You would be the one who was left

August 28, 2010

Here’s a link to a two minute recording of Robert Patterson and his wife Karen talking about his Alzheimers. I have played it over and over, it’s the most moving piece.

The conversation had me remembering the first Process Work workshop I attended. There was an exercise the participants did that stayed with me. It was a meditative exercise, a series of steps and reflections. Each of us had to imagine ourselves at the end of our happy lives and look back at what had been important to us.

Career was paramount for me back then. I was only at the workshop with a group I worked with because we hoped to bring to some new thinking to our workplace. Imagining myself at 90 and pondering on what had been important was revelatory. Work did not feature, just people, well Mottsu in particular. Important to me were relationships and people. It was obviously something I believed but I hadn’t ever quite realised, or let myself realise. The knowledge delighted me.

When I came home I talked Mottsu through the same exercise, only he wasn’t delighted, he was half-hearted at best. It was some time later after we visited a friend in hospital that Mottsu mentioned the exercise. The projection into the future had troubled him and he hadn’t been able to picture himself as old and content, only old and ailing.

Decrepit.

Seeing himself as ill and alone he had been unable to recall joy in his life.

Overwhelmed.

The conversation led us to explore the idea of who would die first. The topic scared me, I didn’t want to be left behind. I felt I would be irreconcilably alone if Mottsu were to die first, it was a shared fear. Karen Patterson re-frames our conversation in her conversation and it touched me deep down: “…the greatest thing you can do if you love somebody was hope that you would be the one that was left, and that you would be the one who could care for you lover…”

Mottsu was so alone in his depression, and I was there. I wasn’t there in an emergency worker or rescuer kind of way, I couldn’t keep him here, and even so I was there. As best I could I cared for him. I am the one who was left.

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Crossing me

May 10, 2010

You get to the edge of who you are and there’s no going back you have to cross.

Cross with care or cross with abandon.

My experiences shape who I am, and recent experiences, the ones I write about, have certainly taken me beyond what I had imagined was me and what I would have regarded as my limits. I have crossed edges, boundaries, and borders.

I could label my experiences as personal development but that makes travelling my course sound self directed. I’ve wandered without a destination in mind, and although I would like to boast otherwise, I must quietly admit that I’ve presented my id or passport, with trepidation more often than boldly.

It’s also true that I could never quite have cracked up and quit, not even when I sat listening to the fridge. I did what I was able to and gently pushed at the edges, redefining me as I went. It’s ongoing work.

Somewhat paradoxically, there is less control and more abandon in who I am now. I’m not without fear, any solo traveller will appreciate there are inevitable moments of self doubt and cross and I grow.

I live a beautiful life, I know that when I can smile to myself on a morning tram packed with commuters, and I swear not much smiling happens on those journeys. Then there’s the almost boundless joy of taking a deep breath of dog, or those moments when I clumsily hug someone who’s not expecting to be hugged, I make it all up as I go along.

I don’t know how it all happened, how I got to where I am. I am thankful to have crossed me and kept on growing. I lost Mottsu and I managed to find the best of me.
I don’t know how that happened.

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Third time lucky

April 5, 2010

Goldilocks found something just right on her third attempts, the porridge, the chair, the bed. For Goldilocks, and in general, it’s good practice to try, try again and not give up.

My first two experiences with counselling were setbacks that served to make me more determined to find a counsellor I could work with. Perseverance paid off, and thanks to the recommendation of a friend of a friend, I went to see Hardt. A psychologist.

Her dark office offered refuge, and I sheltered there, weathering the storm of emotion the tide of tears. Talking and listening, being allowed to be normal, whatever shade of normal I chose to wear on any particular day.

Counselling allowed me rebuild a relationship with Mottsu and with myself.

I don’t know how often I saw Hardt, many, many, times until things felt sort of wrapped up and settled. Well not done exactly, but the sessions stopped when I felt we had travelled as far as there was to go together, a natural close.

Hardt was fabulous, counsellor-like, and supportive, she helped me to normalise my grief experiences. There was more for me to do, more to discover, more therapy to come. I had yet to encounter Process Work and the process work community.

I was third time lucky, whole but still incomplete. The fourth time around was discovering process oriented psychology , a framework for finding and aligning to your deepest nature. Process work is described as an awareness practice and it did expand my awareness in many ways and particularly about myself. Personal development, I guess.

While I highly recommend counselling I doubly, quadrupley, recommend Process Work counsellors and practitioners to locate solutions for psychological challenges, for understanding your deepest nature, and helping you to appreciate yourself as you are, and for just who you are.

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Moving forwards and backwards

January 9, 2010

“Biography is not destiny” says Tony Robbins, “…the past is not the future.”

Thanks Tony, only it seems that way sometimes. Makes me think how easy it is to be defined by the past, particularly by traumatic events which shatter our beliefs about our worlds. Regaining a foothold after a trauma takes time, for a while there is only the past, a future is barely apparent as you work to integrate what happened into your biography. That’s how it was for me.

A lecture on working with trauma given by Dr. Shar Edmunds and Alan Richardson in 2008, illuminated my experience. They said:

Trauma begins with an event or series of events that is too much to bear. The experience is beyond the “edge” of what is possible to perceive and respond to. It shatters our most fundamental beliefs about the world. It’s beyond what we can include in our identity – as an individual or as a community.

The presenters explained the biology and the psychology of reactions to trauma, and the scar tissue created. They talked about the trauma ‘receiver’, how and why that person has a monopoly on feelings and sensitivity.

Listening, I glimpsed something of poor misunderstood, woebegone, powerless, me. Poor me, who wants to thank her dear forbearing friends, the ones who stayed around while I was so bruised and wounded. The ones that allowed me to grasp onto all of the feelings and hurt as if no-one else had ever suffered a loss like mine.

Gratitude.

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