Spring Retreat Part Four: Birth of the Rag Doll

(continued from THIS POST. To read about the retreat from the beginning, CLICK HERE.)

Journal Five 5-12-11

I hear my husband’s car pull up, outside… the car door opens… the jeep door opens and shuts… footsteps… the car door closes.

I could go  out and said something to him, but I keep to my silence.

Tires noisily kick up dirt and gravel. My phone buzzes with a text.

 “I put your bag in the car. love.”

I decide a texted thank you doesn’t count as breaking the silence.

If I’d had my things all along, I would have felt driven to immediately begin working with the things I’d packed, and I might not have fallen into this quiet state of mind so quickly. I also  might have missed out on playing in the creek and seeing the tiny fawn.

At the top of the cloth shopping bag is one of my most treasured things - a baby-sized hand-made quilt. My grandmother gave it to me when I was pregnant with my first child. It was the last time I saw Grandma, and we both knew it would be… she died a few months later.

I spread it across the bottom half of the bed where I will sleep tonight. I pull the stuffed tiger from the bag and put him next to the pillows. Then, I carefully remove the rag doll from the bag, straightening the collar on her plaid dress and her red yarn hair. Impulsively, I hug her for a moment, closing my eyes.

The rag doll…

The Rag Doll…

The Rag Doll has hidden in a dark corner for almost my entire life. She doesn’t talk and she thinks in pictures. The eight-year-old is the only one who can understand what she says… and it’s the eight-year-old who has brought her out of the corner and shown her to me.

She is the one who calls C “the Dancer.” The Rag Doll feels as if the Dancer accepts her exactly as she is. It’s a hard thing for me to accept the Rag Doll as C does. I know it’s what I need to do, but it doesn’t come easily and I’m finally beginning to understand why.

There are many reasons this little one had to stay hidden for so long. It hasn’t felt safe to her to come out, just as it hasn’t felt safe to me to simply accept this part of me. She holds the truth. She is the one who experienced the abuse, from the beginning, and then she would crawl off to her corner, holding tightly to the secrets so I didn’t have to live with them. Each time she was needed, she came back.

Acknowledging her, accepting her, means accepting the truth. I’ve looked at all the ugliness… I’ve seen it for what it is, and yet I’ve kept a clear glass wall up between me and that little girl who was hurt so long ago. Accepting the Rag doll means I have to know that it was me in that bedroom, so long ago.

It wasn’t her father.

It was mine.

To a child, ugly things that happen to her feel like her ugliness. I so didn’t want that to be me. I wanted to scorn her for her ugliness. I had to believe that she was the ugly one, the dirty one, the one who is unloved and unlovable… not me.

It couldn’t be me.

I fought it forever.

When a sliver of light first fell across the Rag Doll, last fall, I found many reasons not to see her.

She’s persistent. The longer I waited, the harder she was to ignore. The eight-year-old haunted me. She sent emails to C without my knowledge. She told C she wanted her to hold her hand, to hold her while she cried, and when that didn’t work (because I was having none of it) she asked C to brush her hair.

There was no way I was going to let that happen.

At appointments, I’ve found that the brush I keep in my car has somehow snuck into purse.

I was embarrassed and appalled.

At one point, C suggested that I buy a rag doll. I never got around to it. Then, C saw one at a second-hand shop. She gave it to me, saying she felt it was meant for me.

The eight-year-old fairly squealed with delight. She was so excited.

The Rag Doll part, inside me, looked in awe at the pretty dress and the ribbons on the doll’s shoes and in her hair.

I felt utter panic. While I was very touched that C had thought of me and brought me the gift, I was afraid to even touch the doll. Even when I got the doll home, I didn’t know what to do with her. I straightened her dress and arranged her on the rocking chair in my room, but I didn’t touch her again until my next appointment.

I’m starting to understand how important it is for me to accept the Rag Doll. I need her as much as she needs me. I brought her to my last appointment, which turned into a very emotional double-session. We finally brought the Rag Doll out of the corner. The eight-year-old held her hand and led her into the “healing circle”.

That was three days before this retreat. I felt intense relief after that session, but that night I had the same terrible dream twice, and woke up screaming. The dream was so hard to explain because there were no words, only pictures. Something was in my room. Something was covering my face, smothering me. I could see it, and when I recall it now it feels as if it was something like a mattress, but as big as the ceiling. I know that makes no sense, but since the dream was only in un-labeled images, my adult mind couldn’t grasp it. All I knew was the fear, and a thought something like, this time it’s real and an overwhelming dread of death.

(back to the journal)

I look through my CD case in search of the April Steele CDs. I want to imagine the Rag Doll as that perfect little one April describes in her “Imaginal Nurturing” CDs. The first track depicts a newborn baby meant to symbolize the core self. I can work my way through the other three tracks, which deal with a slightly older baby and toddler.

Start at the beginning.

T hen see a CD I didn’t know I had. I read the title: “A Place For You Here – A Loving Re-creation of Your Birth Journey,” By Cathy Chapman.

I don’t remember buying it, but it seems as if it was meant for this occasion. I lie on the bed, holding the rag doll.

While the meditation is really quite wonderful, Cathy’s voice and accent take a little getting used to.

I relax and gradually fall into her words.

The Rag Doll at conception
The Rag Doll growing, forming perfectly
The Rag Doll before she was broken and scarred
She is growing into a perfect little girl
She's almost ready to be born.

Me…

It’s me…

I'm right there, and it becomes very real. Cathy talks about a wonderful loving woman who catches the baby and brings her into the world. I feel the energy of this woman, I see her looking into the baby's eyes. I look back up into her eyes.

But then, there is a male voice on the CD. Cathy talks about loving male energy... I cry. The tears are unexpected and confusing. I don’t have words for this, just a kind of block in my mind which seems to mean no.

The meditation ends with a song sung by Shaina Noll and her husband. Waves of energy pulse through me, making the crying more and more intense every time I hear the male voice.

I want it to be true. I want to believe that this male energy surrounds the perfect little being I’m re-creating through this meditation… but it seems impossible. I think about my husband and how wonderful he was with our kids when they were born… but I can’t and don’t want to bring his energy in, here.

He is my husband, not my father, and there is nothing that will make it okay in my mind to transfer his loving presence then to this scenario now.

I cry for some time after the CD ends. I decide to listen to the first track of April Steele’s “I’m So Glad You’re Here”. I bring the perfect newborn image of the Rag Doll into the second meditation and I begin to feel better.

Still feeling shaky, I warmed my dinner and ate it. I felt drained, and looked around the room, trying to understand what I was meant to do next. My eyes fell on the prayer book I’d seen earlier on the piano. This isn’t the kind of thing I usually read, but I carried it outside and turned the pages.

I had a cigarette, catching a word here and a phrase there. Again and again, I tried to get back to “just being” but my mind continued to react to the impossible concept of positive male energy in relation to the Rag Doll.

Thunder in the distance pushed me back inside. I decided to pull out my markers again, now that I have some actual drawing paper to work on. I have no idea what image I’m going to come up with… but I have a feeling the Rag Doll knows.

Disillusioned: An Encounter with a Shaman

I'm adding this image, which I created last month, entitled "Safety"

It seems relevant. In the image I originally had, the wall went all the way around the figure in the middle. I realized that is no longer how I am... and opened it up. Opening up does allow for some pain to get in, but without that opening I've missed out on a lot. I don't want to do that again, and this experience (below) illustrates why.

I've been on a Spiritual Quest for some time now, and it has brought me again and again to the fundamental beliefs of the ancient Shaman. So, yesterday I was looking at Shamanic retreats and workshops. Suddenly a name I hadn't said out loud in thirty years, jumped off the screen and knocked the wind out of me.

I will call her Nando.

She moved in across the street from me when I was around eight, but we really didn't became friends until I was eleven. Our friendship lasted through middle school and a year or two beyond.

Nando was an interesting mix of shyness and enthusiasm. I loved her in the way many twelve-year-olds love a best friend. I remember sleep-overs and walks to school, the stories she loved to write and how excited she'd get over a new, favorite song. I remember that her first crush was on a boy named Brett, and I can still see how she looked when he held her hand.

I was not a good friend.

I was very troubled. I was confused. I had no idea about boundaries of any kind and found my worth only in physical relationships for most of my teens. 

I knew even then that my behavior was not right, I just had no idea why I behaved as I did, or how to change it. I can remember telling Nando about the rape that happened when I was fourteen, as if it was nothing. Closely following that, I confided sleeping with other men, practical strangers, always much older than I.

But the kicker was when I slept with a guy she liked. 
Not only did I sleep with him, but then I told her about it.
In detail.

I know. I'm not proud of it. It was a rough time for me and I'm afraid that spilled out on everyone around me. 

So, yesterday, after I caught my breath, I texted a friend of mine who knows about my love of Shamanism:

A good friend who I've not seen in over thirty years is a practicing Shaman!

Her response:

You have to get in touch with her!

I told her:

We had a stormy past... a guy came between us. It was ugly.

She wrote:

Two Shaman and their stormy past involving a guy? That's a book I want to read! Write it! Now! And you know - she's a SHAMAN. How bad could it be?

Me: Do you think I should email her?

Her: There's some reason you found her, now.

So I composed the following email and then closed my eyes and hit send:

 [Nando]

My breath literally caught in my throat when I came across your name. So many memories... wonderful, painful, and some full of shame… It would be such an honor to reconnect with you.


How ironic to find you in this practice... I have friends who call me "the Shaman." but I’m only beginning to learn this Spiritual path.


Perhaps, even after all this time, there are things you haven't forgiven, Holding those distant resentments blocks the energy we seek... this much I do know. If you feel as if you can, contact me. There is a place in my heart that will always be for you.  

I hope this finds you well,  ~Shen

This morning I was excited to see her name in my inbox. I clicked to open it, and this is what I found:

Hello Shen,


Well, it was certainly interesting to find this email. I haven't really thought of you in decades. I hope you are doing well in your journey through life and continue to learn and grow.


As for myself, my life is pretty full. Perhaps it is because I have a vocation that fascinates people, but I am constantly being asked to be friends with people. However, I barely have time for the small, close-knit and very special circle of friends in my life...and I'm a very private person. So I really don't have the time, energy or desire to pursue other friendships.


I wish you the best of luck!


May joy and peace fill your life!

Seriously???
I mean - excuse my language, but the words 'what the fuck' come to mind. Her "vocation" is "fascinating" and she is "constantly" being asked to "be friends"? I had thought of several possible scenarios, but being treated like a groupie or a member of the Paparazzi never crossed my mind. 

And this is how she is after twenty-some years of intense spiritual practice? 

It really hurt me deeply that she would so calmly tell me that she had no time for me and her claim that she had such a close knit group of friends that she didn't need anyone else felt absurd. My stomach cramped up and I saw red for a while, but gradually I calmed down. 

Email to Nando (this morning):

Well, what a surprising response.

I'm glad your life is full, as is mine. The growth and seeking I've been doing for the last few years has brought me many close relationships, so, I don’t find myself in great need of more friends. On the other hand, I’m not in the habit of turning them away when they present themselves.

After seeing your name, I remembered so many things from the past that I haven't thought of in years. I wonder how your mother is. I always thought she was a special person and was so jealous of your relationship with her. I needed someone like that in my life, when I was young. I was so hopelessly unguided.

Of course, I'm hurt by your dismissive response, but I know there must be a reason I came across your name. I will leave you to your busy, private world and wish you the best. I am going on a private retreat next week, and in that solitude, I will let this go. Hanging on to hurt doesn't serve me... that's one thing I've learned well.

Good luck on your journey and should it bring us together in the future, I hope we can co-exist peacefully. If we never meet again, enjoy the ride and I'll see you on the other side.

~Shen

So, that's my latest emotional crises. A very small part of me looks at her words and the threat of ancient worthlessness pushes towards the surface. However, I'm so much stronger than I used to be. I don't feel bad through-and-through or hopeless as I likely would have even a year ago. That's growth.

In one week, I'm returning to the wonderful quiet of the retreat center I've been to, twice before. For two days I will be completely alone, cut off from all outer contact including phone, internet, tv, radio, or actual human contact. I'm hoping to find that elusive stillness that I only seem to be able to get to through isolation and contemplation. While there, I have a list of things I want to release. Now I have one more thing to add to that list.

We all make mistakes and some of them follow us throughout our lives. At least at this time in my life, I'm able to look at her words and realize that the walls she holds up to protect herself keep out as much love and connection as they do pain. It never occurred to her that I might have something of value to offer her. Instead, she saw my reaching out as a burden. It's sad to think how much she will miss out because of her closed attitude.

And... it's joyful to know that I'm no longer inside those walls.

Ninth Step Revelation

For the last couple of weeks, I've been dealing with the aftermath of newly surfaced memories from the past. As has happened before, these flashbacks have gradually come in and I've been left with disorganized thoughts, disconnected emotions and a general feeling of being broken.

Today, I feel as if I am beginning to put the pieces of my life back together. I’ve been going back through my blog, noticing all the loose ends I’ve left in the wake of this latest wave from the past. I didn’t finish the telling about the CoDA retreat. While the details have begun to fade, there are a few parts of that weekend that I still want to share.

For this post, I’m going to concentrate on one important piece of my personal CoDA puzzle, which I found during the second half of that weekend.

My friend, Rev, is in the same place as I am, in her step work. We are both trying to find our way through the ninth step. I finished my eighth step in May and then I started avoiding my sponsor. I believe Rev has been stalling on this for about as long as I have.

 The ninth step of CoDA is:

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

I must have read that a hundred times, over the summer. I read about it in every CoDA book I have, in AA literature, on line, but still I could not get myself to move forward. I couldn't even write an amends, much less make one.

I didn’t really understand why I felt so stuck. If I hadn’t gone to the retreat, I likely still would not understand.

Lucky for me, Rev was diligent in her search for answers. I was with her quite a bit, and several times she took advantage of the wonderful group of people who attended the retreat with us to ask program veterans how they had worked their ninth step. I listened in on these discussions with great interest, each time wishing I’d thought to ask. I think I commandeered the conversations a few times with questions of my own.

Late Saturday night, Rev asked an older couple who seemed to have a lot of wisdom and experience to share. The man admitted he hadn’t worked a formal ninth step. The woman began to talk about her ninth step, years earlier.

She had that calm sense about her that one sees in people who have worked hard to get their lives in order. I wanted that. I wanted to be able to have that serenity. That knowing, composed ability to speak about such things can only come from a deep understanding of what is true in one's self. Hearing her speak spotlighted how stuck I felt in my own inability to work step nine.

I felt a need to rationalize my feelings. I said, "I’m having a hard time doing my ninth step because there are people on my list that hurt me very much. It’s hard for me to imagine making any kind of an amends to them."

She said, "If they hurt you, you probably need to be making an amends to yourself before you do anything else."

In that moment I realized that I’ve been doing something kind of stupid. I had decided that I didn’t want to talk to my sponsor about making amends because I was sure she was going to tell me I had to make amends to people who had hurt me and I didn’t want to do that. The things is, I’d never discussed it with her! I was putting words in her mouth without even asking her what she thought about it. When this woman spoke of making an amends to myself, I realized that my sponsor might have told me the same thing, months ago, if I’d given her the chance.

A few days after I returned from the retreat, I called my sponsor to set up a meeting time. She seemed overjoyed that I had finally called her. When we met, I explained the entire thing to her much as I have in this post. Then, I made an amends to her for putting words in her mouth, and I asked her what I should do next.

Guess what... she did not tell me I had to make amends to people who had hurt me. I walked out of that meeting feeling a thousand pounds lighter. I had let fear keep me from moving forward, and that brought with it an all too familiar sense of hopelessness. It is wonderful to be back on track. I feel as if I am in charge of my future, once again.

So, despite my frame of mind at the retreat, even with the dark and ugly cloud hanging over my head and obscuring so much of the healing I could have found there, I learned something invaluable.

It’s said at meetings that co-dependent people have a tendency to think they can read minds. This real-life lesson demonstrated exactly how that might look. There is no way I could know what my sponsor would say in any situation unless I asked her, but I had defeated myself and stalled my step work for four months because I thought I knew what she would say and I didn’t want to hear it.

In retrospect, I realize that asking could have brought two possible outcomes. I could have heard exactly what I thought I would - that she wanted me to do things I did not feel I could do. In that case I would have had to make some tough choices, one of which might have been to find a new sponsor. Asking did not mean that I was going to be forced to do things I didn’t want to do – that was another false assumption. The choice of how I live my life is still always mine, regardless of what my sponsor or anyone else tells me.

The other possible outcome is that she would have answered in a way that helped me understand what I needed to do so I could make an informed choice about which amends I should make first and which I should never make at all. That is the place I now find myself, in my step work. It's a positive place to be; a place of hope.

.

A video, just for fun

I'm going to try something I haven't done before. Before I begin, keep in mind I am not a photographer. I do okay with stills because I take a lot of pictures and crop out the parts I don't like.
Video is a different matter.
I am uploading a video to youtube, and I'm going to put the link here and see how it works.
The video is what I saw on part of one of my hikes at the retreat. There were several deer, but when I watched it now I only could find the one I zoomed in on.

Anyway, for what it's worth....
here is the link

Unconditional Love and Forgiveness

Last night, I went to a Forgiveness Workshop, facilitated by Mary Hayes Grieco. I learned of this workshop in January when one of the women from the Wild Souls Retreat saw that Ms. Grieco would be giving the free workshop in my area, and sent me an email.

The woman who sent the email, said she had been able to attend a lecture given by Dr. Edith Stauffer, years ago. Dr. Stauffer was a spiritual teacher who developed an Unconditional Love and Forgiveness workshop, and when she retired, she passed it on to Ms. Grieco.                                     

Creating Space by Shen

The first hour of the free, two-hour workshop was full of entertaining anecdotes that made me understand Ms. Grieco as a real human being. There was no preaching-from-the-pulpit feel to this presentation. Everything she said came from a place of honesty. Yes, she seemed to say, I am not perfect, but I am learning and I am getting better all the time.

                                                     
During the second half of the workshop, she talked about the Eight Steps to Forgiving Another. There are also Five Steps to Self-Forgiveness. These were not new concepts to me - I have been an active student of "how to forgive" for some time now - but hearing her real-life examples and seeing everything outlined so succinctly, helped to clarify and solidify the ideas in my mind. I know the steps to forgiveness are going to be extremely helpful to me, not just next week, but for as long as I remember to use them.

These phrases particularly stood out to me, as she spoke last night.

Spirituality is a state of presence
Master your life
Remember, but forgive
Aim for alignment – spiritually, physically and emotionally
Be present in the moment
Resentment and unresolved rage are toxic to the soul
Shift the energy
Anger is an emotion. It can’t be resolved mentally – it must be resolved emotionally
Look at yourself as God sees you - perfect and whole; a cherished child

The other really important thing I got out of hearing Mary Hayes Grieco speak last night was clarification of an idea that has been growing inside me for some time. I know that C has said almost this same thing to me. I know others have, as well, and I've read things like this in books and blogs. Sometimes it just has to be the right time and place, and I think I am in that time and place, right now.

So, here is my “wisdom of the day”:

The resentment you carry is the connection between you and the one with whom you are angry. When you release that resentment, the connection is gone. Your anger is literally holding you to the one who has hurt you! Dissolving that attachment can unblock the flow of energy and love in you and make space for all the good things you want.

Could the timing of this workshop have been any better, for me? As I said, I heard about this five months ago and had nearly forgotten about it until an email reminder came out a couple weeks ago. To me, it is just one more thing that points to my Awareness Ceremony being exactly the right thing at the right time. So many things are coming together. Everything feels as if it is in alignment.

I brought my copy of "Be a Light" for Ms. Grieco to sign. I was a little embarrassed when she opened it to sign it and it was already signed. I had bought it online, and it came as a signed copy. It really is not the same as having her sign it in person. I explained, she smiled, asked my name and signed my book to me.

I bought two of her CDs, last night. One of them is called A Woman’s Ways. It is about developing intuition. The other one is called, A Peaceful Heart. This one I will be putting to good use, next week. It is “A practical guide to unconditional love and forgiveness”.

I will be using the CD on Wednesday, along with her Steps to Forgiveness, and some other tools I've collected along the way, to guide me through the rest of the emotional baggage I am still carrying. When I sit down for my ceremony on Thursday, I want to be completely ready. I’ve done a lot of work, and I feel very certain that this will be a final piece of release, for me, about much of what I am carrying around from the past.

I don’t want to carry it, anymore. It’s heavy and dirty and ugly and I have much better things to do with my life. Somehow, I know that releasing all of this old clutter from my soul is going to make room for something really wonderful. I know that the space I am creating is necessary and I have such a strong sense of anticipation.

I can’t wait to see what will fill me up.