"He said he's divorcing all of us. He gets out of jail in four days and he's going to serve me with divorce papers. He says he loves us but he can't forgive what we've done to him."
I was used to my mother relaying the latest drama of my family to me. The pattern was for me to listen and then relay the story as I heard it to my friends. It was only a year ago that I realized how much energy I had tied up in my parents' "stories." How I used them to label and define who I was in the world: Victim, Savior, etc.... My first reaction to this story was to smile incredulously and sarcastically respond, "Uh-huh."
A week before I had received a gift of $10,000 from my father to help me pay for college. He had his bookkeeper type up a short note which was attached to the check that read, "Accept this money with all my love, Your Father." I was elated when I read it. Not because I had $10,000, but because my father loved me. The amount he was willing to bestow symbolized his great love for me and nothing anyone said could make me believe any different. Even now, as I listened to my mother tell me his decision to stay in jail for another six months rather than go into a residential drug and alcohol treatment center for six months, I felt his love, not his blame. It felt like power and like being invincible.
He wrote in the four page letter that he knew he would find ways to drink while in the treatment center and he'd get kicked out again, just like the last time, and the time before. He'd never get out of the system that way, so he decided to do jail time and get it over with. The letter was full of blame toward my mother, my brother, and me, emphasizing that we were lounging in the comforts of home while he was in "JAIL!"
To me these were just words from a tired man who was in the struggle of his life. My father started drinking at age thirteen while growing up in the projects of San Francisco. As it was, his current jail time of six weeks, while waiting to be re-sentenced, was the longest he had ever been sober since then. At this point he had been in and out of rehabs for over a year, starting when my mother had him arrested for trying to throw her off the second story balcony. To him that meant a year away from his business, not from his family. His business had always been his first child, and his second priority after drinking.
I had seen many faces of my father throughout my life. The one I wanted to believe was the truest had sent me that note with $10,000. That was the one who told me he could never lie to me because I always looked him straight in the eyes--the one who held me and cried, "I thought you were dead," when I came home one morning after two days missing. Because I believed I knew my father's heart, I couldn't take his letter seriously. Until my mother read me the end. "He says he regrets he will not see you and Anthony live your lives and that he will never see his grandchildren."
"That's awfully melodramatic," I said, more to convince myself.
"Yeah, it's hard to take the letter seriously, but I know he's going to divorce me. I guess I never thought he'd do it. Maybe it's good. It will allow me to really get on with my life. He asked me to stop writing him cards too."
I could tell she was holding in her grief. I am certainly my mother's daughter in that regard. We talked a bit longer, rattling off theories of why he said what he did, before hanging up. I walked with my thoughts to a friend who was nearby and relayed the story to him. He listened and I could tell he was wondering why I was so calm.
"You're taking this news really well, Maria. I guess nothing he does can surprise you anymore."
I shrugged my shoulders and chuckled off the comment, wanting to appear strong, grounded, and clear about who I was amidst it all. Yet inside I felt like I was running from something big. As long as it didn't catch me I wouldn't have to face it.
I couldn't sleep that night. I was frustrated because I hadn't had insomnia since grade school; why was it suddenly coming back? My insomnia in childhood was related to my fear of my father. I still remember being up at 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. at age eight, nine, ten...wishing sleep would take me, feeling completely alone in the darkness of our house. The tossing and turning would drive me to tears and I'd finally get out of bed and go to the kitchen to write or eat. This night my head was spinning with random scenes of past and future. Imagining bringing my baby to jail to see her grandfather and him refusing me visitation. Crying. Believing that if he just saw my baby, he would have the will to live again.
The second workshop began the following morning. As with the first workshop, I was helping to facilitate. I woke up angry, but didn't know I was angry until mid-morning at a meeting with the other assistants. I found I was nervous to speak to the point of butterflies in my stomach. When I opened my mouth the tears started and all I could say was, "I'm having a hard time with something that happened with my father. Could someone sit with me today at some point?" I had no idea until I spoke that I was in such pain around that four page letter. The pain felt old and new, like an old scar that had repeatedly been rewounded and scarred over. The letter was yet another cut into my protective scar tissue. This time I knew I couldn't cover it up again. I had to pull up all the scars and heal them properly.
For three days I worked with friends to understand the complexity of my anger and grief. I knew I had to surrender to the raging river of emotion I kept dammed up in my belly and throat. I had to let myself be caught. Each day I felt resistance and shame around going into it and each day I asked for help. It was a constant struggle against my patterns of isolation and disassociation that had been perfected over twenty-seven years of witnessing the physical and emotional abuse between my parents. I was a pro at not showing vulnerability or confrontation.
My journey took me into dark and painful memories, into places that I had never considered going. Confronting my mother about her drinking and addiction to pain pills. Knowing it would hurt her feelings. That being hurt, she would probably drink. And I would be faced with not blaming myself for the sequence of events. It wasn't my truth that made her drink, it was her disease. I realized that I had always focused my anger at my father because he was obvious: the dominating interrogator, controller, abuser. I saw that my whole life I had been protecting my mother from more abuse, thinking my truth would batter her. And doing this I had created a fear-based, distant relationship with her, with all the outward appearances of caring and love. I saw how my symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had been continuously getting worse, and by choosing to stuff my anger and grief, I was choosing illness over health.
For the last five years my PTSD has manifested in the form of a nervous system disorder: my head muscles spasm involuntarily, constantly. No one I've ever met has come close to a workable explanation for it. Not neurologists, chiropractors, cranial-sacral therapists, nor neuromuscular massage therapists. No one until Russ.
Sunday night, the third night of the workshop, I asked Russ for his help, knowing that he is skilled in one-on-one emotional counseling work with people. We met in a small room used for the assistants to take breaks in. Russ pulled the futon into the middle of the room and we sat down. I felt my resistance again. I didn't know how to validate my feelings of anger. It seemed weak to me to have to keep crying and screaming about the same issues over and over again.
The previous day during the workshop I experienced the physical sensation of choking, as if being strangled, during my emotional release, as I relived an experience of seeing my father beat my mother while I quietly watched on in terror. I also went into convulsions at the peak of my release and nearly vomited. I was embarrassed afterward, imagining I'd made a spectacle of myself. I'd never gone into convulsions in front of so many people before. I personally had experienced full body convulsions numerous times during orgasm. But this was the first time they'd been triggered straight from emotion.
Russ listened to my confusion. He sat across from me, straight faced, without blinking. We both knew I was talking so much because I was postponing getting into it.
"Breathe," he said. "Just start making noise."
I stared at him and took many deep breaths. In no time his face was making me shake in anger. I saw my father's face. I grit my teeth. My fists clenched. It was all I could do to keep my body from shaking.
"What are you protecting?," asked Russ.
My voice came out shrieking, "ALL I KNOW HOW TO DO IS PROTECT! IT'S ALL I EVER DO! MY WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN PROTECTING MYSELF!!! I JUST WANT TO SLEEP!! I WANT TO SLEEP AND KNOW I'M SAFE!!" I fell forward sobbing into the pillow in front of me.
"Maria. Look at what you're doing. Your twitching and shaking is you turning your anger inward. See how you can't stop shaking your hands and knees? It's like you're pounding all that rage back into your body, compacting it into a tight little ball in your gut. That's what the convulsions are. Your anger not being allowed to come out, but being packed in, tighter and tighter. That's what it looks like. You've got to keep it moving out." Russ stood up and pulled me up. "Open your mouth. Make noise. Keep yelling from your diaphragm. Drop your jaw all the way open..."
"AAAHHHH... AAAHHHHHH....!" I sounded as loud as I could. Suddenly I had a surge of energy.
"Keep movin'," counseled Russ. "You gotta move it out. When you feel yourself start to shake, start hittin' something. Keep yellin'."
I started attacking the pillow that Russ held before him. He thrust it in my face and I attacked more, all the time yelling. It was like a miracle. My body was mine again. No shaking. No convulsing. I remember picturing my husband and me making love, me with my jaw dropped yelling the whole time. This made me laugh. The anger had transmuted into humor. Russ's face was Russ's face again and it was hilarious! It felt so good to laugh. My whole body was exhausted now and I felt a whole lot lighter. We called it a night.
Walking back to my room I felt like I'd been reborn--like God had given me a priceless piece of information and channeled it through Russ. I could never relate to my anger the same way again. It was like the sun emerging from an eclipse--I finally understood my head spasms, the knots in my stomach, my shallow breathing, my tonsillectomy when I was fourteen...everything seemed illuminated with a divine truth. "My anger turned inward..." I smiled to myself. "Wow...That's amazing!" All I had to do was move and make noise to heal myself. Sing and dance.
The fourth morning I was surprised when I woke angry again. This time I walked straight into the workshop courseroom with the other assistants and danced and made noise, then told some of them how I was feeling. And that's all it took. I was freed. I was light again.
When I think of my father's four page letter now, I still feel betrayed. I also feel overwhelming love and forgiveness. I used to tell people that I saw my father as the soul who sacrificed happiness this lifetime so that the rest of us could learn unconditional love, compassion, and forgiveness. Now I realize that he didn't sacrifice anything. His choice to suffer is a gift, not only to us but for his own evolution too...as I choose to create a nervous system dysfunction with all the pain and grief that accompanies it. Now I choose to surrender my shame and be witnessed in my truth. I was the one strangling myself. Though once, to survive, I needed to be invisible to violence, now I must realize that I am safe. I can let go. I can breathe. I can sleep.
I have been thinking of ways to integrate all that I learned during the second workshop at Lost Valley, which was Naka-Ima. I have decided to create a ritual to honor the me I'm leaving behind, like a snake shedding her skin, and then to celebrate the new me. I also want to bury something that symbolizes my parents, to help me let go of their stories. A piece of jewelry from my father, burying the idea that money equals his love... burying my desire for his unconditional love. I'm not sure what to bury of my mother's. I know it will symbolize "wanting her to be strong." Perhaps a pain pill. Through this ritual I hope to open space up to celebrate the truth of our courageous passage to where we are now.
Maria Owl is a full-time student at New College of California in Santa Rosa, focusing on Personal Growth to create Sustainable Community. She recently organized the first Naka-Ima in the San Francisco Bay Area and also offers her services of Clairvoyant Counseling and Expressive Arts and Ritual workshop facilitation to her local community.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship