Author Archives: Fausta
Thoughts on Thanksgiving
Day Two: Hidden Horrors
In today’s adventure — we were starting a training. One of the participants had started a fresh pot of coffee. As we were wrapping up introductions, she got a funny look on her face and moved as if she were going to get up. My co-trainer Sarah Cannady said, “Oh, is the coffee ready?”
The participant said, “Nooooo, it’s not the coffee,” and pointed to the floor, at the edge of the room. Suddenly, people in that area were jumping up and moving away, just like in a horror movie, and all I could think was, “Omg, it’s a really big bug, or a mouse – I should run!” But nope, it was neither of those things.
It was a snake. Which was a great relief to me, but sent several people scrambling to get out of the room as quickly as they could. One brave soul trapped it with a garbage can while we waited for help. Fortunately, someone from the Environmental Protection agency was passing by and, unperturbed by the scary snakiness, she removed him from the room.
Whew! We didn’t really need coffee after all that excitement!!
In other news, the ferry I was supposed to catch in the morning has been cancelled due to mechanical repairs. I had to choose between a later ferry or driving around to a different ferry. I’m going to drive. It will take longer, but I can leave earlier and get there earlier, and I’m sure it will be interesting.
The blue line is the way I was going to go. The grey line is the new route. It includes a ferry ride, but much more driving.
Day One: The Lake
So I had gone to the grocery with the intention of having crackers and cheese and fruit for dinner. However, the B&B woman’s husband was telling me about how to get to this one restaurant with wonderful food. He was promoting the fried chicken special, which is made with lard and therefore delicious. That didn’t really appeal to me (sorry, I grew up with olive oil, not lard.) But then he showed me how to get there, which involved driving over this HUGE lake – Lake Mattamuskeet.
So I went for the lake, but stayed for dinner.
The lake went on for miles. I took a couple of pictures on the way down – notice the very cool bird in the first picture! You do literally just drive through the middle of the lake.
The restaurant had some of the most delicious grilled trout I ever had. Potatoes au gratin and baked apples on the side. One piece of cornbread and one beaten biscuit, which I had with the apples for dessert.
Driving back home, the light was lovely and the lake was even more picturesque. Stopped to walk out on a little fishing pier and noticed a couple of men fishing on the other side of the road. I considered the possibility that they were poaching or doing something illegal and would have to kill me, thereby making all of this just an intro to a terrific murder mystery.
But, as you can see, either they weren’t doing anything illegal or they realized I was too ignorant to know what they were doing, so they didn’t have to kill me (Yes, I really have these thoughts.) We chatted for a few minutes, as they came over to my side of the road and were casting their net in the water. They caught a few fish immediately that were looking pretty big to me, but they seemed disappointed. Then I was able to drive on back to my lovely B&B.
On Losing My Voice
You may have heard me complaining all over the internet that I had lost my voice. Monday, the day we left Mexico and the world’s most adorable grandchildren, I could only talk in a low whisper. It didn’t bother me that much while we were traveling. I’d had a cold all week and didn’t feel great anyhow, so it was kind of relaxing to not be expected to make conversation.
Tuesday, I went to the nurse practitioner, who gave me antibiotics for a sinus infection, cough medicine, and steroids for my throat. Despite speaking only in a whisper, I was able to challenge her belief that lots of women just suddenly change their mind and decide to have an abortion at 24 weeks. But that’s a story for a different day.
As the week wore on, I didn’t feel bad, I just couldn’t talk much – or couldn’t be heard. I typed. I was grateful that my job is flexible enough to accomodate not talking. I learned some things.
I learned that sometimes people don’t actually need me to talk. Twice – not once, but two times – people reached out to me and talked about what was going on with them, and were able to resolve their own issues, without a single word from me. Just talking through what was going on with them was all they really needed.
I learned that in other conversations, where my input was needed, people were really good about stopping to give me time to think and type. It is not as easy as you might think to carry on an actual conversation via chat box. People were patient and kind.
Of course, I wondered why I had lost my voice. I can’t remember the last time this happened. Dee suggested maybe it was because of the cold medication I had been taking, but I didn’t think so. As a therapist, I wondered if it was symbolic, if there was a psychological reason.
Maybe, I pondered, I haven’t been speaking up enough. Maybe I’ve metaphorically lost my voice, and now it’s manifesting physically. Or maybe this is an experience in empathy, to increase my understanding of what it’s like to be voiceless in some way.
I wasn’t dreadfully upset about it – I could still whisper when I needed to and it was restful in an odd way. It made me listen more attentively and kept me from interrupting or completing other people’s sentences, which I’ve been known to do. And it was kind of interesting.
But Saturday morning – starting day 6 without a voice – it was getting a bit old. As I mentioned it (again) on Facebook, someone suggested a rememdy. “Th***t C**t tea,” he said, “and R***la throat drops.”
Amazingly, I already had the tea in my cabinet. I hadn’t been using it, I’d been doing all kinds of other tea instead. But there it was, just waiting for me. I fixed a cup of tea instead of a second cup of coffee and headed out.
In my car, I was looking for Kleenex under the dashboard and wondering if it would be worth stopping for the throat drops when I pulled out – a bag of R***la throat drops. Seriously. (No, I didn’t find the Kleenex. You can’t have everything.)
So I drank my tea and had a couple of throat drops – and I could talk. Not perfectly. But I could actually talk. If I’d been at 25% of my voice before, I moved up to 60 or 70%. Pretty amazing.
So amazing that of course I decided it must have been psychosomatic in the first place. I mean, really, how can a cup of tea and two throat drops be that kind of miracle? But that’s ok. There’s still a big take-away here.
Here’s what I think the lesson is. We talk about needing to have the right tools to find solutions and solve problems. But it’s not just a matter of having the right tool. We have to know that it’s the right tool. I had lots of remedies – teas and medicine and extracts and even hot toddies. And I had exactly what I needed (apparently) and just didn’t realize it until someone else suggested it.
It makes me wonder how often I have the solution lying around in my “tool kit” neglected and unused. And will I remember to look at all my tools the next time I need them?
Tybee Island with my Sister: Pictures tell the story.
My last day on Tybee Island started, of course, with sunrise.
After coffee and spending some time on FB and eating cereal and so on, it was time to go bike riding with Julia. Here’s what we had planned:
Yes, intrepid bike riders, pedaling around the island.
Instead, both the bike shops were closed – it was Monday. Apparently, that’s the wrong day for bike riding.
So what could we do?
We walked to the pier, got some woman to take our picture (with the sun in our eyes and my hair all over the place.) Then we went to Fannie’s on the Beach, where we had a lovely plate of steamed oysters.
Content with that, we wandered the streets of Tybee for a while, especially Chu’s Department Store. We were tempted by the hoodies and t-shirts, admired a bowl, glanced at the fishing supplies, and thought about buying some Savannah honey.
Eventually, we decided we needed a glass of wine. Back on the street, there were so many places we could have gone – and we chose Doc’s. Julia thought it looked like a bar we knew back in the day – Hikes Point Bar and Lounge, to be exact – and indeed, it did.
It was actually much darker than the pictures. Thanks, i-phone.
We enjoyed a glass of wine, and had some conversation with the bartender. Overhearing her phone call with her 11 year old daughter had me remembering my days of motherhood in all too vivid color. And it made us laugh. The bartender was glad that I could reassure her that it does get easier. Or different anyhow.
After all that, we had worked up an appetite, so we went to find our menfolk and get dinner. Stingray’s was an easy choice for dinner – Julia and I split the seafood platter. Oh. My. Goodness.
And a good time was had by all.
With Appreciation
The last couple of trips my partner, Dee, and I have taken to Mexico, he’s been having some issues with mobility, so we’ve needed a wheelchair to get from one flight to the next. It’s been awkward and odd and amazing.
Overwhelmingly, I am grateful that airports have a system designed to allow us to travel. I had no idea. When we ask for a wheelchair, a staff person is assigned to push it. That person may go with us to pick up luggage and take it though customs, walk us through immigration and document checks, and go through security. They may be with us for 15 minutes or for hours.
It’s no longer just me and Dee traveling, we’re a little parade. Dee and the wheelchair and the staff person, me, and often a second staff person with the luggage. There are some benefits. We breeze through immigration and customs now. No waiting in line for security.
The staff people are invariably nice and helpful. In Mexico City, they don’t always speak any English, which matches our lack of Spanish speaking skill, but Dee makes an effort to communicate and they do too and it all works out.
Well, that one time when we wandered around the airport for about 3 hours trying to find our luggage and figure out what we were supposed to do to get a flight the next day was not so much fun. Our person kept stopping to ask different people for advice, they would speak rapidly in Spanish, with some gesticulating, and I wasn’t sure what he was even asking, much less what they were saying. Then he would be back, taking the wheelchair in hand, heading off in some direction, and all I could do was follow him. At one point, he gestured to me that I had to go through some security check – I didn’t know why, but the security guy spoke a little English, and he explained that they needed me to look for our luggage. So I headed back into some baggage area, while our guy and Dee headed off in the opposite direction to “los banos,” and I did wonder what would happen if I came back and they were just gone.
What would I do then?
But they were there when I came back, and I had the luggage too, so it was all good.
We had a young woman in Charlotte who was warm and reassuring. “Don’t worry,” she said, “You’ve got plenty of time to make the next flight,” and of course she was right. In Charlotte, their system involved her getting us to the right cart, which then carried us on to the right gate, where they had a wheelchair to get us to the door of the aircraft. The young woman and I chatted for a minute or two – she’s just working at this until she can get a job with one of the airlines, and then she’ll be able to travel. She was telling me about the many places she wants to go, and I hope she gets to do that.
I’ve begun to see the networks of people who staff the airports and the way they relate to each other. Sometimes, our person – our helper? I don’t know what the right term is – but sometimes they’re really outgoing, flirting and joking with everyone along the way. Sometimes they’re more quiet, but alway helpful and kind.
Yesterday, we left Mexico City, landed in Dallas, headed for home. The wheelchair attendant (there, does that sound better?) is a soft-spoken woman, wearing a burkha. Her name tag reads “Ayisha.” She is pleased to hear we have three hours between flights, “Plenty of time,” she says, “No need to hurry.”
She directs us. “You’ll need your passport and boarding pass,” or “show him this form with your passport,” telling me, “follow me,” or “you go ahead.” We move a bit more smoothly than usual.
We are delayed at security. “Only two wheelchairs can go at a time,” she says, “so we just wait. Sometimes, people get so upset, but it’s ok, there’s lots of time.”
We get to customs, and she helps us scan our passports, answer the appropriate questions (no, we have not visited a farm) and get our pictures taken. With our printouts in hand, we are heading on, when a male voice behind us says, “Ayisha, help her with this!”
She turns, I turns – Dee is up ahead just a bit – and there’s an older woman in a wheelchair in front of the machine, passport in hand, saying querulously, “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how.”
Ayisha says to the man staffing the wheelchair, “You can help her,” but he turns his head away, and the woman in the chair says again, “I don’t know how to do this.”
I think Ayisha is going to say something sharp to the man, I think she starts to, or maybe I just want her to, but she doesn’t. Instead she takes the woman’s passport and shows her how to insert it to start the process. She gently and kindly walks her through the couple of minutes it takes to complete it. Then, without waiting for thanks, she turns and we move on.
“Why didn’t he help her?” I ask.
“Oh, he’s very – busy,” she says, in a tone that I think means he thinks he’s too important to do that.
“But – he was right there, he could have helped her,” I say.
“Yes,” she agrees, “He could have,” and she says it in a tone that allows me to let go of my own frustration at what seems like him being unreasonable.
We pick up our luggage – two bags, about 40 pounds each – and Ayisha stacks them on a cart. She takes the wheelchair with one hand, the cart with the other, and starts off. “Oh, I can help with that,” I say, meaning the luggage, but she laughs. “I’ve got it,” she says.
I’m a bit awed. Often the wheelchair person will take one bag and ask me to push the other – which is fine if we aren’t going miles. And sometimes they’ll recruit a second person to help. But she’s handling both wheelchair and baggage as if it’s nothing. “I’ve been doing this job for 15 years. Sometimes,” she says, “I push two wheelchairs.”
She hands the luggage off again effortlessly.
We’re about to get on an elevator – there’s a couple standing there with a full cart of luggage, about to go up. Ayisha says, “Are you going to check your luggage?” They shake their heads no. “Are you looking for a taxi?” Nods this time. “You need to go that way,” she says, pointing. Off the elevator they come, heading down the hall in the right direction.
“How did you know they were going the wrong way?”
She shakes her head, “Easy, you don’t need to go up with luggage. You either go that way to check in baggage, or the other way to go out. You don’t go up.”
We are pre-TSA, but are delayed while they check Dee’s hands for evidence of explosives and pat him down from head to toe. “He is new,” Ayisha says, talking about the security guy. “He doesn’t have to do all that, he was pre-TSA, but that guy, he’s new, new ones, they always do too much.”
She delivers us to an electric cart, “You stay with this cart,” she says, “Don’t take any other one, this one take you all the way to your gate.” I assure her we will, and thank her profusely, as she sends us off with a smile and a wave.
I hate for Dee that he’s had to use a wheelchair. I would not have chosen this experience for either of us. But I am left with such lovely images of the network of people who make it possible for us to travel. So many times, I’ve seen wheelchairs at the end of the ramp as I exit the plane, without giving them another thought. Now I feel connected to the people who do that work day after day. And to Ayisha, who did it with such warmth, dignity, and grace.
Thoughts about Racism as a Social Disease
This article – Confronting Racism as a Social Disease – just derailed my morning timetable. I was going to post it on Facebook with a little commentary, but it is too rich, and I have too much to say about it, to get away with a FB post. So here I am, writing about it instead.
The article, by Deborah Peterson Small, is well worth reading, so I encourage you to do that first.
I’ll start here – the last two paragraphs:
The Black Lives Matters movement—dealing with the immediate victims of trauma as a result of encounters with police and violence—could benefit from an alliance with people in the therapeutic community. I’d like to see poor communities of color served in the same way when tragedy strikes them as middle-class communities are served. It triggers me every time I hear that therapists are offering counseling to people traumatized by the latest shooting disaster but aren’t going to Detroit or Chicago or East New York or any of the mostly black places that are experiencing the same tragedies every day.
I’d like to see therapists acknowledge that when black young people are arrested and put in handcuffs and locked in cells, that’s a traumatic event. What do white people think it feels like for young black people, the descendants of slaves, to be handcuffed and sent to jail? The United States is a nation of people traumatized by centuries of pain as the victims and perpetrators of forced migration, forced extraction, and forced exclusion. Our collective pain is one of the root causes of violence in our society. If ever a society needed to put itself on the collective couch, it’s us.
I have been preaching that, or some version of it, for a long time. Starting in the mid 90s, I worked in a community that was experiencing a sharp increase in gun violence and homicides. I began to see how that impacted the community. I saw that when someone got killed, the impact rippled out through their family and friends, through the people who knew them, people who lived close to them, and so on, all the way into the community health center where I was, touching the therapists and staff there too. The victims were often people we knew, and if we didn’t know them, we knew their mama, their children, or their next-door-neighbor. Or maybe we knew the person who killed them.
I sometimes tell the story that in those days, I would get up and look at the newspaper first thing to see if anyone I knew got killed the night before. My view of the world had changed.
At the time, I started thinking about the impact of slavery over generations, how that might affect the people descended from those who had survived it, and I talked about it to anyone who would listen. Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Joy DeGruy describes it the way I was thinking about it, and I was thrilled when I found her work.
So trauma is “my thing,” and has been for a long time. I get so excited when I see a call-out for therapy like in this article. I’ve looked for ways to do that work – through workshops or therapy or anything for a long time, without real success. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough or long enough, or maybe I’m not the right person to actually do it. But the work needs to be done, so I get excited when someone else says it. Yes, yes, yes.
The first part of the article, more directly about racism as a social disease, made me think about a discussion I was involved in at a workshop on diversity. The facilitator asked if we confronted and challenged racism when it was expressed by clients in our individual therapy practice. It was a great question because it creates some tension for therapists.
On one hand, we are committed to keeping the client’s goals first. We are not supposed to have our own agenda. I’ve argued with more than one therapist who works with children that no, I don’t think it would be more helpful for the mother to work on her parenting issues, that yes, she needs help with parenting, but she needs to work on resolving her own trauma issues first. Yes, the needs of her kids are super important, but if we want her to be a good parent, her own needs have to come first.
So I don’t think I can interrupt the flow of a therapy session to say, “You know, that thing you just said was a pretty racist perspective, can we talk about that for a minute?” unless it’s pertinent to the client’s goals. At the same time, I am committed to dismantling racism, so if my client says things or does things that are racist, how can I not challenge it?
The article points out:
“… the other part—never really talked about—is the harm that comes to white people from living in a racist society and the way in which it distorts their perspectives of themselves. Knowing that the conversation you have about yourself is inconsistent with what’s true, and feeling a constant need to preserve that image by obfuscation, projection, and denial, generate a permanent inner sense of shame.”
So one thing I can do – and I hope I already do this – is to be open to opportunities to challenge those ways of thinking when I see them connected with my client’s goals. Of course, first I have to look for them and challenge them in myself. The beauty of being a therapist is that it makes you do all this damn hard work on yourself first so you’re able to be there in a way that is helpful for others.
If I’m standing in awareness of how stereotypes and racist tropes have affected me, and if I’m aware of my own privilege, and how it impacts my life, then it’s possible for me to communicate those concepts, and challenge others, when appropriate. As is so often the case, whether we’re talking about trauma or racism, it comes back to making sure I’m doing my own work first.
I would love to hear your thoughts about the article or how you incorporate anti-racist work into your life, or what you think can be done to help people deal with the trauma around us. In the meantime, I’ll work on getting my morning back on track.
Kim Davis: Is she acting as a “Lesser Magistrate?”
I’ve read lots of articles about Kim Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky and her defiance of the marriage equality law. Living in Kentucky, it’s particularly interesting to me. But I haven’t seen anyone in the mainstream talking specifically about the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and whether that doctrine applies to the stand Kim Davis has taken.
According to Wikipedia, the doctrine of the lesser magistrate dates back to the time of John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation. Simply put, it states that if the government is wrong, individuals still have to follow the laws, but magistrates – people in public office – have a right and a duty to stand up against the laws. Which makes sense. They have a duty to defend their people from tyrants. But ~
Fast forward to 2013 and Matthew Trewhella, author of The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, available here on Amazon. {No, I’m not suggesting you buy it, but I’d rather you check it out on Amazon than on his website…} Trewhella says:
“America has entered troubling times. The rule of law is crumbling. The massive expansion of Federal government power with its destructive laws and policies is of grave concern to many. But what can be done to quell the abuse of power by civil authority? Are unjust or immoral actions by the government simply to be accepted and their lawless commands obeyed? How do we know when the government has acted tyrannically? Which actions constitute proper and legitimate resistance? This book places in your hands a hopeful blueprint for freedom. Appealing to history and the Word of God, Pastor Matthew Trewhella answers these questions and shows how Americans can successfully resist the Federal government’s attempts to trample our Constitution, assault our liberty, and impugn the law of God. The doctrine of the lesser magistrates declares that when the superior or higher civil authority makes an unjust/immoral law or decree, the lesser or lower ranking civil authority has both the right and duty to refuse obedience to that superior authority. If necessary, the lower authority may even actively resist the superior authority.”
Then I found this website, that blogs about the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. They are thrilled with Kim Davis. According to them, “What Kim Davis has done is not about religious liberty – it is about reining in a lawless federal judiciary.”
If she, and others who resist issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are following the doctrine, then they don’t actually want the state to find ways to accommodate their religious beliefs. Their goal is to keep the state from issuing licenses – from acting in ways that their religion deems immoral. As the blogger says:
“The clerks (and others) do not want to have to lay their hand to this great evil (by issuing marriage licenses), but then promote a change in state law so that people can still do the evil – just not through them. This is not true interposition.”
The blog then goes on to complain that the clerks “seem to be taking some bad advice from politicians and lawyers.” I agree with them, but not the way they mean it. They’re critical because it looks like they might settle for having a new system that would issue the licenses without them. “True interposition” doesn’t work like that. According to the website:
When standing in interposition against wickedness, lesser magistrates – like county clerks, judges, or legislators – should understand that their primary duty is to protect those who reside in their jurisdiction against the aggression of the tyrant – not to protect themselves.
Not only does the interposition of the lesser magistrates protect the people in the jurisdiction of their office against evil – but it also abates the just judgment of God.
Kim Davis (and others) are attempting to stand in the gap. Their fealty to the Lord does not allow them to join the higher authorities in their rebellion against God. But, it is all an utter failure if they proffer actions to see the evil accomplished another way (via a website at the statehouse). It is not true interposition.
So don’t be confused by discussions about religious freedom. This is not about an individual’s right to act in accordance with her conscience. It’s not about the need to make accommodations. The intent is to stop the government from acting in ways that are against her religious beliefs.
No, she can’t win this battle. In my worst fantasy, her attorney is encouraging her to see herself as the first of the Lesser Magistrates to stand up to the immoral, tyrannical government. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s not helping her envision herself as – oh good grief, yes, seriously, the Rosa Parks of her time. I think he is. The website, after a lot of talk about why the Supreme Court can’t “make laws,” says:
What Kim Davis has done is not about religious liberty – it is about interposition, it is about honoring Christ, it is about reining in a lawless federal judiciary.
It is now incumbent upon all other magistrates – sheriffs, district attorneys, judges from all spheres of government, and legislators from all spheres of government – to rally around Kim Davis, interpose on her behalf, and defy a lawless federal judiciary.
It is now incumbent upon the people to rally around Kim Davis and assure her of their support – with their persons, with their finances, with their prayers. They must also prod their state and federal magistrates to interpose on her behalf and defy the lawlessness of the federal judiciary.
So don’t be surprised when Kim Davis goes back to jail. Don’t shake your head and say, “WHAT does she want?” She wants to lead the lesser magistrates into battle to defy the Supreme Court.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
Then Whose Fault Is It?
{Reblogged from my website: http://faustaluchini.com/blog/}
Just as I was beginning to write my last post, I ran across this article entitled: How to Land your Kid in Therapy. The author, Lori Gottlieb, starts off expressing her relief (as a parent) that parents don’t have to be perfect – that the real goal is to be a “good enough” mother. Then she talks about her experiences as a therapist. She describes how her first clients clearly suffered from having parents who were not emotionally nurturing. Then she begins to describe some other clients:
Imagine a bright, attractive 20-something woman with strong friendships, a close family, and a deep sense of emptiness. She had come in, she told me, because she was “just not happy.” And what was so upsetting, she continued, was that she felt she had nothing to be unhappy about. She reported that she had “awesome” parents, two fabulous siblings, supportive friends, an excellent education, a cool job, good health, and a nice apartment. She had no family history of depression or anxiety. So why did she have trouble sleeping at night? Why was she so indecisive, afraid of making a mistake, unable to trust her instincts and stick to her choices? Why did she feel “less amazing” than her parents had always told her she was? Why did she feel “like there’s this hole inside” her? Why did she describe herself as feeling “adrift”?
The author spends the rest of the article explaining what the parents of her young clients have done wrong to create young adults who “have it all” but are still not happy. Drawing on the most sound psychological theory, she explains how over-protecting your child from disappointment, giving them too many choices, and treating them as if they were “delicate tea cups” puts today’s young people at a disadvantage – and “lands them in therapy.” She describes what parents can do to keep from handicapping their children in this particular way.
It made me laugh. I don’t disagree with her – in the ideal world, parents would know how to provide exactly the right amount of protection balanced with the right amount of laissez-faire. I’m sure there are parents who know when to negotiate and when to stand firm in exactly the right amounts. And maybe their children grow up to be perfectly well-adjusted and happy in all the right ways.
I don’t know any of those parents, or their kids either. Maybe they exist – I just haven’t met them.
But I appreciate a person in their twenties who “has it all” and still feels that something is missing. I don’t think it means there’s something wrong with them – I think they’re on track to discover who they are and their purpose in life. I understand that they may be a bit miserable, but I don’t see any reason to hold their parents accountable for that.
Good grief, in order to be perfect parents – including being just the right kind of flawed – would take some phenomenal perfection. Ridiculous. Some people have trauma-laden pasts to heal from, others may suffer from lack of experience with difficulties – but everybody has problems. Going to therapy is one way to learn how to deal with whatever your struggles are.
Being anxious, depressed, unhappy, bored, or miserable might mean we need to make changes in how we live. It might mean we need to accept some things about how we live, or about the universe. We might need new skills or a new perspective. Maybe our childhoods were traumatic, or maybe they were “too easy.” The question is still not “What’s Wrong With Me?”
And the answer is not, “Well, here’s what my parents did wrong.” Don’t misunderstand me – if you had a traumatic childhood, as many people do, there is healing work that you need to do. If you had parents who thought you were supposed to make them happy, you have healing work to do. And if your life was so easy that you’re a bit spoiled – well, you still have work to do.
I’m pretty sure that we’re all scarred from our childhood, not to mention adolescence. Our parents are only human, and they carry their own scars. Most of them do the best they know how to do. Figuring out where your parents went wrong is not, actually, the goal. It might be a place to visit, a little exploration might help, but that’s not the end of the journey.
So if the question is not, “What’s wrong with me,” or “Where did my parents go wrong?” then what is the question?
Sometimes, just figuring out what the question is takes time and energy. Sometimes, it’s about looking at the things that have happened to us, seeing them with adult eyes and a new perspective. Looking at the rules we’ve learned about how the world works, deciding which rules are fact-based and helpful, which ones aren’t. Figuring out what we feel and where we stand and who we are. Ultimately, the question becomes, “Given all the things that I’ve been through, given the things about my life that I can’t change, given all my goals and dreams and needs, what do I need to do to be ok? Right now, what do I need to do to be ok?
A Story to Tell 