I’m mapping a year of recovery from a traumatic injury. I address my fear as well as the creative opportunities that made themselves known as healing unfolds. I didn’t know the levels and layers that my 70-year-self would need to attend to. I share this healing experience with the intention to ‘mind-map’ a creative recovery approach as support. I also choose to encourage you and others when the need arises.
My nineteen-year-old reflects her experience …
the strengths and weaknesses rooted in the ‘so long ago’ … seen here as a report:
I feel invisible.
I feel ignored.
I feel worth-less.
I feel traumatized.
I had moved into an apartment immediately after graduating from high school. I worked two jobs. I’d been working at a dress shop since I was fifteen now I also worked full time at an advertising agency downtown.
The messenger, Dr. Perchan, tells me in the fall of 1967, that I would be giving birth in June of 1968.
Action required
First I speak to Mrs. McQuaid. A strict policy: ‘DO NOT bring your personal business to work.” is in place. I break the rule and tell my boss, ‘I’m pregnant.’
She takes her most officious posture and immediately lays out the plan; “We’ll fly you to Mexico, you’ll have this taken care of, you’ll rest a few days and come back to work. Done.”
I didn’t know I had this Other Voice. It speaks calmly to her,
“No. I won’t go.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
I don’t deserve to be punished.“
Mrs. McQuaid eyes me, as if for the first time, and advises, “Call your mother. Have her come in for a meeting.” An hour later, temperatures dropping, the fall clothing line being delivered, carts of hanging skirts, sweaters, and slacks clog the path to the break room where thickly packed wall-to-wall racks of plastic-wrapped winter coats create a cave around the little card table where we usually eat a sandwich.
Mother is ushered in pushing her way through the thick garment bag barrier to take one of the four chairs: Mother, Mrs. McQuaid, Mrs. Parrish and me.
Mrs. Parrish offers paper cups of water from the cooler as Mrs. McQuaid informs mom of the situation, quickly mapping out the plan that she had proposed to me.
Mother stares straight ahead into the plastic wall, speechless. The second of five, I was born sickly and blue. She called me ‘Angel’ and slept with me on her chest for the first 18 months. Now grown independent and adventurous; I am too much. The more I question authority and need answers the more withdrawn and silent she becomes.
The Other Voice now speaks clearly to these three adults.
“No. I won’t go.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
I don’t deserve to be punished.”
Mrs. McQuaid pushes back against the plastic wall, stands, looks down at mother and says, “That’s all I’ve got. It’s up to you.”
Mom says nothing. I follow her out of the shop. No words. She needs me invisible.
Within days she has mapped out her plan and takes me to St. Vincent DePaul Convent to leave me with the ‘unwed mothers’. I am given the tour of the barracks where girls are stowed until their babies are born into the adoption system. I pass a number of pregnant teens before returning to the social worker’s desk.
Time to sign the legal papers. I will stay here in a small shared room.
The Other Voice speaks to the social worker and mother.
“I won’t stay here.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
I don’t deserve to be punished.”
The social worker ushers us into the dingy lobby. Sometime later, she calls us back into her office to inform us that she has made “special arrangements.”
As we prepare to leave, the social worker hands mother a slip of torn paper.
Shortly after the holiday, I will be delivered to the address written in her tiny scrawl.
I sit in my room, my shattered right arm creating a physical & emotional pain that echoes back through time.
Silently I ask my inner nineteen-year-old to help me remember. I want to know how she navigated increasingly deep and dark waters. She whispers in my ear. Pain makes it impossible to hear what only she can tell me. I feel my deeply ashamed part.
I drift back in time. I want to remember, once before, when I was “carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders”.
Shoulder.
Should.
Grow up.
Donna, this is such a powerful site to read and reflect on- I am grateful for your sharing how this work is unfolding as you/ we pay attention, and excavate further into the stories we have been a part of… as a FP sister from 2011 I now understand better the tools I have available, which you demonstrate so well for healing to take place.
Thanks Sherry. Yes. I was deeply touched by a Listening exercise that took place at the FP retreat in July of 2012. We were divided into groups of three. There was woman ‘A’ (detach and ignore), woman ‘B’ (pour your heart out sharing something of deepest personal importance to ‘A’) and woman ‘C’ (neutral observer of the dynamic between A & B).
After discussion, we once again broke off into groups of three, holding different positions. This time A listened to B as if what was being said was the most important conversation ever spoken. Really Listened.
Part of what was revealed is that “we listen people into being” and that includes “listening to the part of myself that doesn’t want to listen to myself.” We addressed, “violence normalcy” and were offered the opportunity to notice how often we accept the crumbs. How often we do violence to ourselves by accepting the crumbs. The struggle that we have to push through to be heard. Like a child, yearning to be heard. Listening. Truly listening from a depth place…so precious…listen a person into being. This is developmental. This is what I carried away from that exercise in listening.
Last year as my arm was rebuilding its internal structure all I could do was listen … and it was this younger self that needed to be heard. This blog space is her container. It is here that she can speak. It is because you are here that she can be heard. Thanks so much for your reflection, Sherry. You helped to bring this piece forward for me. This is truly a work in progress.
Oh Donna, what deep work you are doing! Now I do remember the listening exercise from going to L.A. to meet Claire and Katherine, and all those wonderful FP sisters. The importance of Presence, and yes, the difference of hearing v.s. really listening. I made copious notes at the conference and also continued on with Mastery, Destiny and Leadership- life lines for me trying to discover what was ‘wrong’ with me, when I had no way to understand those beliefs I held, of my value, worth and essence. In listening to your 19 year old self, transcribing her feelings and thoughts for us here, of being wrong, bad, a burden…this sharing hit a deep part of me, also buried with my own secrets. Believing that if others knew ‘this’ about me, I would be shunned or no longer acceptable to my friends, sexuality not being discussed when I was 18. Wanting to be seen as ‘nice’, ‘good’ in spite of losing my virginity with my first love. At 21, naive and trusting, I headed off with backpack to Australia from Canada and was constantly the target of sexual molesting and assaults (Hawaii, Fiji, N.Z. Aust.) until I paired up with another female for travel. My Guardian Angels kept me alive but my ‘be nice to others’ programming did not teach me boundaries to stand up and that I have the right to a strong voice to protect myself. In 1971 “No!” meant ‘keep trying’ to guys, there was no #me too movement for support.
Donna, your listening, your mind mapping, the truths from your Younger Self all are so powerful for me to learn from. Now 70 as well, I see how my ‘not enough’, over functioning as a co-dependent, sourcing my value and worth from doing more, searching for outside approval, may also go back to that young woman, 2nd child of 6 who wanted love and acknowledgment from emotionally unavailable parents. Then spending 50 years as a care giving health professional.
Today before I read your post on listening, I actually typed out a page from an e-book I have, EMBERS by Richard Wagamese (a favorite Canadian Ojibway author of mine)- his messages received from the Ancestors written during his morning meditations in British Columbia.
On Stillness ( first chapter)
Richard Wagamese
Sometimes people just need to talk. They need to be heard. They need the validation of my time, my silence, my unspoken compassion. They don’t need advice, sympathy or counseling. They need to hear the sound of their own voices speaking their own truths, articulating their own feelings, as those may be at a particular moment. Then, when they’re finished, they simply need a nod of the head, a pat on the shoulder or a hug. I am learning that sometimes silence is golden, and that sometimes “ Fuck, eh?” is as spiritual a thing as needs to be said.
Page 15.
Thank you Donna for listening to your 19 year old with such love and courage – I think perhaps it is timely for my own deep listening as well. Metta.
You have given much to think about. How the young woman in us becomes the teacher when needed and can nurture the hurting adult. You were and are a force of nature, huntress of wisdom , bastion of strength. Thank you for guidance.
Thank you, Lynn.
Indeed; the young woman in us as a teacher.
My nineteen-year-old began to nudge me weeks before the injury…I had a mild curiosity but I was too busy to sit quietly and really listen.
Following the fall it was just her and me.
She held knowledge that I had never fully acknowledged.
Now I mine gold.
Thank you so much for standing beside me as I collect the treasure.
Dear Iona; how can someone start life with such grief and pain in every aspect and then go on to become the Goddess of Power and Strength; plus, be there for others as they face their own demons. How does that happen? it happens only to very special people! Thank you for sharing and for being my special friend.
Dear Sue, thank you for reading this story of ‘coming out of the shadows’.
I have ever reminded myself that so many others have had so many far more difficult challenges and made a wonderful life for themselves.
I am not special.
I have been pushing this story away and down and further away and down for all these years.
Some friends know bits and pieces.
The whole story is ‘too much’ to take in.
It doesn’t seem possible or real.
As the story unfolds I share only because this past year has made it necessary to bring the nineteen-year-old child/woman out into the light. She deserves to be seen. And the gifts she was given are timeless and deserve to be celebrated.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for seeing this young girl’s grief and pain. Thank you for seeing how it turned to strength as testimony that others can face their demons … and have tools in place to do so …I’ll share what I was given with the intent to keep those timeless gifts alive.
Such a brave woman to release this to the world. Thank you for sharing this part of yourself. You are a force of life and knowledge, no longer blue and without power-I am grateful you are here with us.
Thank you Jen.
This story being shared is a tricky wicket for sure.
My shadow-side keeps reminding me that I am breaking a code established so long ago.
Stay hidden.
Keep the secret.
It is VERY DANGEROUS to be seen.
I’m going against the grain of so many messages that made it clear that I need to be invisible.
This past year changed that when the nineteen-year-old showed me her grit and determination. I want to share her. I want to celebrate her! I want her to be seen.
Thank you for making her challenge worth the telling by reflecting here the way that she touches, moves and inspires you.
In reading this post, Donna, I could not help but wonder if that one almost unnoticed, simple sentence in your story, actually might have powerfully shaped you into the fiercely independent, free thinking, force of nature that you have become. When you said that you were born a ‘blue baby’ as we referred to them during my years in the Air Force, and that your mother “slept with you on her chest (against her heart) for your first 18 months, I found myself thinking, “Well, of COURSE Donna is indestructible! She is the product of two hearts beating, two life forces joining as she set off on her earthly journey! There is no force greater than the human heart………and YOU, with your great heart and spiritual mission, are the beneficiary of TWO of them!! ……..a lovely visual!
Hello Marianne, Yeah. Mom and I often spoke of how she contributed to my independent nature by keeping me so close to her for that first year and a half of my life. She liked to tell me that she ‘carried me everywhere and slept with me on her chest to keep me warm’. I often thanked her for giving me that level of contact and connection. I wasn’t breastfed but I was deeply held. When I visited Bali, the Island of Artists, I learned that a child is carried for the first 260+ days of life. Either the child is in someone’s arms or seated on a bed up off the floor. At that certain point of so many days, there is a ‘feet touch the ground’ ceremony. It is believed that a child is too close to the Spirit world to make contact with the earth until they have been here for that length of time. I loved learning that and began to imagine that perhaps I was being prepared for something beyond what I could comprehend…just my own meanderings ‘-)
Thank you so much for your reflection on this piece of the story. It is a contributing factor indeed.
Donna, my heart aches for you and I am so sorry for your pain. No, you do not deserve the punishment, but what an amazing and beautiful life you have made from grief and pain. And how many other broken lives have been touched by you and your story and have been mended back together? So many. Thank you for your beautiful and powerful message.
Hi Kay, thanks. That young girl didn’t deserve to be punished. She did not deserve that level of pain.
Last year as the healing was taking place I found myself writing,
‘I am so ready for the pain to be turned into = p a i n t.
As the story unfolds here, in its abbreviated and short form, the pain gets way worse before the Other Voice guides me to an opening that has sustained the journey. It’s a story. It’s a story of learning. I’m a slow study…it took me a long time to ‘get it’. I’m still learning. That’s why I’m doing my level best to be sharing this past year and the healing gifts that it has brought. Thank you so much for being here and for your kind comment.
I admire your deep, indigenous courage! To know at such a young age what was absolutely right for you, and to have the tenacity to follow through and keep going! At age nineteen to have the emotional where-with-all and tools to reflect on your experience in such a creative way is mind blowing. Thank you for your vulnerability!
Hello MM ‘-)
As a young girl, I was drawn to the woods when things were most confusing at home. My dog and I enjoyed long stretches of being quiet; lying on the ground, observing birds, following animal tracks along the creek edge, drawing the cloud formations.
I can only look back now and sense into the opening that was created. Time alone and undisturbed must have allowed the Other Voice to speak out loud when it needed to be heard. I couldn’t take credit for courage or tenacity. When I found out that I was pregnant I became quite numb and dissociated. I thank the Other Voice for making itself heard! I look back and I say, “WHO said that!?” Who knew to stop the trajectory of Mexico or a convent cell so something else could come instead?
Such a powerful story of oppression, and yet a beautiful insistent part: I don’t deserve to be punished! How can we all access the eternal LOVE at work in this story? How can we all have faith that LOVE was working in and through us in these dark, dark hours. How can we find the gold that lives at the heart of our stories of pain? Standing with you and for you, Donna, as you deeply excavate these old wounds! LOVE, Kristin
Thank you for being here Kristin.
As this story unfolds the consequences of oppression rise to the surface in an inescapable, inevitable way.
No blame.
No shame.
Simply paying attention and noticing the impression on a young person’s sense of self when taught that they’re bad and wrong and a burden to others.