Thursday Re-View — That Well of Depression

That well of depression…

That place of complete and utter darkness;
that place where no one hears your cries;
that cylinder in the earth that was your prison,
struggling to get out
until your fingernails were bleeding…

That core of the earth…that plug…

Exhausted, you slipped along its slimy walls to the bottom,
where you collapsed, covered in sweat and blood and grime,
unable to move,
blinded by tears of frustration and abandonment…

But what if…

That well of depression was actually a birth canal…a tunnel…
a waystation…an airlock from here to there…
a bridge…

What if…

That well of depression became a wellspring,
a place of healing waters,
a baptism of graces,
a flowing giver of life…

“There is a river.”

What if…

That well of depression that became a birth canal
that became a wellspring
brought forth a beacon of light –
a way through the fog,
a welcome for the lost,
a respite for the lonely,
a shelter for the homeless,
a place to break bread for the hungry?

What if…

That well of depression that became a birth canal
that became a wellspring
that brought forth a beacon of light
duplicated its length
from the ground below to that above
and became a lighthouse?

You are their Light.

As the water bubbles up from the wellspring –
the core – the Source –
it is transformed into light;
particles of gold that pierce the heavens
in a terrible beauty.

Bringing light to the furthest reaches of darkness;
a light so strong that you cannot look upon it,
yet so gentle as to diffuse itself
into soft folds of protection (wings?).

Light that heals as it bathes its molten fluid
of serenity and peace and love.

You are back to where you started…
at a beginning rather than an end.

You are running toward
rather than running from.

You are Home.

__________________________________________________

Thursday Re-View — Despair

funkari

It is gradual, insidious, cunning.

I slip, slip, slip down into the darkness,
its waves covering me, masking me,
sucking me into its void.

A black hole of nothingness,
where cries of despair no longer echo
but end sharply, cuttingly, abruptly.

An unearthly stillness,
a catching of breath,
then a slow release that’s not a release,
but only more weight,
dragging me down, down, down into obscurity.

There is no light, no sound, no life, no hope.

A stillness, a waiting — not expectant,
but a relenting to the darkness,
its presence a living, breathing, creeping thing.

My soul is wounded, easy prey for the shadows
that wait patiently in the quiet.
All energy, breath, life is sucked dry
with nothing left to give, no desire to give,
no future.

Why struggle?

There is no life, no sound, no light.
There is no future, no hope, no dream.
It takes more than I have to dream.

The sobbing is more than crying —
it is an emptying, a stealing, a taking
with nothing left in its wake.

Cold, dark, damp.
Slimy, keening vacuum.
It waits.

It has all of eternity to feast on this soul.
It licks its lips in anticipation of the
tenderness to be destroyed.

The black hole is more alive than I am,
its eyes watching me, searing me
with a vacant blindness that still sees.
Sees too much.

A rustling – furtive –
a licking, smacking anxiousness
in the murky gloom.

It waits for me, as it has done before.

I have no strength to fight it.
My thoughts are muddied.
The weight of the darkness suffocates,
pushing the air out of my lungs.

My bones – no bones – no shape –
no light – no sound.

Nothing.
There is only this barren wasteland
and I no longer care.

About anything.

I’m exhausted.  I just want to rest.
To catapult into oblivion,
among the stars, weightless,
no control or direction.

I am abandoned.

Is this surrender?
To what end – nothing?  A future?

Must so much of me die in order to live?

And then – on a distant horizon –
the tiniest pinprick of light.
It blazes into my soul
and I breathe…

I am safe.

I can dream.

__________________________________________

Thursday Re-View — Echoes of Darkness Sheathed in the Light

In Memoriam – Mom
April 25, 1928 – February 29, 1988

[written March 1, 2009]

I thought it had passed.

Just yesterday, I remarked to my sister – “This is the first February in 21 years that hasn’t been brutal.”

Then this morning, just the mention of the phone call in the early morning darkness, when Dad told me you had died and I said, “Good” – (Good for who – me? You? The echo of guilt lingers still…) – brings back the grief like a wave crashing into rock, and I am pulled under in an instant, drowning.

The well of grief swallows me, the darkness returns, and I ache with loss – the emptiness – the missing of you – the longing for your closeness – (Me? The one who hated hugs? The one who now hugs all those in need, desperate for their/my/your touch?).

My right hand trembles, my teeth chatter, and I rock…I ache…I mourn.

My tears flood the emptiness with despair, until the well is filled to overflowing, and just when there can be no more left, the flood gates open with a rush of white-hot tears – searing, scalding, scarring – as they traverse the channels carved in my soul.

I escape then, but to where? A place of quiet, of gray, of nothing, where no one or no thing exists…where no one or no thing can hurt.

I am numb.

I cease to feel, to breathe, to mourn…quiet, waiting, collecting, remembering, forgetting. I want to stay in this nothing, where the past and present blend, simply waiting. I could spend eternity here, neither warm nor cold, neither black nor white – nothing.

But then a soft white light burns through the fog – slowly, steadily, purposefully – coming toward me. And when I turn from it, it envelops me with warmth, an embrace, a distant memory, a familiar voice, a whisper. It seeks, it flows, it permeates, it dissolves, it heals – slowly, completely. It restores breath into my lungs, it touches my hand and the trembling ceases.

The crying stops and I return. Depleted, yet complete, filled with the sense that love hurts and heals, devours and regenerates, erases then re-creates, takes away only to be made whole.

If I love, I risk.

My losses seem legion, but my blessings lift me to a place I would not have seen had I not been buried. The tears that drowned me in their ending are transformed into the healing waters of a baptism, a beginning, a grace.

I hesitate – these wings have weight – do I want what they hold? A familiar stirring inside me – a blossoming – a peace – a knowing that this is right and good. The weight will be lifted when I surrender.

And I hear the whispered promise – “I will be with you, always.” – and I feel Your embrace lift me up, then release me. I soar back into life, toward the light and Your promise, and I know I am who I am because of You, because of Your love.

Of whom do I speak? Of my Mother? Of God? Of His Mother? It matters not; only that I return. Only that I remember Your voice as I reach out to those in need. That I am present in their pain – that I quiet their tears – that I wait in their darkness – that I am their light and their hope as You were/are/will always be to me.

Lift me up, so that I might lift them.
Love me, so that I might love them.
Give me hope, so that I might bring hope to them.
Guide me, so that I might guide them.
Give me Your words, so that I might speak them.
Give me Your hearing, so that I might listen to them.
Heal me, so that I might heal them.

Remember me, as I remember You.

I am who I am, because of You.

_______________________________________________________

Related Post: Remembrance

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Thursday Re-View — The “Greatest Therapist Award”

The handwriting is looping, the capitalization non-existent, the ragged piece of paper torn on one edge, but with a faint flower at the top. It looks like the effort put into the note is considerable, the pressure of the words seen through the paper from the other side.

It is childlike. It is simple. It is a priceless treasure given to me upon my departure from Community Mental Health that I keep under glass on my desk.

No, it wasn’t written by a child. It was written by a 31-year old woman – a patient for 2 years. A woman-child. A woman whose emotional maturity was paralyzed in early adolescence, when she had several children as a result of sexual abuse by her father…abuse that her mother never stopped. A woman who never finished junior high and who ran away to get away from the monster at home, only to meet more of them on the streets and under the bridge where she slept. Where she did what she could to eat and to take care of her children until Child Protective Services removed them and placed them in Foster Care.

No protection for her, but at least there was for her children. And for the children with different fathers from severed relationships who came after that.

Rape. Childbirth. Physical abuse. Homelessness. Death of one of her children and institutionalization of another. Arrests and incarceration. Drugs and alcohol. Prostitution. Multiple suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Emotional abuse.

Self-esteem: zero. Worthlessness: 100%. In her mind, that is. And in the mind of the bruiser of a man whose son she raised as her own, who beat her up regularly, even though she took any and all that he threw at her.

But she never left. Why?

Where could she go?

She had no job – who would hire her? She had no high school diploma, with her jail time checked honestly on every application. Applications where the handwriting would look like it looked in the note above.

But she loved the squirrels outside her window, and had names for each one of them, and when her boyfriend killed one with a BB gun when he was drunk, she carefully dug a hole and buried it while he slept off the rage and the drink.

Until the next time.

Non-compliance with therapy appointments and medications until she realized that I saw past her bravado and resistance to the little girl underneath.

She was hard to like, but her survival instinct was easy to admire.

For several months, she never missed an appointment. I looked over her shoulder while she filled out applications with an agency that was willing to hire people with an arrest record. We picked out an outfit together for her interview, her boyfriend there to have the final approval on what she wore.

She didn’t get the job.

But she finally got a driver’s license so if another opportunity presented itself, she would be ready. She started to study for her GRE but didn’t have the money to sit for the exams. A fairy godmother took care of the fee at the local office that registered people for the review classes that she got thrown out of for being disruptive.

She always had difficulty with anger management, but she was also sleep deprived, since everyone around her did whatever they could to prevent her from studying. She passed all but one part of the exam for her GRE anyway, and got a tutor for the higher math.

Her father got a cancer diagnosis, and she struggled mightily with whether to go see him to tell him that she still loved him as a daughter, or to go see him to kill him for the despicable horrors that he visited upon her as a little girl. Normal feelings for what she had been through, and I daresay far above anything her father would have felt.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, for me, a chance at another job, this one in higher education. One with a secretary to answer the phone and a computer to make appointments, with time off and supplemental help. Nothing like the limited resources of Community Mental Health that wore people out.

For someone who was exhausted with compassion fatigue, it was a relatively easy choice.

But it was so terribly hard to leave the patients in my case load. And she was one of them. Right when she seemed to be making some headway, another person who she had slowly, hesitantly learned to trust was abandoning her.

Who to save? It had to be me. Because I cannot “save” anyone but myself, and I needed to give some of the compassion that I so easily poured into others, to myself.

So everyone was transitioned to new psychotherapists whom I thought would be a ‘good fit,’ and I had enough advance notice to properly ‘terminate’ my clients.

I wish I could tell you that she passed the final portion of her GRE, left what would hopefully be her last abusive relationship and found a full-time job.

But I can’t.

I don’t know what happened to her…not even if she kept her appointments with the new therapist. Not every story has a happy ending, or at least an ending that we are a part of or even privy to.

But I do have the tiny stuffed green frog she gave me on the last day, one she got from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. And I have the “Greatest Therapist Award” next to me on my desk.

Not to remind me of my award, but to remind me of the special woman-child I was so privileged to work with for 2 years.

To remind me of what a survivor looked like…a woman so tough that she was still standing, a woman so gentle that she named each of the squirrels in her back yard.

Thank you for gifting me with a glimpse into your life and sharing things that no one else knew. For keeping a small shred of hope alive even when the voices all around you ridiculed and berated.

I wish you happiness and warmth and smiles; sunshine and rainbows and sweetness.

But most of all, I wish you love.

Pure love. Of yourself and from someone good and decent and kind.

You deserve nothing less.

The privilege was mine, lovely lady. Be well.

You are in my thoughts and in my heart…go out and shine!

____________________________________________

Thursday Re-View: “I Wasn’t Enough…”

Hubble Telescope

I wasn’t enough.

When she came for her first counseling session, everything about her screamed a hard life. You could see it in her slumped shoulders, how she shuffled her feet, the weary sigh when she collapsed in the chair, the emptiness in her eyes. Her deeply lined face with its weathered features belied her chronological age of 37. If that wasn’t enough, it was confirmed in the ankle bracelet that peeked out from the ragged cuff of her jeans.

“Tell me why you’re here today.”
“My parole officer sent me.”
“How can I help you?”
“I don’t know if you can.”

She was under house arrest, her license had been suspended, and she’d been through this before.

That’s how our therapeutic relationship started. Trust was going to be difficult. I asked for her patience while I got through an initial history, since she hadn’t been through this before with me. Polite but distant, she waited for whatever was to come. She’d get through it; she’d been through a lot worse.

Family history is important; we are the sum of our experiences. A therapeutic tool known as a genogram is something I perform with every client/patient – it is a family tree that shows marriages, divorces, step-children, siblings, relationships, suicides, substance abuse, imprisonment, mental illness – all important ways to know where the person is coming from, in order to determine where they need to go, and how to get there.

Hers was a very common story for the general population our county mental health clinic served – never knew her father, had an alcoholic mother and several half-siblings, had been sexually abused by an uncle and physically abused by a stepfather, dropped out of high school, had her own child when she was 15, battled alcohol and prescription drugs off and on for the past 20 + years, and was married to an alcoholic. She had several arrests for DUI and shoplifting. Her teen-aged daughter was pregnant and living with an abusive boyfriend.

Oh – and she always wanted to be an artist.

She was depressed. No surprise there. Whether she got depressed when her life fell apart, or her life fell apart causing her depression…her use of alcohol and other drugs only complicated matters. It’s hard to know which came first, but depression and addiction go hand in hand far too often. And they were tough to beat…

Textbook – depressed mood, hopeless, helpless, emotional withdrawal, difficulty falling asleep, but sleeping excessively, weight gain, trouble concentrating, not interested in any social activities. The fact that she had been clean and sober for almost a month was wonderful, but terrible at the same time – these feelings were raw and painful; unwanted and unfamiliar; after all, for most of her life, her feelings had been numb from the drugs.

“I’d like to make a deal with you,” I said to the eyes that grew more wary. “How about if I hold onto your hope until you find it again yourself?”

“Okay,” came out softly, along with a slight sense that perhaps I was the one who needed help, rather than her.

Her parole officer wanted her to talk with someone about how to deal with her husband, who wouldn’t stop drinking with his buddies at their house several nights a week. It was too much of a temptation for her; she craved the alcohol even though her husband put a combination lock on their keg; she desperately wanted the Oxycontins and Vicodins and Percosets that her daughter offered her, but still found the strength to refuse. But she was losing ground…

Where to even start? Here, it was one day at a time, one hour at a time. By the end of the fourth session, she had managed to get her husband’s beer nights moved out to the garage, along with the keg, and to tell her daughter to not bring any of the meds when she came to visit. They were giving her some grief about it, but she stood firm.

Baby steps? No. In actuality, they were huge. She took control of those two things in her environment, and her sense of empowerment brought a smile to her face and a slight squaring of her shoulders.

“I’m so proud of you!!!”

She covered her face with her hands, sobbing. “No one ever said that to me before.”

“Well, they should have. You are a strong, courageous woman; a survivor. Right now, as is, you are enough…”

Her blue eyes, glistening with tears but clearer without the effects of the drugs, met my gaze with something different, something lost that was slowing being found.

With hope.

For an instant, I saw the beautiful young girl she would have been had all of the terrible things not dragged her down and worn her out and bruised her soul. Innocent, expectant, full of hope for the future. It was staggering. It was humbling.

Sacred ground. She felt it too.

Palette of Memories
Josephine Wall

She missed her next appointment, but when I called to reschedule, I could tell she was excited about something. She had just gotten off the phone with her parole officer; he arranged an interview for her at a local family run convenience store that took part in a county program for ex-offenders. It was part-time, but a start. Plus, it was in walking distance from her house. The interview was next week.

Hope. There it was again, tinged with a girlish excitement.

We spoke briefly about what she might expect from the interview, and what she planned to wear. I congratulated her again, wished her luck, and assured her she would be fine. She signed off with a breathy, “See you next week.”

And that was the last time I ever heard her voice.

When I came in to work on Monday, my supervisor showed me her obituary in the local newspaper. Dead, at 37 years old.

Why? What happened? I was in shock as I relayed our last conversation in full.

I called her husband, looking to offer my condolences, and hopefully, for some answers.

They had some friends over for a party to celebrate her job interview. She cooked lots of food and seemed happy and excited. He remembered drinking too much and falling asleep on the couch. His daughter woke him up and asked if he’d seen her mother; she was nowhere in the house, and the keys to the truck were gone. At first, he didn’t understand.

When they found her, she was already dead. By her own hand.

A. Successful. Suicide.

I couldn’t speak.

He mentioned how much his wife had liked coming to her appointments at the counseling center, and that she seemed to be doing better.

I asked him if I could help in any way; he said no, but thanked me for calling, and for helping her.

I hung up. Helping Her? Hardly.

Suicide meant that at that moment, for a reason that we would probably neither know nor understand, she had been in such emotional pain that she just wanted to stop hurting; she just needed to escape. She hadn’t been thinking clearly enough to realize that the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness would pass; that they were only temporary; that she would get through it and survive, just as she always had.

Survive and thrive. Clean and sober. Perhaps at a new job. Or so we had hoped… Or so I had hoped…

The tenents of good practice dictate that involved staff and supervisors hold a “psychological autopsy” for any patients who suicide. We sat around a conference table on speaker phone with administration at our other office. I presented her history, from start to finish, along with treatment plan, progress, appointment schedule, recommendations, contact with her parole officer and family, patient compliance. Every detail.

Why? What happened? What could we have done differently?

Nothing. But she committed suicide. Everything? No, I knew that wasn’t true. Delayed it, perhaps. But change takes time, and there hadn’t been enough of it…

After about 25 minutes of this, I started to cry. In front of 2 supervisors, and over the speaker phone “in front of” the CEO of the county mental health offices and two attending psychiatrists.

“She has a name; she’s not just a case.” I struggled on. “And for just a brief time in her 37 years, she felt good about herself. It wasn’t long, and it obviously wasn’t enough, but it was something.” Silence in two rooms filled with people. “And she was important…”

I couldn’t sit there with it being so impersonal. We health care professionals do that so often by necessity; we need to retain distance and objectivity in order to do our job well. It’s not about us, but rather always about the patient.

But I had to remind them, and myself, that she lived and loved and hoped and dreamed and fought as long and as hard as possible. And I admired her for that. And I loved her for that. And I would remember her for that.

Be well, lovely lady. You touched my heart. I know that you are free of any of the torment that weighed so heavily upon you, and that your eyes and thoughts are clear. And that you have hope again…

Paint with bright colors, with abandon, with your heart…and paint outside the lines, without limits or restraint.

My time with you was too short, but it was my privilege.

And remember – right now, as is….you are, and always will be, enough.

Eternal rest, grant her, O Lord, and perpetual light shine upon her.
May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

spotonlists

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The “Greatest Therapist Award”

The handwriting is looping, the capitalization non-existent, the ragged piece of paper torn on one edge, but with a faint flower at the top. It looks like the effort put into the note is considerable, the pressure of the words seen through the paper from the other side.

It is childlike. It is simple. It is a priceless treasure given to me upon my departure from Community Mental Health that I keep under glass on my desk.

No, it wasn’t written by a child. It was written by a 31-year old woman – a patient for 2 years. A woman-child. A woman whose emotional maturity was paralyzed in early adolescence, when she had several children as a result of sexual abuse by her father…abuse that her mother never stopped. A woman who never finished junior high and who ran away to get away from the monster at home, only to meet more of them on the streets and under the bridge where she slept. Where she did what she could to eat and to take care of her children until Child Protective Services removed them and placed them in Foster Care.

No protection for her, but at least there was for her children. And for the children with different fathers from severed relationships who came after that.

Rape. Childbirth. Physical abuse. Homelessness. Death of one of her children and institutionalization of another. Arrests and incarceration. Drugs and alcohol. Prostitution. Multiple suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Emotional abuse.

Self-esteem: zero. Worthlessness: 100%. In her mind, that is. And in the mind of the bruiser of a man whose son she raised as her own, who beat her up regularly, even though she took any and all that he threw at her.

But she never left. Why?

Where could she go?

She had no job – who would hire her? She had no high school diploma, with her jail time checked honestly on every application. Applications where the handwriting would look like it looked in the note above.

But she loved the squirrels outside her window, and had names for each one of them, and when her boyfriend killed one with a BB gun when he was drunk, she carefully dug a hole and buried it while he slept off the rage and the drink.

Until the next time.

Non-compliance with therapy appointments and medications until she realized that I saw past her bravado and resistance to the little girl underneath.

She was hard to like, but her survival instinct was easy to admire.

For several months, she never missed an appointment. I looked over her shoulder while she filled out applications with an agency that was willing to hire people with an arrest record. We picked out an outfit together for her interview, her boyfriend there to have the final approval on what she wore.

She didn’t get the job.

But she finally got a driver’s license so if another opportunity presented itself, she would be ready. She started to study for her GRE but didn’t have the money to sit for the exams. A fairy godmother took care of the fee at the local office that registered people for the review classes that she got thrown out of for being disruptive.

She always had difficulty with anger management, but she was also sleep deprived, since everyone around her did whatever they could to prevent her from studying. She passed all but one part of the exam for her GRE anyway, and got a tutor for the higher math.

Her father got a cancer diagnosis, and she struggled mightily with whether to go see him to tell him that she still loved him as a daughter, or to go see him to kill him for the despicable horrors that he visited upon her as a little girl. Normal feelings for what she had been through, and I daresay far above anything her father would have felt.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, for me, a chance at another job, this one in higher education. One with a secretary to answer the phone and a computer to make appointments, with time off and supplemental help. Nothing like the limited resources of Community Mental Health that wore people out.

For someone who was exhausted with compassion fatigue, it was a relatively easy choice.

But it was so terribly hard to leave the patients in my case load. And she was one of them. Right when she seemed to be making some headway, another person who she had slowly, hesitantly learned to trust was abandoning her.

Who to save? It had to be me. Because I cannot “save” anyone but myself, and I needed to give some of the compassion that I so easily poured into others, to myself.

So everyone was transitioned to new psychotherapists whom I thought would be a ‘good fit,’ and I had enough advance notice to properly ‘terminate’ my clients.

I wish I could tell you that she passed the final portion of her GRE, left what would hopefully be her last abusive relationship and found a full-time job.

But I can’t.

I don’t know what happened to her…not even if she kept her appointments with the new therapist. Not every story has a happy ending, or at least an ending that we are a part of or even privy to.

But I do have the tiny stuffed green frog she gave me on the last day, one she got from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. And I have the “Greatest Therapist Award” next to me on my desk.

Not to remind me of my award, but to remind me of the special woman-child I was so privileged to work with for 2 years.

To remind me of what a survivor looked like…a woman so tough that she was still standing, a woman so gentle that she named each of the squirrels in her back yard.

Thank you for gifting me with a glimpse into your life and sharing things that no one else knew. For keeping a small shred of hope alive even when the voices all around you ridiculed and berated.

I wish you happiness and warmth and smiles; sunshine and rainbows and sweetness.

But most of all, I wish you love.

Pure love. Of yourself and from someone good and decent and kind.

You deserve nothing less.

The privilege was mine, lovely lady. Be well.

You are in my thoughts and in my heart…go out and shine!

____________________________________________

Echoes of Darkness Sheathed in the Light

In Memoriam – Mom
April 25, 1928 – February 29, 1988

[written March 1, 2009]

I thought it had passed.

Just yesterday, I remarked to my sister – “This is the first February in 21 years that hasn’t been brutal.”

Then this morning, just the mention of the phone call in the early morning darkness, when Dad told me you had died and I said, “Good” – (Good for who – me? You? The echo of guilt lingers still…) – brings back the grief like a wave crashing into rock, and I am pulled under in an instant, drowning.

The well of grief swallows me, the darkness returns, and I ache with loss – the emptiness – the missing of you – the longing for your closeness – (Me? The one who hated hugs? The one who now hugs all those in need, desperate for their/my/your touch?).

My right hand trembles, my teeth chatter, and I rock…I ache…I mourn.

My tears flood the emptiness with despair, until the well is filled to overflowing, and just when there can be no more left, the flood gates open with a rush of white-hot tears – searing, scalding, scarring – as they traverse the channels carved in my soul.

I escape then, but to where? A place of quiet, of gray, of nothing, where no one or no thing exists…where no one or no thing can hurt.

I am numb.

I cease to feel, to breathe, to mourn…quiet, waiting, collecting, remembering, forgetting. I want to stay in this nothing, where the past and present blend, simply waiting. I could spend eternity here, neither warm nor cold, neither black nor white – nothing.

But then a soft white light burns through the fog – slowly, steadily, purposefully – coming toward me. And when I turn from it, it envelops me with warmth, an embrace, a distant memory, a familiar voice, a whisper. It seeks, it flows, it permeates, it dissolves, it heals – slowly, completely. It restores breath into my lungs, it touches my hand and the trembling ceases.

The crying stops and I return. Depleted, yet complete, filled with the sense that love hurts and heals, devours and regenerates, erases then re-creates, takes away only to be made whole.

If I love, I risk.

My losses seem legion, but my blessings lift me to a place I would not have seen had I not been buried. The tears that drowned me in their ending are transformed into the healing waters of a baptism, a beginning, a grace.

I hesitate – these wings have weight – do I want what they hold? A familiar stirring inside me – a blossoming – a peace – a knowing that this is right and good. The weight will be lifted when I surrender.

And I hear the whispered promise – “I will be with you, always.” – and I feel Your embrace lift me up, then release me. I soar back into life, toward the light and Your promise, and I know I am who I am because of You, because of Your love.

Of whom do I speak? Of my Mother? Of God? Of His Mother? It matters not; only that I return. Only that I remember Your voice as I reach out to those in need. That I am present in their pain – that I quiet their tears – that I wait in their darkness – that I am their light and their hope as You were/are/will always be to me.

Lift me up, so that I might lift them.
Love me, so that I might love them.
Give me hope, so that I might bring hope to them.
Guide me, so that I might guide them.
Give me Your words, so that I might speak them.
Give me Your hearing, so that I might listen to them.
Heal me, so that I might heal them.

Remember me, as I remember You.

I am who I am, because of You.

_______________________________________________________

Related Post: Remembrance

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Thursday Re-View — “The Welcome Angel”

bhmpics

I met Dannie when her social worker discharge team brought her to my office after more than a year in a residential mental health facility. Probably in her mid-thirties, but looking much older, she was petite, wiry – all coiled muscle – with high cheekbones that validated her ethnic background. Her long hair was held back by a headband across her forehead. Her shoulders were slumped, her skin a pasty gray, with a shuffle in her reluctant steps. Her voice was deep and scratchy, the type that country music would describe as “whiskey and smoke.”

We had nothing in common.

She remained standing after I invited her to be seated, looked up for the first time, met my eyes with a spark in hers and informed me: “You have 5 minutes, and then I’m walking out of here.” Under the spark in her gaze was pain, made all the more marked by the deep circles under her eyes.

I was wrong; we had quite a bit in common.

As I worked with Dannie, I came to know of her struggles with addiction – to alcohol, to prescription drugs, to family conflict and to abusive men. Her present boyfriend was soon to be released from prison, and the rescuer in her struggled with letting him back into her life. I reminded her that if that was her decision, she risked losing the progress she had made with staying sober, not having another suicide attempt (she had two prior to our meeting) and remembering that she, as a human being, had value and worth.

I so hated to see this strong woman – the one who told me that this boyfriend was better than some of her others because “he always made sure to hit me where no one could see it” – lose ground in her healing and recovery. But I believe in the autonomy of my clients – and Dannie needed to feel in control of something, even though I believed that taking control in this instance would be to refuse his coming back to live with her.

Life, like therapy, is never without setbacks, and a new concern was a health issue that flared up, with a prognosis that offered only maintaining her present health and not letting it decline, rather than any type of cure. Coping with that, along with the depression, addiction and everything else, became a daily task.

One day, in Dannie’s latest update on her continuing family conflicts, she asked my opinion about something. Apparently when Dannie went to her mother’s grave site, she saw a wrought iron angel lawn ornament stuck next to the headstone, the word “Welcome” in big letters. Dannie was horrified and appalled, especially since she found out later that it was her very own sister who had put bought this for their mother, when her sister had a few too many beers. Dannie removed it and threw it away, only to return a week later to find another one in its place.

Wasn’t that terrible?

She looked at me, at once aghast, angry, yet expecting no less from her family. Then, I saw it – the faintest gleam in her dark eyes, that fiery spark that only Dannie had after a life filled with 10 kinds of despair. The edges of her mouth curved up a bit, and she looked down at the floor. But I could see her shoulders start to shake. I couldn’t help it – this therapist started to laugh, struggling to keep it private, since Dannie wasn’t looking at me.

Her eyes met mine and we both burst out laughing at the same time; a rollicking, easy, raucous laughter that, I found out later, had quite a few of the other offices in the hall wondering what in the world was happening in Theresa’s office. Dannie and I were bent over, laughing, until tears ran down our faces. An angel in a cemetery – okay; but a welcome angel?

The absurdity of it caught us both, and in that moment, for Dannie and me, there was nothing else but our sharing joyously in something macabre, yet somehow, in some way, making sense in the larger scheme of things. It felt good and it felt right; it was beautiful. We collected ourselves, then were able to segue perfectly into her own fears about dying, a topic which she had always skirted in the past.

Unexpectedly, I left that job to take another position that I felt called to, and with a month until my departure, I said my goodbyes to Dannie. I felt certain she would be in good hands with the therapist assigned to take over her case. Our 5 minutes that turned into a few years was done, and I was proud of her progress and transformation. When she thanked me for saving her life, saying that she’d never forget me, I answered that she did the work, and that it was a privilege for me to have been part of even a small portion of her life journey. I also mentioned that whenever I saw a wrought iron welcome angel, I would think of her and the laughter we shared.

Not long after, I heard that Dannie had passed away. “Oh no…” My sadness was immediate.

I was afraid to ask, but I had to ask, how she died. A suicide? No. An overdose? No. As a result of physical abuse? No. The answer – “of natural causes” related to the condition we knew about. Her body shut down; it was time.

I breathed a sigh of relief. At the time of her death, Dannie was sober and still living on her own, having refused to take back the abusive boyfriend. It was unfortunate, but it was a good death. Yes – a good death.

Now, whenever I see an angel lawn ornament, I smile, think of Dannie and send her a prayer. Sometimes, I can almost hear her laughter, but then I realize it was only the wind. (Maybe. Then again, maybe not…)

Thank you, Dannie, for the gift of your generous and strong spirit. You mattered. You made a difference. You shine in my heart, and in my memory.

Someday, find a way to let me know if you were met on the other side by a Welcome Angel…

Somehow, I think the answer to that is yes.

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Thursday Re-View — “Mouse Therapy Expert”

Occasionally, I will post “Thursday Re-View,” a post from when I first started my blog that you may have missed. Enjoy!

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Mouse Therapy Expert

I was born to be a psychotherapist. No, that’s not being egotistical or arrogant; at a “certain age,” you come to know your strengths as well as your limitations. You have to – there’s probably not much time left to live each day with intention.

Like I said – I was born to be a psychotherapst. But little did I know that I would gain even more credentials while working in Community Mental Health. Thanks to my colleague Katherine and my patient Ben, I was awarded the M.T.E., or Mouse Therapy Expert, specializing in a Rodent Recovery Program. Drop-ins welcome. Group rates available. Perhaps I’d best explain.

Working in Community Mental Health is not for the faint of heart. Resources are almost non-existent, schedules are jammed and the clients/patients are desperately in need of good mental health services. For some reason, my supervisor determined that as a counselor, I worked well with “chronic” patients: those who were in and out of the system, with long mental illness histories and a poor prognosis. It was common for the patients and therapists to give up, with little progress made through no one’s fault.

Ben was fairly typical of his diagnosis and personality: middle-aged, never married, still living with his mother, poor social skills, no friendships, unemployable, but a genuinely nice man. Somewhat rotund, Ben would shuffle into my office, his round face anxious but with a bit of a smile, his regular outfit of jeans and a plaid shirt freshly washed and ironed (by his mother). He always sat at the edge of his seat for the entire session, as if he would bolt out of the door at any moment. As usual, he would start his first sentence with, “Theresa…” and launch in to his latest anxieties about his family, his finances, his nightmares and his smoking habit.

In Ben’s case, therapy was often nothing more than reassurance for his many worries, making certain that he was taking his medications correctly, and setting his mind at ease that he would never be homeless in his present situation; that there was enough funding available, as well as local resources, to help him survive.

My office was one of many in the Adult Outpatient section on the first floor of a 3-story brick building that used to be a hospital (verified by the morgue refrigerator corpse drawers in the basement now used for plain old storage), but now used to provide mental health services to the county. It was an old building with drafts everywhere, marble floors and dropped ceilings. I was lucky enough to have 2 windows, which either brought the succulent aroma of a delicious carbohydrate lunch from next door’s KFC or the seemingly twice-a-day whirr of the Medivac helicopter as it landed in the landing zone of the general hospital next door. For visualization purposes, when in my office, the patient sits with his or her back to the windows while I face them, seated at my desk, my back to the door. (Note: always keep yourself closer to the door.)

It was just another day as I jotted a few things in his record, Ben and I discussing his goals for next week. I heard a bit of a thump, but extraneous noise was common in the building – shredders, telephones, voices, drawers slamming, people walking down the hall, etc. – so I didn’t think anything of it. As I listened to Ben, my eyes drifted to the window behind him, and there on the ledge was the cutest, tiniest mouse that I had ever seen. He sat there on his hind legs, calmly looking at me. Then, (was that a smirk on that adorable face?) he leaped to a near-by electric cord and started to make his way down towards the floor. Which would put him by the back leg of Ben’s chair. Which was far too close to Ben’s feet. All this time, I’ve got a poker face, but my mind is racing a mile a minute. Ben – a bit of a paranoid schizophrenic, with auditory hallucinations and fears of just about anything – far too close to a mouse.

A brief aside – I am not really afraid of mice, but I prefer rats. Ever since I worked with rats as a biology major in undergrad, I found them to be friendlier and not as quick to nip at your fingers. (Lab rats, at least. I can’t account for sewer rats the size of dogs.) I genuinely was concerned about not setting Ben off emotionally with a cute little mouse crawling up his leg.

Animal Crossing Wiki

What’s pounded into our head from Day 1 at my place of employment? If there’s a problem, consult with your supervisor. So I punched in my supervisor’s extension. Thankfully, he answered. “Mike, I have a problem.. Could you please come to my office?”

“What’s the problem, Theresa?”

Darn it. He’s going to make me say it in front of Ben. I put Mike on hold while I break the news to Ben. “Now I want you to stay calm, Ben, but I have to tell you something. It’ll be okay.” His eyes are like saucers. “There is a tiny little mouse – he’s so cute – (I hope that will soften the blow) on the windowsill (a little white lie, also to soften the blow) behind you.”

Ben turned around, saw the mouse dangling on the cord, and in one swift movement, vaulted behind me in my chair. He was trembling. I took my supervisor off hold. “Mike, there’s a mouse in my office. He must have dropped from the ceiling tiles. Can you come down here?”

No answer – just disjointed breathing. Then I hear a faint voice. “A mouse, like M-I-C-K-E-Y – that kind of mouse?”

Disney at a time like this. “Yes.” I feel Ben restless behind me.

Mike squeaks at the other end of the phone. “Theresa, I’m scared of mice.”

Well, you’re not supposed to hang up on people, especially your supervisor, but I was running out of time here. I dialed my colleague in the next office. She could handle it; she was an independent, capable, take charge kind of woman. “Katherine – I need you to come over here.”

“I can’t. I’m with a client.”

“Katherine – I need you over here now.”

In a few seconds (it must have been something about my voice…), my door opens and Ben races out while Katherine walks in. I point to the mouse, who’s still having fun on the electric cord. “It’s a mouse.”

Katherine – my heroine – takes one look at Matt (that’s what I named the mouse) – and puts both hands up while she backs out of my office. “I don’t do mice.” So much for colleagues coming to the rescue. At that point, Matt scurries back up onto the window sill. I hear someone behind me, and there’s a very confident-looking man (not my supervisor) walking up to the mouse. Katherine explains from the doorway, “My client is a hunter; he said he’ll take care of it.” Without any hesitation, the man grabs the mouse. With Matt cupped in his hand, Katherine’s client walks down the hall to release him into the wild (the bushes outside our building, which probably means the mouse will be back inside in 30 seconds flat).

I see Ben cowering against the wall, inching his way toward the waiting room. “I’m going to leave now, Theresa. Is that okay?” I assured him it was, so he tore out of the building and raced down the steps. (I was hoping the mouse wouldn’t leap out of the bushes; we’d have to carry Ben through the parking lot to the hospital.). We calmly asked all of those waiting to disperse from the hallway and told them everything was okay.

All in a day’s work. I made a mental note to call Ben the next day in order to check on him, since I knew he had trouble sleeping. I hoped this mouse incident wouldn’t cause a nightmare. The next morning, promptly at 8:30 am, Ben called me before I could call him.

“Ben, how are you after yesterday’s excitement?”

“Theresa, I’m sorry I left, but I don’t like mice. I just don’t like mice. They scare me.”

“That’s no problem, Ben. It seems a lot of people don’t like mice.” Once I knew he was fine, we made another appointment for next week.

“Theresa, will there be another mouse there?”

I explained that I didn’t know, but I was sure maintenance and housekeeping would be on the look out from now on.

I could hear Ben’s sigh of relief. “Okay. Thanks, Theresa.” He hesitated and I could hear the wheels turning. He spoke again, ever the gentleman. “It’s a good thing there weren’t any ladies there; they would have been scared…”

I kept the shock from my voice and answered with Ben’s same sincerity. “You’re right, Ben – it’s a good thing there were no ladies there.” We said good-bye and I hung up, shaking my head in amazement.

At least I was doing something right – Ben obviously viewed me as his therapist, and not as a female. But my Mom, who would accept nothing less from her daughters than for them to be “ladies” – would be appalled and disappointed about my new status.

After all, there were no ladies present.

Thanks, Ben. I’ll never forget you. I wish you healing and peace of mind and people who love you. And no more mice…

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You are a blessing.

Today’s Quote

Feelings of worth can flourish only
in an atmosphere where
individual differences are appreciated,
mistakes are tolerated,
communication is open,
and rules are flexible –
the kind of atmosphere that is found
in a nurturing family.

~ Virginia Satir, 1916 – 1988 ~
Psychotherapist

The Greatest Miracle in the World

“However, I am not that sort of a ragpicker.
I seek more valuable materials than old newspapers and aluminum beer cans..
I search out waste materials of the human kind,
people who have been discarded by others, or even themselves,
people who still have great potential
but have lost their self-esteem and their desire for a better life.
When I find them, I try to change their lives for the better,
give them a new sense of hope and direction,
and help them return from their living death…
which to me is the greatest miracle in the world.”
~ Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World

If there is any one thing that being a Licensed Mental Health Professional can teach you, it is that every single person you meet has a story. Some are easier to detect, while others are cloaked in near perfect images of success. The complexity of these stories is enhanced by gender, socioeconomic status, culture, genetics, upbringing, faith tradition, age, marital status, family situation, education…the list goes on.

But every person has a story…

In my work, I am privileged to be a co-journeyer with another person when they choose to share even a small part of their story. The details of some of their stories can crush you; I often find myself marveling at their strength and courage. Indeed, I do not know if I would still be standing if I had to go through what some people have gone through. And yet many of them retain their inherent goodness as they keep pushing forward…

The single mother whose younger son was tragically killed in a car accident by his older brother, which she was reminded of each time her oldest son came home from school…

The woman whose father had sexually abused her since she was an infant, with whom she had three children, receives word of his terminal cancer diagnosis and is torn between wanting to forgive him and wanting to condemn him…

The man who never told anyone else about his molestation when he was a little boy at the hands of his stepfather…

The former gang member, his body covered in tattoos, crying about how his mother died in her native country without knowing that her son left the gang and started a new life…

The teenaged girl, left pregnant from a brutal rape, whose daily morning sickness reminded her each day of the horrific incident…

The Viet Nam veteran who was plagued by flashbacks of his best buddy being blown into pieces right next to him…

The teen-aged girl, without siblings, who lost both her parents within 6 months of each other – her mother to cancer, her father in a car accident…

The woman who suffered from schizophrenia and refused psychotropic medication, who was evicted from another apartment every 3 months…

The woman who committed suicide because she could not see a way out of an abusive relationship…

A successful business woman who was now living out of her car because of her husband’s secret gambling addiction…

A young woman who would seek shelter in a closet during every thunderstorm, unable to forget how her mother used to bathe her in scalding hot water to try to cleanse her daughter of her fear…

“Each of these individuals and everyone else in the world
still have their own pilot light burning inside them.
It may be very diminished in some,
but…it never, never goes out!
So long as there is a breath of life remaining,
there is still hope…and that’s what we ragpickers count on.
Just give us a chance and we can provide the fuel
that will be ignited by any pilot light,
no matter how diminished it may be.
A human being…is an amazing and complex and resilient
organism capable of resuscitating itself
from its own living death many times,
if it is given the opportunity and shown the way.”
~ Og Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World

We are resilient, we human beings.  And we are even better when we are joined in our pain by someone who cares…by someone who believes in our worth…who does not judge us, but rather sits with us in unconditional positive regard…who holds on to hope until each of us finds it once again…by someone who is simply present.

So I will continue to be present with those in need, whether those dying at the end of life or those dying while they pretend to live. I will search out those who have been discarded and slowly help them to believe in their worth. If I can find them, then they can find themselves.

And in our connectedness, together we will transform their diminished pilot light into a burning blaze that shines brightly for all to see.

Circles of Compassion and Grace. Remembering the Ragpicker’s instruction by following his very own:

Laws of Success and Happiness

~ Count your blessings. ~
~ Proclaim your rarity! ~
~ Go another mile. ~
~ Use wisely your power of choice. ~
~ Do all things with love. ~

And remembering that we humans are indeed the Greatest Miracle in the World…

Mouse Therapy Expert

I was born to be a psychotherapist. No, that’s not being egotistical or arrogant; at a “certain age,” you come to know your strengths as well as your limitations. You have to – there’s probably not much time left to live each day with intention.

Like I said – I was born to be a psychotherapst. But little did I know that I would gain even more credentials while working in Community Mental Health. Thanks to my colleague Katherine and my patient Ben, I was awarded the M.T.E., or Mouse Therapy Expert, specializing in a Rodent Recovery Program. Drop-ins welcome. Group rates available. Perhaps I’d best explain.

Working in Community Mental Health is not for the faint of heart. Resources are almost non-existent, schedules are jammed and the clients/patients are desperately in need of good mental health services. For some reason, my supervisor determined that as a counselor, I worked well with “chronic” patients: those who were in and out of the system, with long mental illness histories and a poor prognosis. It was common for the patients and therapists to give up, with little progress made through no one’s fault.

Ben was fairly typical of his diagnosis and personality: middle-aged, never married, still living with his mother, poor social skills, no friendships, unemployable, but a genuinely nice man. Somewhat rotund, Ben would shuffle into my office, his round face anxious but with a bit of a smile, his regular outfit of jeans and a plaid shirt freshly washed and ironed (by his mother). He always sat at the edge of his seat for the entire session, as if he would bolt out of the door at any moment. As usual, he would start his first sentence with, “Theresa…” and launch in to his latest anxieties about his family, his finances, his nightmares and his smoking habit.

In Ben’s case, therapy was often nothing more than reassurance for his many worries, making certain that he was taking his medications correctly, and setting his mind at ease that he would never be homeless in his present situation; that there was enough funding available, as well as local resources, to help him survive.

My office was one of many in the Adult Outpatient section on the first floor of a 3-story brick building that used to be a hospital (verified by the morgue refrigerator corpse drawers in the basement now used for plain old storage), but now used to provide mental health services to the county. It was an old building with drafts everywhere, marble floors and dropped ceilings. I was lucky enough to have 2 windows, which either brought the succulent aroma of a delicious carbohydrate lunch from next door’s KFC or the seemingly twice-a-day whirr of the Medivac helicopter as it landed in the landing zone of the general hospital next door. For visualization purposes, when in my office, the patient sits with his or her back to the windows while I face them, seated at my desk, my back to the door. (Note: always keep yourself closer to the door.)

It was just another day as I jotted a few things in his record, Ben and I discussing his goals for next week. I heard a bit of a thump, but extraneous noise was common in the building – shredders, telephones, voices, drawers slamming, people walking down the hall, etc. – so I didn’t think anything of it. As I listened to Ben, my eyes drifted to the window behind him, and there on the ledge was the cutest, tiniest mouse that I had ever seen. He sat there on his hind legs, calmly looking at me. Then, (was that a smirk on that adorable face?) he leaped to a near-by electric cord and started to make his way down towards the floor. Which would put him by the back leg of Ben’s chair. Which was far too close to Ben’s feet. All this time, I’ve got a poker face, but my mind is racing a mile a minute. Ben – a bit of a paranoid schizophrenic, with auditory hallucinations and fears of just about anything – far too close to a mouse.

A brief aside – I am not really afraid of mice, but I prefer rats. Ever since I worked with rats as a biology major in undergrad, I found them to be friendlier and not as quick to nip at your fingers. (Lab rats, at least. I can’t account for sewer rats the size of dogs.) I genuinely was concerned about not setting Ben off emotionally with a cute little mouse crawling up his leg.

What’s pounded into our head from Day 1 at my place of employment? If there’s a problem, consult with your supervisor. So I punched in my supervisor’s extension. Thankfully, he answered. “Mike, I have a problem.. Could you please come to my office?”

“What’s the problem, Theresa?”

Darn it. He’s going to make me say it in front of Ben. I put Mike on hold while I break the news to Ben. “Now I want you to stay calm, Ben, but I have to tell you something. It’ll be okay.” His eyes are like saucers. “There is a tiny little mouse – he’s so cute – (I hope that will soften the blow) on the windowsill (a little white lie, also to soften the blow) behind you.”

Ben turned around, saw the mouse dangling on the cord, and in one swift movement, vaulted behind me in my chair. He was trembling. I took my supervisor off hold. “Mike, there’s a mouse in my office. He must have dropped from the ceiling tiles. Can you come down here?”

No answer – just disjointed breathing. Then I hear a faint voice. “A mouse, like M-I-C-K-E-Y – that kind of mouse?”

Disney at a time like this. “Yes.” I feel Ben restless behind me.

Mike squeaks at the other end of the phone. “Theresa, I’m scared of mice.”

Well, you’re not supposed to hang up on people, especially your supervisor, but I was running out of time here. I dialed my colleague in the next office. She could handle it; she was an independent, capable, take charge kind of woman. “Katherine – I need you to come over here.”

“I can’t. I’m with a client.”

“Katherine – I need you over here now.”

In a few seconds (it must have been something about my voice…), my door opens and Ben races out while Deb walks in. I point to the mouse, who’s still having fun on the electric cord. “It’s a mouse.”

Katherine – my heroine – takes one look at Matt (that’s what I named the mouse) – and puts both hands up while she backs out of my office. “I don’t do mice.” So much for colleagues coming to the rescue. At that point, Matt scurries back up onto the window sill. I hear someone behind me, and there’s a very confident-looking man (not my supervisor) walking up to the mouse. Katherine explains from the doorway, “My client is a hunter; he said he’ll take care of it.” Without any hesitation, the man grabs the mouse. With Matt cupped in his hand, Katherine’s client walks down the hall to release him into the wild (the bushes outside our building, which probably means the mouse will be back inside in 30 seconds flat).

I see Ben cowering against the wall, inching his way toward the waiting room. “I’m going to leave now, Theresa. Is that okay?” I assured him it was, so he tore out of the building and raced down the steps. (I was hoping the mouse wouldn’t leap out of the bushes; we’d have to carry Ben through the parking lot to the hospital.). We calmly asked all of those waiting to disperse from the hallway and told them everything was okay.

All in a day’s work. I made a mental note to call Ben the next day in order to check on him, since I knew he had trouble sleeping. I hoped this mouse incident wouldn’t cause a nightmare. The next morning, promptly at 8:30 am, Ben called me before I could call him.

“Ben, how are you after yesterday’s excitement?”

“Theresa, I’m sorry I left, but I don’t like mice. I just don’t like mice. They scare me.”

“That’s no problem, Ben. It seems a lot of people don’t like mice.” Once I knew he was fine, we made another appointment for next week.

“Theresa, will there be another mouse there?”

I explained that I didn’t know, but I was sure maintenance and housekeeping would be on the look out from now on.

I could hear Ben’s sigh of relief. “Okay. Thanks, Theresa.” He hesitated and I could hear the wheels turning. He spoke again, ever the gentleman. “It’s a good thing there weren’t any ladies there; they would have been scared…”

I kept the shock from my voice and answered with Ben’s same sincerity. “You’re right, Ben – it’s a good thing there were no ladies there.” We said good-bye and I hung up, shaking my head in amazement.

At least I was doing something right – Ben obviously viewed me as his therapist, and not as a female. But my Mom, who would accept nothing less from her daughters than for them to be “ladies” – would be appalled and disappointed about my new status.

After all, there were no ladies present.

Thanks, Ben. I’ll never forget you. I wish you healing and peace of mind and people who love you. And no more mice…

You are a blessing.