addictions. "If we don't, we are the Buddha," he told me. And there are places of trauma that continue to need attending to. All this is true. So there is no arriving, no place where the journey ends. No. If we are alive and breathing, there is more that we can open our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls to. And what a gift that is.
It is also true that I am so much larger than my wounds. We all are. The addictions, the unhealthy relationships, the unskilled triggers and reactions, the harmful belief systems and more have indeed needed to be seen for what they are ― places where I have needed to attend to, understand, hold with tenderness and compassion, heal and transform.
And this, to me, is life. This is the journey of being a fully embodied human being. The challenge is to open to our own unique individual and collective journeys of becoming who we most truly and wholly are ― sacred, beautiful, holy beings. When we are struggling and in pain, and there are symptoms that emerge ― whether addictions, anxiety, depression, shame, anger, isolation, illness, and more ― these can simply be seen as signals where we've been hurt and where we need help.
We all need and belong to each other. We are all sacred. And may we be blessed with our own "Ann's" who speak up and offer us the loving truths that can change our lives. God works though so many. May we recognize when that helping hand is outstretched, reaching for us in kindness, caring, and love.
With love and blessings,
💗
Molly
* * * * *
Recommended reading ―
Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and
the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness,
and Healing in a Toxic Culture
No comments:
Post a Comment