Sunday, September 28, 2008

too many dogs I talked about mission and purpose at our work retreat last month.  This, from someone who is searching for a little purpose herself these days,  and so my reading materials included Billy Graham’s The Journey, All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Kadison’s College of the Overwhelmed, Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Nemo.  Yes, Nemo.  I kept it simple. First, I had them gather in 2’s and share one thing about each other that the rest of us might not know, something that makes them unique. Then we shared with each other.  I was pleased people opened up.  Then I did my Sunday school thing with excerpts from Simon Birch (now there’s a child who knew his purpose, in spite of others’ doubts along the way) and Tortilla Soup (tying in the family and needing others theme as well as doing what we were meant to do giving us back our “taste.”)  And like Sunday school kids, they hollered when I turned off the film. Focus, people, focus.  Yet, I feel like a failure at this purposeful work thing.  I try too hard to make each day count as some momentous moment of my life, each encounter, each word, wait, this is the HSP thing, isn’t it, with a lack of estrogen thrown in. focus, focus. On the big picture.  Some people are gifted at that. Letting the little things go, seeing the forest, not all the trees.  But let’s not be so negative about HSP’s.  Speaking of forests, I saw Prince Caspian last month at the dollar movie and I loved it so much, I cried.  The good tears.  The LIFE DOES HAVE MEANING kind of tears.  The trees and all their individual significance that only an HSP would notice.  C.S. Lewis’  imagination captured the human plight of battles with enemies surrounding us, surely defeating us, the camaraderie of our allies, the fighting between us and our allies,  our temptations, our weaknesses, our fronts.  The roots of trees capturing evil, then the huge running trees “and they will cry out, even the stones will cry out” and “the trees will clap their hands,” are the verses that roared in my head.  Aslan the Lion, makes me cry. I see God behind the fur in the way he tumbles playfully with Lucy.  And in the way they missed him, only, I’m the one that’s been gone. Purpose for me now is in the trying, the wanting, the struggling to not struggle so much with it all.   Just being is so hard for me.  But life does have a funny twist sometimes and as I was finishing up a visit with a former therapist’s housekeeper whom she had brought out to Penitas’ clinic last month,  I turned to this healer and mentioned how I missed her remarkable way of summing up life’s patterns or people’s ways.  And right there, on the spot, she said one of those amazing phrases, and I felt affirmed.  I then affirmed her gift of paraphrasing and bringing closure to challenging life events in this quest for sanity and sense.  Now, I am reading a book on Osler, the great bedside physician.  I am thinking I may type up his 9 points for living a full life and put them in my examining rooms. Manage time well.  Find a calling.   Find mentors.   Be a part of community.    Be positive.  Learn and teach.    Care carefully.     Communicate.     Seek balance.   I guess work has been difficult, but in a way that I don’t see.  I move from one patient to the next and if there is any time between, I do risk management assessments or QI studies.  It’s all got somewhat of a negative trend to it, looking for things that might go wrong in a clinic.  Even though I am looking to make things better.  Some things do turn out well, like our charts on positive chlamydias, we did good, treatment and prevention –wise.  Hard to quantitate “doing good,” isn’t it?  I try hard when it’s possible.  But it is absolutely impossible to see the “doing good” in medicine on a day to day basis.  For an HSP, this is hard to take, knowing we don’t always help someone.  Just trying here.    Well, I have one last point to make here.  I never liked the phrase, “nervous breakdown.”  First of all, there’s no such medical diagnosis.  People use the phrase to try and objectify a melt down, those times when they’ve been trying to do too much, didn’t say no enough, perhaps didn’t take care of themselves, perhaps didn’t see it coming, just too busy. Too busy.  But it sounds good, doesn’t it?  “I had a nervous breakdown.”  As though something happened to me outside of my control.  That is such bull shit.  Well, I had one last Saturday at Penitas.  After  seeing 4 patients, each with about 6 medical problems, 3 of them chronic and worse, and after racking my brain for the best treatment, then listening some more and talking some more, I put my head on the counter, and cried.  Everything just seems too big for me.  Too many medical problems and too many mental problems.  Too much poverty and too little control over their lives.  Too many patients still waiting in the waiting room.  Not enough me.  I calmly stepped out and called Shirley in.  She grounded me for a few minutes.  I could have left if I wanted to.  But I stayed and things calmed down immediately. One or two problems each, some improvements, some just refills.    There is a breaking point sometimes.  Like tonight at the dog park, there were too many new dogs, and there were 2 German Shepherds and 2 Collies and 3 or 4 yelping puppies.  Just too many dogs.  And sometimes the breaking point is not in the numbers or our own pain, but in the pain we feel for others.  But who am I kidding?  The pain I felt for my daughter yesterday was perhaps all mine.  She can take care of herself, I think.  I seem to be the one falling apart rather easily.  Let’s review these one more time.  This is my mantra for the week.   Manage time well.  Find a calling.   Find mentors.  Be a part of community.   Be positive.  Learn and teach.    Care carefully.   Communicate.    Seek balance.     9:36:54 PM

any thoughts?

	Tuesday, September 16, 2008

seasons, weeds, liberty and listening It’s cooler outside and I don’t feel as old. In fact, my step is lighter and my knees don’t hurt.  It feels like 50 degrees, but the thermometer says 82. This is grand. The feeling younger part especially.  Nothing like a little shake up in the seasons to put a new lease on life.  And I visited with my mother in the Hill Country. I defied her orders to stay home and away from the flow of Houston evacuees.  And I made the right decision considering there was no rain or traffic as predicted.  And that was good, because we laid the new grass-appearing arrangement on my dad’s grave (“your father always wanted to be different from everyone else.”) Now, see, I didn’t know that.  I did know she wanted me to care about what goes on the grave and I never have cared much.  So I brought them this time; the weed arrangement that looks so real, like a field untended and natural.  He would like these.  And we saw a movie together, The Women. A good one for a mom and daughter.  She needs company and a little help at this time, and we can’t move just yet.  We are almost at that place. It’s not the job-changing or moving so much as the daughter in her last year of high school.  And my mom is so intent on NOT being any kind of burden that she is ready to pack up tomorrow and go into assisted living.  But let’s try the knee surgery, and staying with us for rehab first.  Recruit my sister to visit once a month and me once a month and take it one step at a time, with the neighbors watching closely, and check with the Florida sister just in case I am missing something between the lines here.  This is tough.  My daughter must have read it in my face this morning when I got off the phone with my aunt; she walked right over and gave me a hug.  Not really like her.  It was so good, I asked for another. Presentation on sexual exploitation accepted for a local (Corpus Christi) conference sponsored by CPS, CASA and other child abuse prevention organizations.  I submitted one on STI’s and child abuse, but they chose the one on sexual exploitation by health care and human service professionals, and asked for 3 hours for ethics.  Yo can do.  A few video clips perhaps, a few case examples, maybe even my own.  Empowered enough to submit the same thing, with a college twist to the ACHA.  Getting the word out.  I wrote to Tibor Machan today; he’s a columnist who wrote something interesting about universal health care and how it shouldn’t be.  I don’t agree with what he says—something about how we can’t make professionals (doctors, etc) provide health care for free.  I tried to show him another side to that.  That it is not necessarily a burden to professionals, but something we can offer to better our world.  He had no ear for my words, only a mind to clarify his own, evidently Libertarian, point of view. I got it. And it was interesting.  Just not a two-way thing.  I thought that was the point of writing for the public, to not only be heard but to hear other views.  I guess not.  To some, it is perhaps only to be heard.   He’s right, though.  We should not  force people to do anything against their will.  God forbid.  And health care is not a universal right, because, well, we would have to make someone else give them health care for free, and that is taking away from those professionals’ God-given rights.  I tried to tell him that there are a few professionals around willing to serve in this way (although lately I cannot find very many of them to help me out in Penitas!) and if we could model this kind of serving the poor, instead of promoting some sort of justification based on individuals’ freedom to choose, instead of standing by while people suffer from ear aches because their co-pay is too high to afford to go to a clinic. Yeah, that’s right some people even have insurance, they do work, and yet they have no access to health care.  And medicine is not  rocket science. Geez, sometimes it’s just writing a prescription for the diabetes medicine to prevent complications that will eventually cost the public much more in expensive hospital stays.  Common sense, not liberty.   And here I thought people were just too busy to help out at free clinics.  Nope, they believe in freedom for all.  And no forced labor.  Now  that is more noble.  Nothing like justifying not helping the poor among us.  Nothing like creating a reason to be comfortable with the state of things as they are.  There, I feel better saying my peace.  Thanks for listening, Tibor. (not) Glad I’m a democrat, by the way. 11:57:47 PM

any thoughts?

	Monday, August 25, 2008

a day in the life I am honored to report blessed details of an un-famous local, a PA entrusted with the bodies and minds of mostly young lives—from the newly married with uhm…intimate issues to the tall valley transplant who just wants to play his sport.  Such vulnerability in the search for wellness. To say to someone, this is how you must behave—or eat—or play or not play. Knowing full well it is the manner of telling that really counts, not who I am or what I know.    Learning to be more authoritative but staying humble.  I mean, medicine is a tricky business.  Science isn’t always what it’s cut out to be.  But communicating mutual trust and balancing what we do know with what we don’t know, well, I often wonder why medical providers are trained in science.  Medicine is so much more; it’s soulful, it is.                                                                          Then driving to the post office to mail a package, insert $20 to the newly independent girl, girl justice, girl new job. Girl finding furniture, with expenditures equaling income, learning a new world.  The museums are free, and the transportation, too.  Ahh, the perks of a government job.  Then lunch with a friend excited with her wedding plans so I listen, listen a lot, one-way talk ‘til I mention edgewise that there’s been a slight change, uh, I won’t be joining the church after all.  After all, it’s the time of our lives that we need to be together, my man and I, not apart.  And I prayed.    Well, I sat in silence mostly which is the closest thing to prayer for me.  Getting guidance from a spiritual leader who seems from another world, a Methodist perfectionist world, or, in my mind, from the same world as my perp, so many similarities, if only he knew how triggering perfectionist talk can be.    So leaving the restaurant, I leap over large puddles, the rain coming down on me, and I strip off the wet socks, lay them on the car seat and after an afternoon of more details of peoples’ lives that make me feel honored as usual, I find dry socks to put on my bare feet in my Birkenstocks (no, I am not gay.) I take the back way home, listening to Michael Murphy’s Carolina in the Pines and Wildfire so I can feel sad, so I can go back to college time --to a time that was simpler, easier, more biblical, more outdoorsy.  I close my eyes (at the stoplight) and I smell the autumn crispness of east texas, hear the leaves scrape the sidewalk outside my antique dorm window, see the pines towering into the sky on my way to class.  A simpler time, it was. So many complex encounters today; tension and joy mount.   Sexual dysfunction so early in marriage; and two cases in one week.  “I am not a sex counselor,” I hear myself say—twice today.  And I reinforce good communication and the great benefits of counseling, but I really want to scream out, “Grab the moments now!  While your ovaries are working so well!”  Because I recall such wasted greed for release, alone or in closets .(don’t ask)   Too impatient, I was. If only people could wait, could stay married long enough for a day like today when the joy and the tension of the mundane, the rain, the music, the memories, the honorable purpose of work, blends together and comes to a head with majestic life thoughts.  When the day culminates with dreams realized, and there is  a peace about completion, of a job well done and still doing. Fulfillment in touch or longings finally met, not wasted. Investment in others’ lives and deferred gratification come to pass. At last.  This was a day in my life, this day, august 21, 2008.                                                                            1:11:19 AM

any thoughts?

	Sunday, July 27, 2008

summer talk, 2008                                     I am finally getting comfortable with my camera—snapping shots of people hugging, thinking, smiling. And sunflower fields on the side of the highway.  The leaning wooden shacks in the lone texas meadow, made into black and white and my highway 123 drive captured at last.  With a car window border. Oh, sometimes I get out and shoot.  But I like the edge of the picture filled with windshield; it reminds me of my life on the go, and that it’s time to stop.  Well, I printed up pictures for everyone in Pitts.  And I mailed them, and I framed them and I put east texas reunion pics in albums for family.  I will call myself a pseudo -photographer as I know nothing technical about cameras.  But then I guess I am a pseudo-blogger, too.  Who knows, I might be able to figure out how to post my photos on my blog someday.  I figured out the blog somehow.  Most days I feel like a pseudo-person, going through the motions of a person, doing the things that go with my name or profession.  Going to the right places with the right people but waiting for the real me to jump out any time now.  The one that tells it like it is, without fear of consequences.  The one that stands up and screams for people to just say what they really mean—the one that chucks it all for a life on a river, spent walking or rocking, listening and talking.  I got better this summer at the talking thing—the light talking, the fine art of talking about little things, understanding it’s not always what I say that counts. It’s taking the time to sit and say stuff, to sit with someone, to hear, to listen.   I did this on my two vacation trips, east texas and Pittsburgh, but also I am doing it more at the clinic with my co-workers.  Getting the hang of it, I think.  This summer I tried to make time to write-mostly handwritten thoughts in my journal and I began work on my daughter’s senior journal, my down-home version of Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, which I also read this summer, along with a similar collection of sage advice by Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten) They both wrote about crayons and other simple, nice things.  Mostly about making and taking time. I submitted a poem for the university newsletter, changing its name so my blog still won’t be identified (chicken!) and that was nice seeing it in print.  A huge step for me.  The 2nd step since reading one of my essays aloud at a reading on campus last Spring.  Still not sure where I want to take my writing.  How open I want to be.  With whom I want to share my words.  Why I want to share them.  Just talking here.  Light talking.  There’s a very different form of talking that appeals to me, but I didn’t realize just why until I read an old book by Dale Carnegie about public speaking:  The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking.   This is about practicing your words, and saying them just right, and talking with a purpose to as many people who will listen.  Mr. Carnegie’s basic philosophy is that effective speaking is “the revealing expression of a human personality.”   Oh my.  Yes, I have experienced this.  I have spoken publicly and I felt that I was known.  I also felt content and whole.  In Dorothy Carnegie’s updated forward to her husband’s book, she writes, “every activity of our lives is communication of a sort, but it is through speech that man asserts his distinctiveness from other forms of life.”  Through speech, man “expresses his essence.”  And “when he is unable to say clearly what he means, through either nervousness, timidity or foggy thought-processes, his personality is blocked off, dimmed out, and misunderstood.” Whoa there, now she’s really got my attention.  I can never seem to say the right things when I am caught off guard.  Even things I feel strongly about and know a lot about.  And when it comes to negative feelings, well, forget it, I can’t seem to say things clearly and constructively.  Ms. Carnegie goes on to say, “Personal satisfaction depends heavily upon a person’s ability to communicate clearly to his fellow men what he is, what he desires, and what he believes in.” Hmm, so maybe that’s why I blog/write.  A bit easier to express myself.  (Especially when so few are listening.)  After reading Carnegie’s book, I also realized that public speaking (and the preparation for it) helps me “de-fog” my thought processes.  And it also affirms my passion for educating others on important issues—issues that cross over into our relationships and self-affirming needs.   Mr. Carnegie insists that when we speak about the things we know, we will be effective in getting our point across.   I thought about how much I know about STI’s, unfortunately.  I see them and treat them every day at my work.  And I experienced sexual exploitation and I have spoken about it to other professionals.    Still, I hesitate to pursue this speaker side of me.  I get so nervous and feel so insecure.   Apparently, this is something I can improve on as I go…with the intro’s and endings and in-between stories.  Yet, stay “real.” The most enlightening thing Carnegie says about public speaking is that it links us to ourselves.  Our personality is seen through our speech.  Especially if we speak our truth, what we know, what we have experienced.  Our personality linked through our speech.  I just have to say it again.  I think I know now why I am always trying to pull more words out of my husband.  (what’s inside there..please…) Perhaps I am drawn to speaking for the way it opens me up to others, a sharing of thoughts and pain and a path to healing.  And sometimes I see a tear or someone walk out and never know, never know how my words affected them.  Perhaps it’s why people blog…to throw themselves out there, at first “just for me,”  they will say, (Ok, that’s what I said.) Then after getting to know themselves more, they are then known by others, and they know others and on and on it goes, connecting one by one.  Ok, I stole that from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song on her Calling CD that I have been listening to all summer.  But one of my biggest fears in public speaking is the whole vanity issue.  I have to be confident to speak.  I have to believe that I have something they need to know.  It all seems very ego-centric to me.   It’s the same reason Christmas letters and alumni newsletters make me twitch.  Perhaps i confuse self-assurance with self-centeredness. I wonder why we never read this in our friends’ and fellow alumni’s letters:  “Here I am, just living my life the best I can with no instruction manual, warding off crises as they come, keeping me and my family intact and seeking joy in the everyday, common things that remind me of my ultimate purpose in life—to draw closer to the One who has known me since my beginning.” But maybe I’ve rambled a bit too far from my beginning.  Where was I?  Oh yeh, talking and taking pictures and finding ourselves in what we say.  I really need to lighten up.  My daughter just drove in from Austin.  Her summer is over and I get to help her load up the car for her road trip to D.C. in 4 days.  We’ll be talking a lot, I hope, and maybe I’ll get a picture of her driving away, or maybe not.    1:01:17 AM

any thoughts?

	Wednesday, July 23, 2008

pittsburgh and other things Pittsburgh is a nice city, the New York Times says so and so do i.  The Allegheny, Ohio and Monongahela rivers converge in the downtown area and sloping hills surround the rivers.  15 minutes outside of town-beautiful rolling hillsides and if you drive just far enough- Amish land.  Things feel simpler.  Horses carry people who don’t want to go faster.  Dresses are fanciless, but smiles abundant..  But Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania were not the best part of my vacation.  Seeing my family was the best.  Family I didn’t know very well, family I hadn’t seen since I was 10.  Family glad to see us and feed us.  Homemade lasagna, the real thing from a full-blooded Italian uncle.  And I look at the photo of my mother sitting next to her sister and they look happy, leaning into each other.  They look old, but it is a good kind of old, like natural changes that whisper  wisdom and quiet acceptance of slowing down.  Being together again is what mattered.  It might be their last time.  That’s what made it bittersweet, this reunion. Yes, good to see my mom embrace her sister, sit for hours talking on the porch, sharing private family stories.  Some stories we may never know.  I like that we don’t know everything.  Then something else happened.  When my mother spoke harsh words to my sister, others heard.  And when my sister shared with me and my cousin her struggle with mom’s lack of blessing thru the years, my cousin found out that this is how it had always been.  Then her mother may have said something to my mother, and it was all good after that.  I think my mother saw herself for the first time.  I don’t know if her sister spoke to her. We don’t know.  Things just got better and my sister felt better about herself, and about my mom.  She let go of old things. And I saw my mother physically slower.  Prone to falling.  Tired.  A little too ready for her final days.  Especially for someone so “with it” mentally. This was hard.  Now come decisions. The direction of our lives will be affected by her years to come and her health.  And that’s ok. It’s not about me.  It’s not about whether I will write more or go for this training or that conference.  It’s about somebody else.  And I think God’s timing is always good.  1:01:04 PM

any thoughts?

	Sunday, June 15, 2008

Reading Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama.  I like his writing and I like him.  This is long overdue, this getting to know the possible future leader of America.  I wanted Hillary.  I wanted the tough one, the one I would never want to be my friend. And I wanted the brave one, the one who had the courage to try to change a health care system that doesn’t work.  I also wanted to be for someone for my own reasons, and good ones at that.  Someone different than who my kids were voting for.  It seemed only right.  I was the democratic rebel in my own family growing up.  Coming over to Obama’s side wasn’t a huge leap.  But I still can’t get the song, Stewball, out of my mind.  I still feel like a traitor.  But I really like this book and I think my feelings of treachery will subside with each page I read….. And I have a list of things I scribbled while driving 80 down highway 123 on my way back from the hill country and east texas, just things I should write about someday…                 * “We are country” (my daughter referring to her relatives in east texas)                 * “They’re more no-nonsense than MaMa—oh my gosh, Mom, you’re nonsense compared to                                   them.” (again, my daughter referring to our relatives in east texas and their highly                              efficient, not so social ways. I took this as a compliment of my more                                 creative ways but I may be fishing here.)                 *Peaches and salt and (safe) homegrown tomatoes.                 *My mother, “Aunt Baby,” the only living sibling at the reunion                 *Singing, “Who’ll take care of the home place?” with a church filled with folks wondering just                                 that.                 *Fiddle and guitar in the dark on the porch over the river (the hill country home place)                 *Glimpses of mother pride and blessing.                  10:58:29 PM

any thoughts?

	Wednesday, May 21, 2008

new beginnings, or to my graduate of 2008                                                                   There will be nine graduating 4 year-olds at Proyecto Desarrollo Humano in the Sabal Palm colonia of Penitas on May 23rd.  There were 31 graduating PA students in the class of 2008 on May 10th. I do not know how many graduates will be getting their diplomas at Brown University next Sunday, but I will have my eyes glued on the one, most important, graduate of the class of 2008, my daughter.  It is the time of year where we hear lovely clichés about life lessons and future goals.  This year was no different. “Graduating means a new start, new beginnings..”   When my daughter began this trek 4-years ago, her beginnings were not so clichéd, but more edgy, as she blasted out a valedictorian speech that spoke of the “demise of childhood”, the “ambiguities of life” and our “indeterminable future.”  Indeed, she had learned to embrace a chaotic and changing world in the last year of her high school.  It was thrust upon her when I had to tell her about my sexual exploitation by our trusted pastor, her youth leader at our church.  I had to tell her because I felt she must hear the story from me and not someone who had half-truths or town gossip, and I had to tell her because my name was to hit the newspapers the next day due to our lawsuit against our church. Sexual exploitation is a tricky thing to explain to others.  Actually, most experienced counselors will advise their clients who are victims of sexual abuse to be very careful with whom they share their story of abuse.  People will say things now or later that can set one back in their healing process.  It is hard for people to grasp the shame that a victim feels with any kind of abuse.   And to make matters worse, so many people reflexively believe that it must be the victim’s fault in some way, because if not, it means this could happen to them or to someone they love, and that piece of information is unacceptable, impossible to grasp in an inner world where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.  Blaming the victim somehow fits their world model, their code of fair living.  As a victim of abuse blamed by many in my beloved church, this “survival in a cruel world” explanation helps me keep loving my old friends, those that I left behind when I turned into my “indeterminable future.”  You see, the cruel thing about exploitation is the victim feels that she consented to the acts of betrayal.  That is the core of this form of abuse.  In fact, it is how the perpetrator operates, and it usually works well in keeping his victim silent.  Once I began reparative therapy, I was able to see past the “involvement” in the deceitful acts and could see more clearly how I did not initiate the “relationship,” and thankfully I had my journals that mapped the entrapment, the transference and my many desperate attempts to escape.   Threatened by abandonment in “therapy,” lost in a world where I thought my healing could come only from this man, I did not even see the psychological grooming that my perpetrator instigated to entrap me in his make-believe world. And so, I was reeling from the shame at the time I had to tell my daughter, and I was still in counseling after the abuse by my pastor and counselor, but struggling with the “coming out” process.  Although I felt in my head that suing the church was the right thing to do to protect others, I felt in my heart an aching sensation, a feeling that my life would never be the same.  It is the ones we love so dearly, the ones closest to the victimized that are the most violated by this betrayal of trust by a pastor, but the complicated thing is that my loved ones also felt betrayed by me.  And so this shame healing was a long and difficult process.  I had to get past the shame of my actions that went against every moral grain in my body and then trudge on into the shame of betraying my family with those actions.  And once I made an inkling of progress in the direction of finding myself again, then came the dangerous venture into the world of misperceptions and misunderstandings of those around me. But others had to be told and my daughter was not prepared for her mother to be so fragile and so wounded and so lost.  And she did not understand what happened to me.  It would have to mean I was weak and vulnerable, someone she had never known.  I waited patiently for her to understand.  I waited a year for my daughter’s words of forgiveness.  I imagine her full understanding will come someday.  She did write me a note sometime later saying how difficult it was for her to see me as just a person, “it was someone else inside my mother, who had a life beyond me.”  It was an apology for her appearing to be judgmental at the time of my news, when in reality she was being a little selfish.  Oh my, no apology necessary.  This delicate, coming of age, woman, daughter of mine, worried about my well-being, when I had toppled her world with my words. And so as I listened to her words of ambiguity on that night of high school graduation--I took them in deeply.  She was honest.  There were no starry-eyed words of achieving all her dreams.  Oh no, only jaded memories of an innocent youth snatched away too soon.  The center of her world came crashing down during a time in her life when she needed safety and trust.   She escaped to her grandmother’s house on the river.  But even my mother could not understand fully.  “Oh, P, how could you do this?”   So there I go again, into my head, quickly revisiting all 5 visits with my perpetrator/ “counselor,” those visits filled with grooming, leading up to his psychological “attack.”  It was a long, long time before I really FELT as thought it was NOT my fault.  And then I had to tell my daughter and my mother.  And then I had to re-live the shame.  But it was ok.  I saw them struggle with that ambivalence.  I know you.  I don’t know you.  You did this.  You didn’t do this.  It’s interesting how people focus so much on the victim instead of the perpetrator in cases of sexual abuse.  I am soooo looking forward to this Brown graduation, and I wasn’t sure why exactly until I began to write this down.  Somehow, it’s an honor that is doubly due to my first-born.  As though she missed the first go-round.  We will have dinners and dances and receptions galore.  She will be honored by many.  As usual with this one.  Writing fellow, best senior thesis, summer scholarship from Cornell, Justice department job.  Not as much ambiguity in her life these days.  And I will be there for her as always.  But now I am solid.  And I stand with my partner, her father, the one who never questioned who I was, the one who called me into myself again, grounding me in family and love.  As her mother and father, we will meet her new friends we haven’t met and her old friends’ families.  We will see the house and meet the professors and once again sit on the famous “green,” only this time it will be the last time, as she heads out into the world to make her own life. Anyway, it’s a happy day when the world keeps spinning after a crisis.  It’s an even happier day when it spins to the rhythm of her world, and it holds the painful things tight in its orbit.  I often wonder if it isn’t these crises that make it spin, that keep it on its axis, this big world that only looks so happy from the outside.   I am never fooled by outside appearances.  And I am never fooled by minced words of futures filled with delight.  What I do know is that when we go through painful times, when we march right through and throw ourselves into the fire and beg our loved ones to take us back, to love us again, they do.  And the pain eases very slowly over time.  I feel as though the pain is only now lifting after six years since my abuse and four years since telling my daughter.  The shame is gone, well, enough that I don’t feel it everyday.  And something heavy is lifted from my chest when I think about the one that endured my pain.  In her coming back into my life again, in her trusting again, it probably is more than four years in the world of suffering.  Like dog years, maybe 28 years.  But who’s counting when there is a new beginning?  Congratulations to my graduate of 2008.    9:10:03 AM

any thoughts?

	Monday, May 05, 2008

glaciers and time                                                                   http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1195  this is the perfect summary of the book I am reading.  Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, by Eugene Peterson. This idea of living our lives congruent with our faith, but wait, what is faith, what is spirituality anyway? And what does a personal relationship really mean? I am digging it out, and I am in no hurry. Time is another issue he addresses,  like a glacier that takes eons to form by snowflake upon snowflake, but when it begins to move, there is no stopping it. We shouldn’t be in a hurry for the important things in life, but we shouldn’t waste time, either.   Something funny happened at church yesterday and it illustrated so perfectly another point that Eugene Peterson tried to make.  That people today do not recognize  the glory of Christ, that resurrection is not understood and not lived.   This kind lady got up to speak about the upcoming mother’s day luncheon and how we will celebrate the women of the church, she said (in a rather monotone, tired-like voice) that it would be nice if these active women of the church could live forever, but since that is not the case….it was here that the minister interrupted her and held out his hand and ever so gently said, “Hermana, but we do live forever, in his glorious kingdom “(and his hand made that curving motion toward the heavens)…  there was this ever so slight pause and I am way in the back and I am thinking yes, we do live forever, that’s right. His interruption was a perfectly timed reminder--a contrast to our daily trying to clone ourselves and do so much in the name of the church and busy-ness.  And here was what she said next, “Well, anyway….(like, what I was saying before you interrupted me…)  That was her response to this amazingly good news?   Well, anyway, so we have this amazing God who loves us so much that He died for us; He stands by us, never  giving up on us, shaking us up with love and purpose… yeah, well, anyway. But here’s the kicker.  I can totally relate to this hermana, really, I can. I was there once.  Burned out, and tired of being one of a few doing so many things for the church.  I’ve lost my fire before.  I remember the well, anyway days.  But there I am, sitting in the back pew, taking it all in, loving this day of rest, day of listening, praying, meditating.  I was soaking in the Word that will stay with me throughout the week not because of beautiful song and children’s laughter, but likely because of the babies crying and the mix-up with the power point and the gentle hello in the hallway by a lady who wouldn’t let me sneak out so fast.  There was glory coming through in all of this imperfection. It doesn’t feel right not to be active in the church, but it just isn’t the right time now.  I want to rush it, I do.  But snow flake upon snowflake, I am building some sort of fortress, that when it comes time to move, man, get out of my way.  In the meantime, I will sit and relish this thing called worship; and I will imagine what it would be like to be a part of a faith community again. Hey, maybe that makes me a part of it.  10:06:36 PM

any thoughts?

	Sunday, May 04, 2008

lists I always thought lists were a wonderful thing. They ordered my life, at least the perfect life that existed in my head, but perception of order can be a good thing, too.  Perception- that’s my key word these days as I ponder others’ perceptions of me and mine of them.  It’s all head stuff.  Lately, all my battles are fought inside my head.  I create them first by misperceptions . I allow feelings to be proof and I fight against the world and everyone in it to hold my stance.  But back to lists.  My father was a list man.  At least, in his retirement.  He’d wake up early—like me—6 a.m. was late.  He’d stand by the kitchen counter after his coffee and make the day’s list.  He told me once he liked crossing things off when they were done.  Me, too. And not just because I think of him when I do it. But all lists aside.  The best order in my life is when I can cross out bad feelings.  I don’t know where they start.  It’s a knot tied up in my chest usually starting with a boss’ comment or lack thereof.  Or a co-worker’s actions or inaction.  The knot grows into something larger, tighter. There’s no untying it .  No word, no cry, no walk at the park can untie this disquieting knot of misperception.  It’s been a long quarter of a year, this time of studying and constant clinical care getting those numbers up.  Now I’ve passed the exam(check), and the busiest month of the year is over and I’ve passed most of the big presentation deadlines(check, check).  I’m letting the dust settle from the flurry of busy-ness.  The checking off of the lists.  But the knot is still tied.  I hold it inside me like the weight of a treasure chest.  It begs to be opened and I still hope there is something to grasp with hands, something to look at and know and then, hopefully, cast away.  But the weight is still there, unopened, ungrasped.    So I bought a book to read.  It’s Eugene Peterson’s, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.   Oh my, this man is brilliant.  Sometimes difficult, sometimes wonderfully simple, to read.  So, with the unrest I was feeling, busy and preoccupied, I decided to make my time God’s time today.  And I went to church.  Mr. Peterson would say I “was keeping time with God,” with my resting and enjoying the freedom to do so this Sunday.  He says we are meant to worship, made to settle down together as community and re-group, so to speak.  Listen to the quiet, perhaps.  Not to squeeze God into our busy lives, but to “immerse ourselves in the rhythms and stories of God’s work, get a feel for proper work, creation work.  When we go to work it must not be helter-skelter improvisation; it must be congruent with the way God works.  And that begins with Sabbath-keeping: the resting, the blessing and hallowing without which the creation week is not complete.”  Peterson tells us that “the Exodus command to remember the Sabbath is backed up by the precedent of God, who rested on the 7th day.  When we remember the Sabbath and rest on it we enter into and maintain the rhythm of creation.  We keep time with God.” I like that expression so much.  “Keeping time with God.”  I think I will go to work re-energized tomorrow.  I feel a little more purpose—and rhythm-- in my step.   And I think I’ll take a break from lists for a while.        3:49:31 PM

any thoughts?

	Saturday, May 03, 2008

inner herder                                                                                I’ve been reading about the natural herding instincts of dogs in Cesar Millan’s book and thinking about getting in touch with my own inner herder.  Sophie and I reach the open area of the park and I drop her leash and speak to her calmly, saying her name, focusing her eyes on mine and she trots a way, slowly at first, tilting her body sideways as she avoids the dragging leash.  Then she runs freely, chasing the cooing doves as they lift their heavy bodies to flight.  She points her nose upward to catch their scent and she runs boundlessly--no fences here to hold her in.  Now I wonder if there is an inner something in me  that I need to get in touch with.  I reach that grassy, wide-open hill of our suburban park and my chest expands, I breathe deeply and all the things trapped inside my chest are opened up.  Sophie runs back to me like a racehorse reaching the finish line. I am her endpoint.  I am her everything. She needs me to find the places that set her free and keep her safe, like this hill and the dog park where she runs with other dogs and enjoys the pack. Ahh, the gathering of same-butt scents, the cliques that nature only knows. And she runs back to me still, to make sure I’m watching her—to make sure she’s still mine and I’m still hers.  Balancing the needs of our inner selves with the need for safety and the ones we love.  If only people gave more thought to what they need, to listening to what calls them.  And when they heard it, there would be that someone in their lives who would allow them the freedom to live that call.  People, let your dogs selves run wild.  Get out with others dogs, watch them and be who they you were meant to be.  9:29:35 PM

any thoughts?

	Wednesday, April 16, 2008

good book                                                         My reading group met for the last time yesterday, to wrap up discussing a book about teaching writing to Latina students.  The author of one of the last chapters was there to join us.  His chapter was the most difficult to read, and they have all been challenging to me, because they use an academic language unfamiliar to me.  Overall, I have been enlightened on the current debates on bilingual and creative writing classes in HSI's. (Hispanic Serving Institutions)  These are good people, striving to overcome cultural barriers, to reach past the syntax and find the stories.  (and I told ‘em so as I pulled out my camera for a parting shot of this motley crew consisting of profs, educators, clinician and social worker.) As I was saying, I had a hard time reading “The Politics of Space & Narrative in the Multicultural Classroom,” by Robert Affeldt.  Here is a sample:  While reading, we imaginatively probe the spatial contours that shape the action of the text and use this structure to generate metaphors in order to fill in, extend, and complicate narrative models of self, action, and event.  Reading and writing compel us, creatively, to construct patterns of reasoning that allow us to fill in missing causal inferences that cohere texts.  I wish to argue that constructing such patterns requires us to access space in order to invoke, simultaneously, our culture’s perception of the ordinary while carving out our own place within it.  Narratives and metaphors draw us into complex aesthetic experiences that invite us to inhabit the embodied space of another in order to search for more adequate representations of personhood.  In a sense, every act of reading, the experience of textuality itself, is a sensual act of inhabiting the skin of another through the experience of our own body.  It is this complicating mix of bodies, of crossing private borders that make reading and writing both real to us, a living experience and potentially disruptive. I  thought I would express what this means to me, especially after reading a good book: I hold your words in my head.  I sense a mutual longing but know it’s a universal one which makes it no less intense.  The stranger-ness clings like the flutter I feel when meeting someone new and interesting, perhaps outside my circle.  Vast differences embrace the sameness as I curl my body around your book, bringing you inside the ring.  But it’s only a desire to protect you and your raining heart, that pours over my borders, and into self.  My edges are made smooth, my narrowness wide, and my intact boundaries are somehow made porous, and I am more myself than ever. 9:18:58 AM

any thoughts?

	Monday, April 14, 2008

little, little                                                                                                Walking back from the park tonight, with sophie, I caught a whiff of magnolia in the dark. Our neighbors change their front flower bed 3 times a year and this was a new scent. And it took me back to east texas and white porches that wrap around the houses and words that are slower than now.  Then I spotted a lone firefly in the grass and I remembered Houston and green lawns filled with lit-up bugs and me and my brother waiting with our jars to catch ‘em all.  When the corner mountain laurel blooms earlier in the spring, I stop and take a deep breath and I can see the hills of the hill country and remember the open spaces.  But flowers and bugs aside, it’s songs that really take me back.  And since I heard “Uncle Albert” 4 times this week, I just have to write more about a time when….. I set up the radio on the pier extending out into the lake. This was my get-away, this tiny body of water dissipated my adolescent angst. And on this day, music would take me over the edge of my solo imagination that hovered somewhere between wildflower meadow-running and Rod Stewart serenades.  I can still see the texas sun glimmering across the surface of Lake Magnolia, the sky a perfect blue, no clouds, an occasional vulture blocking the sun from my tanning body, stretched out on my towel.  Then the song came on and I started to dance and hop as if on a balance beam, on the edge of the pier with my arms held out in a T.    Now, whenever I hear the part: “Little, little be a gypsy get around, get your feet up off the ground, little, little, get around.  Hands across the water, Heads across the sky,,,hi, hi, hi.”  I smile, remembering that free feeling, that feeling you get when you are stirred by a sound that calls you.  Lots of songs stirred me and my (little) wild side.  “Daniel” gave me the courage to call my soon- to- be boyfriend.  “Operator” got me over my first “real” kiss.  Carole King and Cat Stevens, well, at least it took 2 whole albums…     10:24:34 PM

any thoughts?

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