RaggedBlossom's Xanga

Friday, April 04, 2008

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:08:56 GMT

I'm bringing Xanga back - drop a comment if you're with me!

Hey

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:16:14 GMT

I noticed I'm getting hits. This has kind of been "in the drawer" for a while, but I've been planning some new layers for "The Broken Vessels: Excavating Shards of Memory in the Blogosphere." Thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

Enter here.

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Sun, 08 May 2005 15:42:36 GMT

The Cry

"And we cried out to the Holy One, the god of our ancestors, and the Holy One heard our voice, and witnessed on our affliction, and our labour, and our oppression. And the Holy One brought us forth out of the Place of Constriction with a strong hand and an outstretched arm."
The Passover Hagaddah

The storm hit. This is what I need to do. My God, this is the cry. I can't bear hold it in anymore. It has to come out.

So I'm crying finally, but who can hear? I cry out like the Israelites under slavery, and somehow the god that made a promise takes heed. Oh, You. You You You You You. You can hear. You can see. I'm eight years old hiding in the closet again in the middle of the night, pushing away the knowledge of what is happening to me. But the truth closes in. I'm trapped between the lie I wake up with in the morning and the uknowable truth I encounter every night. The closet door opens as it inevitably does. But this time it's You. Because You saw. You heard. You extend Your hand, hand of strength, hand of comfort. Hand of redemption.

I'm going to need a lot of help. I'm still the pitiful orphan girl that was my great-grandmother, still at the mercy of communal good will. How many people will need to help clean up this mess? How many, how much, to heal this devastation? Way more than one therapist, way more than forty-five minutes a week. And a lot of money. Devastation bankrupts.

Back to gateway.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:44:01 GMT

The Mortal Fear of Physical Peril,
or,
Fear in My Cells

I've thought of taking a break from therapy to go for a series of massages to release chronic holding up and down my spine. This one muscle spasms, my right shoulder goes down and my hip goes up. I'm crooked and graceless. I wanted a break, too, to clear up my doubts about L. It was a good sign when Little J. (my eight year-old self) started to get sad about the prospect of not seeing her.

Explaining to L. why I wanted the break helped clarify some things. Before these new memories, I had several categories for Donna that had taken me a lifetime to sort out: the endearing, pitiful, strangely wise crazy woman I had always known; the fantasy of the perfect mother that was my forgetting; the violent abuser of the first set of repressed memories from my early twenties; the angry needy multiple I revealed later in my research as a historian; Baby Donna, the symbol of her pure untainted soul I had come to on the path through all of that to the heart of compassion. A Donna for every layer of memory. This incest jumbled them all up. Now I can't seem to get a fix on anyone but the baby. Now she's just not there. I can't put this new Donna in with the rest yet, the sadist, my mistress, my dom, my top.

Little J.: "When I do feel this, I won't die."
L.: "No you won't die. Back then it wasn't safe to feel. But you won't die now."
Little J.: "But it's ok to die, if I do die. I mean dying is something that happens."
Me: "I think what she's trying to say is that she understands now that feeling won't kill her. It's not that she wants to die. But the fear is in my cells. Saying, it's ok to die, reassures the cells. Just accept. Don't fight against it. If it's my time to die then that's as it should be. Facing and accepting death enables the release."
L.: "Yes, death is part of the process."

Right after our session, I got a huge hit of transference. "L. doesn't like me anymore. I'm covered in filth." I'm not identified with it. Just noticed it. I also figured out that the fear in the cells is simply the imprint of mortal fear in response to real physical peril, my life under threat every night. For months I lived with the fear: tonight she's really going to kill me.

And I understand now that I don't have to let L. go because she doesn't give me everything I need. When I need to look into her near-black eyes, eyes the color of fertile soil, and feel her strong presence with me, I can.

Next Blog - Layer Now

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 21:32:31 GMT

Mother Superior Jumped the Gun

When I hold you
in my arms
and I feel my finger on your trigger
I know no one can do me no harm
because happiness is a warm gun
The Beatles

A little over a year ago, I wrote this about a trip I took with my mother shortly before she died. Here's what I left out:

August 1980: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Hurricane River Campground on Lake Superior. Mom and I sit on the beach at dusk. The evening is pleasant, but there's a damp chill in the air and dense rainclouds hover near the horizon.

She whispers in my ear: "Are you still my horny little girl?" Her words hit me like a knock-out blow from a fighter in the ring that I hadn't seen coming. All that I did not remember comes surging forward in a single moment and slams me into the boards. Here I am, lying prostrate at the feet of my conquerer as I had eight years before. I put this moment and the ones that follow that night in the box with the others I had forgotten, and will forget again when I stand up in the morning.

Then the storm that has been gathering over the water attacks the shore. We run to the tent seeking shelter from its rage, but I find no refuge from the rage within.

Next Blog - Layer Now

Monday, February 14, 2005

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 18:41:53 GMT

Bentching Gomel: Trauma and Witness in Communal Prayer

“No one can speak a true word alone.”

Paolo Freire

At my shul in Brooklyn we’ve started the custom during the Shabbat morning service of asking if anyone present needs to “bentch gomel.” A person who has come through what we’ve been calling a “risky situation” should recite the gomel prayer, a blessing of gratitude for deliverance from harm’s way. It goes like this: “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe, who bestows goodness on the undeserving, and who has bestowed every goodness on me.” The congregation then responds, “May the One who has bestowed goodness on you, bestow every goodness upon you forever.”

The Talmud gives four categories of what traditionally constitutes the risky situation that calls for gomel: crossing the sea, traversing the wilderness, recovering from illness, and being freed from captivity. Today’s liberal congregations have expanded the application of gomel to whenever one feels that one’s life was at stake in the threat he or she has faced. These threats can range from a brush with death in a car accident to surviving rape or incest. The commandment to recite gomel is derived from Psalm 107. The survivor must “utter his thanksgiving in the presence of ten, as it is written, “Let them exalt Him in the assembly (kahal) of the people (Ps. 107:32).”[*]

The call and response of the gomel prayer and the commandment that it be recited in a minyan (quorum of ten) speak to the survivor’s profound need for witness in healing from trauma. Like the “amens” that punctuate the mourner’s kaddish, the call and response of gomel communicate to the survivor the presence of community as he or she confronts grief, loss and terror. Gomel offers the survivor the opportunity to be recognized in community in the midst of personal suffering, a precious gift in a world of alienation.

Leaders model for the congregation how to help the survivor bear the burden of pain in a spirit of comfort, ease and even joy. Everyone gets another chance to foster intimacy in community, and to experience the healing power of witness for both the blessed and those making the blessing. We learn once more what it takes to make ourselves available for a soul-encounter with the Divine in ourselves and the other. At shul in Brooklyn on Shabbat morning, I open again and again to that encounter and possibilities it brings to our lives. That’s what I call exultation of the Holy One.

[*] Berakhot 54b, Soncino translation, 1960, emphasis added.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Sat, 22 Jan 2005 22:26:58 GMT

The Place

"How awesome is This Place!"
Jacob, after awakening from his dream of the ladder ascending to heaven

I've been so overwhelmed by the rush of memories lately, each one more sadistic and violent than the next. They started to come through in September after a summer hearing voices like "I want to die, I hate you, I want to kill you." I understood that these were flashbacks, clues to traumas that I hadn't remembered. Repressed memory shattered my identity years ago. I'd spent years excavating my unconscious, and wondered if I hadn't more to do. Last spring, the lid blew on my sexless marriage. We entered counseling, hoping to cultivate a deeper emotional connection. I wanted my "wounded self" to be more present in our relationship. I talked about my wounds, and the voices started, and eventually so did the incest revelations.

I write, they come. But so far, just my mind knows. My body, this persona, just go along as before as if nothing has happened. I say persona, but it's not false. It's real--warm, open, loving, a teacher, a mother. "I" only experience the effects of the memories in a very distanced way, and have struggled to feel. But now I see why I haven't been able to feel. I had to take a kind of inventory. I needed the story first:

It started out euphoric, a kind of sexual initiation for both of us. Donna had retreated from the household as her mother's, my grandmother's, illness progressed. Donna would often come home after bedtime, often deep in the night, and come in to kiss me goodnight. Things escalated from there. Grandma had known that Donna was dangerous, and had kept her under control. But Grandma was gone now, lying dilerious from brain cancer. And Donna was out of control. E-mail me if you want the rest of the story.

So how could I feel? When I didn't know what I had to face? When this persona was designed not to feel this very thing? It's as if my life is a river, and memory of this incest is a toxic waste dump in that river of my life. I've flowed along nicely, the toxic sludge safely contained. Now that I've done an inventory, it's time to dredge. And I know that it's not possible to do that without some leakage. That means I'm going to feel needy, I'm going to feel desperation, terror, the walls closing in--everything I felt then, everything I sealed off so I could keep flowing.

Lying there in L's office as Little J, shuddering with fear, overwhelmed by the monumental task to feel, I realized that I can only do it with God. I thought about one of the seventy names of God, HaMakom, The Place. That's where I'm headed, to The Place of total and complete non-judgement, The Place of infinite compassion, where all things are seen and known and accepted with perfect clarity. Where there are no adjectives. Just verbs. And things, as they are. Not ugly. Not shameful. Not even beautiful. They just are.

Next Blog - Layer Now

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 19:59:58 GMT

Reflexivity

"Reflexivity generates heightened awareness and vertigo, the creative intensity of a possibility that loosens us from habit and custom and turns us back to contemplate ourselves, just as we may be beginning to realize that we have no clear idea of what we are doing. The experience may be exhilarating or frightening or both, but it is generally irreversible. We can never return to our former easy terms with a world that carried on quite well without our administrations."
Barbara Meyerhoff and Jay Ruby

It didn't feel comfortable "reflexing" on L., but the twinge of panic was so revealing, like getting a whiff of a festering wound to which I've grown so accustomed that I don't notice it anymore, until....sniff, sniff...eewww. The safety and comfort that triggered the transference is still there, so I'm sure I'll have to go for another spin. I like thinking in terms of reflexivity rather than transference---seeing the reflection of self when reality bends back on itself, and in that revelation lies the undeniable potential for change--even the imperative to change. Yes, change does happen in the reflexive moment; there is no choice. I only have a choice about what I do with it, how I shape change. Reflexivity generates awareness. Am I going to allow myself to see, to know, to internalize that knowledge? Or will I follow my basest reactionary impulse? Will I waste my time, my energy, my life really, rebelling against what I know? There is no choice here, except the choice between life and death. By the gift of some grace, the choice of life has always been simple for me. Not so simple, though, facing the implications of living.

"What gain is there in my death, when I descend into the pit? Will the dust acknowledge You? Will it declare Your truth?" (Psalm 30) So here I am, still waiting for You to change for me my lament into dancing.

Next Blog - Layer Now

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:07:24 GMT

The Queen of Transference

I have feared getting "dependent," "needing" L, and now it's happened. But I wouldn't call it dependence. It's just that I'm no longer bracing for flight, no longer planning my escape. It doesn't feel bad or out of control (yet) the way I feared it would, but rather like the refuge I have sought, a small island of comfort in a sea of menace. In my dream the other night, I ran from a totalitarian regime, running running running along the expressway. In waking life I can't find the time or space to grieve - everything is too close - houses, other people, neighbors, strangers in the city, pressing mundane demands.

I thought I could just be witnessed, my pain could be witnessed, by L., that I could evade transference. I could find the switch and turn the pain on by making the sound. She would hear it. Healing would happen. Because you must understand, she has been so game. She pulled back the veil between us and held my gaze when I asked her to draw near. I asked her to touch me and noticed her subtle awareness of the energetic body. I push into her. She gives me resistance. She has allowed me to rechoreograph psychotherapy. So I thought she would witness me, and I could go away. But now I realize that I am the queen of transference. Healing does not take place next to L. but into her, through her.

Every challenge she answered in strength helped to create the comfort, the refuge I have never known, but the refuge is way less safe than the exile I've lived until now. I don't want to go away now, and the comfort lulls me into complacency so that I'm off guard when I'm sent off again to fend for myself in the wilderness, shit out of luck because I lost my edge. She has offered me something I want, something I'm now desparate to keep, yet loss seems inevitable. Her attention and care are so euphoric, even ecstatic, yet I know this arc too well. I'm going to crash into the pain of loss. Then we'll know what's wrapped up in my hard little bundles of need, cold as stone. Things are about to heat up, and the question is, who will get burned?

But my witness-self, my God-self, does not identify with the transference. She will take it all in and guide me. She's allowed this to happen, really. Yes, she has given her permission. She has sanctioned this. Choose your metaphor: I've gotten on the ride and I have to take it to the end. It's carried me up to the heavens, the view so sublime from here, but I'm about to take a fall. Or: the storm approaches from the horizon. I can't run from it anymore. There is no escape. In fact I'm running toward it. Toward the darkness. The pressure. The rage.

Let it come. Because I must know what happens when it's over.

Next Blog - Layer Now

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 13:00:37 GMT

Midwife

I resent it that I walk out of her office and all this stuff is just churning, churning away. I'm stewing, mulling it over, trying to grasp what's going on. It is my life. But L. moves on to the next client, to her "life." She is deeply enmeshed in my life, while I am her job. Understandably, I must occupy a small place in the constellation of concerns and responsibilities and affinities and demands that define her life, all of our lives. It's the way of the world. Of course, it's important to feel efficacy in one's work. It's beautiful when one does. But her work is not just work. It takes place in the realm of the human soul. And here she is, tending to so so many of them, including mine, including her own. The relationship feels out of balance to me, and deeply unsettling, especially when I consider that this imbalance defines the psychotherapeutic relationship. What is this relationship? Who am I to her? Who is she to me? What are we supposed to be doing?

Little J. calls her "friend." That's okay for her because she is a child and L. is an adult. It's implied that this is not actually an equal "friendship." L. has earned the child's trust, "befriended" her and now she looks to her new friend to help her. "Friend" does not begin to describe it for me. I am an adult, she is an adult, yet this can never be equal. L. loaned me a book by an incest survivor. The author of the book had a kind of master/student relationship with her therapist. She describes him as teaching her--how to feel, what authentic emotions really are. Now here I must admit to my own hubris. I think I know what authentic emotions are. In fact I'm sure that I do. Is there a part of me that is really confused about the definitions of love and need and anger and desire and grief and even joy? Do I need to surrender to L. as a teacher, a master in the workings of the human heart?

This conclusion does not bring me peace. Next day, Shabbat, I am still unsettled and agitated, my mind struggling to accommodate itself to this conclusion. I leave the house early for services, giving myself time to visit the park on my way, searching for a bit of private, personal space in the anonymity of the city. On my way out I glance at the book by my bedside, The Courage to Heal, opened to an autobiographical account of a survivor, and read: "...I needed to scream and holler and yell...a friend took me to the beach. I lay down in the sand and cried...my advice to people working on this stuff is find working therapy as opposed to talking therapy. Talking doesn't truly release it. That's why people can be in therapy for twenty years, you know---because they just talk about it. Express it and release. If you need to scream and holler, that's what you need to do."

...work not talk...scream yell pound...yes!

I get off the bus near the lake. Mild breeze, low yellow sun on the water. I go down a low rise and lean on a tree, then squat down, let sound come out of my belly. A grunt. A push. I do know what love is. I know what grief is. I know: sadness, pain, anger, joy. Grunt. Push. I don't need a teacher, I need a midwife! I am mother, but also babe, giving rebirth to myself.

D., my husband, so gracious, so solicitous, indulges my request to go to the beach after services, to the biggest noise machine in New York City. My two year old is more than happy to comply, and let's me go off by myself. I've explained that "mommy time" helps me be a better mommy. And only the great ocean can absorb the sound I need to make. My friend comes, needing to release stuff of her own. I tell her the whole saga, and when I get to the "I thought maybe L. was my teacher," my friend interjects. "No it doesn't seem like that's what's going on here. It's more like she's helping you connect to your raw core, letting that rawness emerge," validating on her own the understanding I had come to myself.

I climb out over the water, unsteady on the rough dark uneven stones. Hard wind, low sun, churning sea, air shades of blue and wintery yellow light. I make the sound from my belly again, but drawn out, stronger, lower down in my womb---"uuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaahhhhh" "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaahhhhhh"-----vibrating, electrifying, awakening every cell. Standing, back arched, heart to the sky. Sky, sea, accepting this cry, indifferent but so vast. Finally tears, a few moments of hard-won grace. "Why did you do this to me??!!"

My tears rejoin the mother of all tears.

Next Blog - Layer Now