Being in nature calms and nourishes me. I breathe deeply and speak more thoughtfully. I am quick to laugh and sigh. My eyes drink in all the shades of green growing things. The sun sparkling on the water hypnotizes me. I listen with a wider attention to the sounds of birdsong and the rush of the wind blowing through the trees. I love the smell of the earth and the toasted fragrance of long dead cedars becoming soil again. Looking out the mesh roof of my tent before I fall asleep I am awed by the magnitude of stars that I ignore most of my life because even though I intellectually know they are there, I am unable to see them from within the city, and so can forget how tiny and brief we really are. I see my loved ones through this brief window and love them all the more. But before going away on vacation I often make a fuss over all the packing and preparations, feeling that all the organizing is just too much work, it’s not worth the trouble. I think of all the chores that need to be done at home or the projects that I need to attend to. I wonder if maybe getting out of town is just going to set me behind schedule and I will end up “paying” for my vacation by having to work twice as hard when I return. I’m insufferable, really. I don’t know why my family puts up with me. But I change my perspective almost immediately after arriving at our destination and I admit my mistake. I would have missed the deep feeling of rootedness in nature had I stayed at home. I would have missed adventure and exploring the unknown. I confess, I am a creature of habit, but I am also a quick convert in the face of nature and all its beauty. My wellbeing depends upon my connection to nature.

What does it mean to forgive and why would we do it? There have been times in my life when family members have told me to forgive when what they really meant was to forget. As a young person, without many defenses, being told to forgive sounded like an invitation to be trespassed upon again. And it sounded as if those advisors saw my sense of injury as unimportant and invalid, so much so that it could be forgotten. I remember feeling affronted and even injured again by this suggestion that I now forgive. “NO WAY!” was my response. I held on to my pain and anger because I knew, the way children do, that an injustice had been perpetrated upon me and I would not lie for some grown-up’s comfort while I suffered. Forced forgiveness is no forgiveness at all. And forgetting, well forgetting can’t happen on command either. Decades had to go by for me to even consider that not forgiving was harming me, and my current relationships. When I realized that my remembered pain and suffering was currently hurting me I felt a fresh wave of anger at the people that had originally hurt me, ”See what you’ve done now!” It took the loving support of friends, family and therapy to help me grieve for my hurts. Without grieving I could not forgive. In a way I had to give my pain and anger more space and time before I could let them go. I had put my hurts in a small corner of my psyche, but they were ever present in the background. Bringing my hurts to the forefront of my experience, while in therapy, was essential to letting them go. Paradoxical, but there you have it. If I hadn’t experienced it, I wouldn’t have believed it.

I had thought forgiveness was something religious people talk about and pretended to have. I cynically thought forgiveness was a lie. It was when I could forgive myself for wrongdoing and be forgiven by others for mistakes that I had made that I finally got an education in forgiveness. Forgiveness is a state of awareness and consciousness that we can cultivate through our actions and interactions. It is a fluid state; sometimes we can cultivate more forgiveness within us, and sometimes less. But most of the time, when we are being gentle with ourselves, we are more forgiving of others. Forgiveness has helped me feel more connected with humanity with all our faults and gifts. When I couldn’t forgive I was rigid and judgmental. When I could really be present for myself about the pain I had experienced I could let go of being someone else’s judge. I was free to release them to something larger than myself, whatever that might be for them. I was no longer caught in our painful connection. I was free. Having gone through this difficult journey to forgiveness provides me with a reference point in helping others on their journey to find forgiveness. Forgiveness is possible if you are willing to be present with your pain.

Remembering trauma can be so frightening and disorienting it is amazing that anybody ever does it. But usually memories come to us. We don’t go searching for them. And when they do come, uninvited, most people would do anything to not remember: drink, deny or move across the country. Who would want to sit still and remember and feel the impact of trauma? The trouble is, denial seems to have a finite lifespan, much shorter than our own, and our brain and bodies know something that our mind does not: that remembering brings healing and wholeness to our lives, IF we can find a way to integrate our experience into the fabric of our lives. I remain in awe of the brain and body’s pull toward healing. Even as we externally run away from health and self-care our brain and body self-regulate and try to correct for the imbalances we create. When we finally stop running because nothing has worked to escape our memories, having a therapist who cares and is willing and able to sit with the story of the trauma, and the accompanying feelings, is invaluable. Each person’s story is his or her own. The path toward integration looks different for everyone because it must be created and traversed by a unique individual. When I sit with someone’s hard story I am listening intently to their experience and the meanings they have given to traumatic events. And I listen for the open spaces, the places where maybe there is room for a revised meaning that is more supportive, gentle and even multi-dimensional. By this I mean that context and the developmental stage of the client at the time of the trauma have huge implications upon how they interpret and integrate the trauma they experienced. When we can look back and have compassion for ourselves given what has happened, it is easier to heal. Compassion is the great healer. Remembering seems, at the time, like a curse, but when our minds and bodies insist upon remembering it is because they are reaching for wholeness and a better future. It is always an honor to be with people as they reach for wholeness.

A long time ago, when I was in graduate school and had begun an internship working with three, four and five- year-old abuse survivors, I was afraid of feeling overwhelmed by my client’s hard experiences. I was inexperienced and I worried I might start weeping in their presence and thereby be more of a disturbance than a person of use. I wanted so much to respect them and be present with them. I was somehow afraid to be in the room with their vulnerability. But my fear disappeared as I came to know my young clients that were just learning how to be on the planet. Sometimes they would talk about their bad experiences, or play some piece of it out with the toy people, the alligator or T-Rex. Sometimes they would bash around the room and I would have a hard time keeping them from hurting them or me. But through it all I learned to hold my heart open with them while they expressed whatever they needed to when they were with me. I came to see them as amazingly resilient. They were not always pleasant to be around, but I respected their process. I witnessed each of them, in his or her own way, organically moving through and out of a bad time. I saw how, if they were given the space and care they required, they could heal over their wound like a scab. It wasn’t as if they could ever be a child that had not been wounded; it was just that they could recover enough to go on with their essential developmental growth. My young clients helped me understand how to be with survivors of all ages. I will never know how those twenty-eight, twenty-nine and thirty-year-olds now fair in the world after having such a rough start. But I do know, now, how to sit in the room with survivors and really be with them in their process of healing.

When I used to tell a story about something that happened in my past I would think my description was indisputable because I was there, I saw what had happened. I became disturbed if someone else described the same situation with a different interpretation as to its meaning or the motivations of the people involved. How dare anyone question my story? I can still be very attached to my stories, but I am becoming more comfortable with the realization that that is what they are, stories. I have strong beliefs about some things so I probably wont change the stories that describe my core beliefs. But I have lived long enough to see that beliefs are not facts. Some of my old stories were limited by my lack of experience, my misunderstanding of people, or context, or immediate pressures I knew nothing about. I have found relief, comfort and even humor in being open to changing a story to include details I had not considered. It is freeing to stop polishing an old story, especially if it contains a grudge or resentment, and incorporate new information, or even just say to myself; “You don’t know everything that was going on in so-and-so’s life at the time this thing happened. There may be more to the story.” This reminds me to remain flexible and open to new information. It also keeps me from being judgmental and self-righteous.  When I am working with clients I want to listen to and respect their stories. And I want to listen in such a way that they can feel free to amend or edit their story as they heal old wounds. If we become too enamored with our stories we find it difficult to grow into a person not described in our old story. So, we need new stories all the time and we need people who are willing to listen with an ear for new possibilities. As a therapist I am privileged to hear important stories all day long. I love a good story, and its sequel.

I like to think of myself as a patient person, and in many ways I am. But, truthfully, when I am going through a hard but growth-full process, I would like the pain to hurry up and be over with. I have also witnessed many of my friends, family members and colleagues try to transcend a problem without actually sitting through the organic change process. Actual change has a beginning, middle and end. We can’t escape this “given” if we really hope for improvement. And ironically, if we to try to jump over the middle part of our transformation we prolong our suffering and miss the transformative process entirely. I don’t think all change is painful. Some change is so slow and subtle that we hardly notice the shift within us until years later we look back and realize that we are different from who we used to be. But much of our growth as humans comes from an uncomfortable awareness that something is wrong and we want to change “it”. For some reason we also look outside ourselves first and try to change other people or situations to make ourselves more comfortable. This never works. We can only ever really change ourselves. When we finally surrender to the change we have been resisting something alchemical happens inside us. It’s not as if I get more patient once I’ve surrendered, it’s just that I accept how impatient I am, who wouldn’t be? I become humble and compassionate with my fellow humans and myself. Change is like labor and birth. You can make a birth plan, but you never have control over the birth. The transformation of birth not only brings forth a new life, but it brings forth a new mother. I like to think that the pain we suffer in the present is a labor of love in giving birth to something new within ourselves.

Sexuality is something we each must define for ourselves.  Images of sex in movies or magazines influence the imagination, both positively and negatively. But our own sexuality is a country we create every day. I didn’t used to think sex was a creation of our own making. I thought it was certain feelings or behaviors that you either had, or you didn’t, a certain motivation that either already existed inside you, or was missing. This either/or thinking was helpful when I was young because the country of sex and sexuality was so vast and unchartered I could only grasp a small corner to explore. Developmentally, this makes sense. When we are young and lack experience in the rest of the world of course we want some working definition as we first step out into the unknown. We don’t even know who we are, we are in the middle of forming an identity, how could we grasp all of what sexuality can bring, what it can mean, where it could take us. Movies and magazines tell us it is all about the sexual acts and about how we look and what we say. We don’t learn until much later that sex and our ever-changing sexuality is quite often a place beyond words. It is looks or sounds, feelings or colors. Sex is primal and spiritual, it is physics and chemistry. Sex is quite a bit in your own head and profoundly connected to someone else. And what it is mostly is different every single day.

I have been rereading one of my favorite books on parenting called, “Parenting from the Inside Out”, by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.  I have been thinking about how childhood problems with attachment impact adult attachment. When a child tries to bond with a parent or caregiver that is insecure, avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized the child cannot help but also become insecure, avoidant, ambivalent or disorganized. It is the water in which they swim; it is the air they breathe. As infants and children we must bond to survive. We can’t help but imprint those first relationships upon all following relationships. But, a lovely bit of news from the book is that our brains are malleable and can continue to change and be “rewired” by new information. So, we might start out life insecurely attached or avoidant in our attachment, but by becoming aware and conscious of our challenge we can implement change in our own thoughts and behaviors so that we can become more secure, and less avoidant. I am repeatedly amazed by the parents I work with for giving to their children what they never received from their parents. It takes great courage to explore who you are as a result of less than adequate care. Most people sidestep looking at their early attachments because it is just too painful and threatening. Most people tell me that their parents did the best that they could for the times. And while I know this to be true, most of the time, I remind my clients that accepting what happened is only the first step in healing. Examining the impact of what happened is a different matter. It requires ownership of that impact upon our current lives and then making conscious changes toward better ways of relating.

Beneath the Surface

As I was running errands this week I drove past a scuba diving shop that said something like “Explore beneath the surface”. I thought this would also make a good sign for my practice. Much of therapy is looking at underlying feelings and motivations and exploring our inner selves. Diving beneath our surface self, the persona that we present in order to get by, takes courage and support. It also takes practice. I have never been scuba diving, but I know that if I ever decided to go diving I would want an experienced teacher by my side until I felt confident in my own abilities. Our inner life can be as vast and uncertain as the ocean. Therapy can help us wade in slowly, get used to hidden feelings, explore what lives in our mysterious unconscious. We will never be able to know everything about our inner self, but we can gain insight into some of our more prominent issues and begin to recognize the power that lies beneath our awareness. The more we dive down below the surface the more we can be honest with ourselves and congruent with others.

Acceptance before Change

This morning I was thinking about how there are many things beyond my ability to change and that sometimes, maybe most of the time, accepting “what is” can be the healthiest response to discomfort. Certainly acceptance is required before making a change for the better because without acceptance I might rush in and try a quick fix to a problem that I don’t even understand, and do more harm than good. For me, acceptance is being willing to sit with a problem or feeling long enough to absorb the information that the feeling or problem has to share. If I rush to change something before I even know what it is I could always be running from my feelings. No one wants to stay in pain or fear, but if we don’t accept those feelings as ours, and as important parts of growth then all the changes that follow, no matter how well intended, will be shallow and lacking in substance. I am thinking, as an example, of someone who stops drinking but never risks recovery. Though their health might be overall improved by this change of removing the intake of alcohol, there is a brittle quality to their behavior and in their psyche. When I speak with someone in recovery there is a little sadness in their eyes, but they have depth and even humor and humility to share for having gone through their painful journey. They accepted who they are and this makes them more vital and malleable. So too with all of us who accept who we are and the challenge at hand. Acceptance deepens our changes.