Place Holder

Summers are busy.

I love that I get to spend time with my nine-year-old granddaughter - even if it's mostly as her chauffeur. We sing. We talk. We eat snacks together as we zip along Berkeley and Oakland freeways between day camp and home or sit stuck on the road in terrifICK traffICK. Her company makes everything sweeter.

Writing that I promised myself to do still simmers on a back-burner of my brain while I write place-holder pieces to keep my foot in the door.

Away all weekend at a family wedding in Truckee, California, I did place-holder yoga and place-holder meditation. Even an abbreviated practice in a tiny cozy rental house with two young cousins and their mama gives me some comfort and greater ease in the world. So, though it's not the complete, thorough practice I usually  create every day, it supports continuing the habit of doing the routine once in 24 hours so I don't lose my place or lose my Self in the over-busy-ness of life.

Place-holder writing is this blog... a commitment to show up once a week for myself as a person writing. Sometimes, I write what I want to be working on. Sometimes, the subject has no particular thrust or intent. It's just writing to keep the chops polished. I don't expect anyone who stumbles upon my ramblings to get anything from it. Perhaps like watching warm-ups for any physical art form; the stuff of barre work for ballerinas or spring practice for baseball teams, this is just to keep limber enough for the work ahead.

Today is one of those times.

Writing parts of this book, Emergence, puts me in a quandary. It feels like trying to catch moonbeam motes and nail them to prose on the page. Elusive, inconclusive and requiring me to be reclusive, these images of work I've done in the shamanic realm with clients has got me stymied.

In recent interviews about his new book, How to Change Your Mind, covering his various guided psychedelic journeys, Michael Pollan discusses how relating these experiences can sound just plain stupid. Yes. This is what I'm up against as I try to capture the essence of supporting a client during the re-negotiation of a life-changing traumatic event. Those big owies that each of us endures in a lifetime tend to offer us some take-aways; some more useful than others. The earlier in life the challenge descended, the more pervasive its potential negative effect - simply because we don't yet have the hardware to perceive life-threatening events as anything but a commentary on our right to be here on the planet.  I chose to specialize in resolving birth trauma, helping to free up little ones from the residue of Fight, Flight, Freeze in their Nervous Systems, because working with them is particularly rewarding. "...one robin unto its nest again..." I also chose this work because it's what I knew intimately and my career was the byproduct of healing myself - with the support of some pretty fabulous practitioners.

When unresolved, those earliest imprints send out nets that snare us every which way - hobbling us in confounding and pervasive sticky strands. Working in the shamanic realm can help change our mind, and our body, and emotions - allowing our spirit to soar again. I've always considered it a privilege to witness the ordinary miracle of healing. So many of my colleagues and I love our work, but are concluding that in our current world we are creating trauma faster than it can be healed one person at a time.

The purpose of writing this memoir at this time after working in the field for over thirty years is to name the possibilities for resolving birth and early trauma so we can move forward in life as a human family with less entanglement in the load of garbage we all got handed.

While not a short-cut or substitute for traditional therapy, journey work without drugs of any sort, has a place in the pantry of ingredients to simmer a client in alternate realities different from the limiting one that has been dogging her/him since birth. Shifting perspective often gives the "AHA" moment necessary to make permanent, if incremental, changes in how we view ourselves in the portrait of the human family... not as the rug for humanity to rest its feet, but PART of and EQUAL to the whole.

Under the attuned guidance of a bodyworker or practitioner skilled in supporting a hypnogogic state, an adult client may enter the realm of conjoint reality on a different plane, viewing her/his trauma as a drama in need of re-write. From a higher perspective we look at the events and what was happening around our personal experience and gain lasting perspective that it wasn't our fault; that we were not singled out to be punished, but rather were given the ubiquitous and familiar load of poop on our plate to digest and assimilate in a way that yields a particular gift unique to us, which we can then share with our tribe.

In my early life, I faced many challenges. The privileged opportunity I had of turning those particular poisons into nectar is what led me to offer support to babies similarly challenged by early life events. Left untreated,  those early imprints can be overwhelming and persistent in their effect on every aspect of our lives.

At camps for children with medical challenges where I'm one of many volunteers, we see two ways of reacting to the loss of a child. When death takes a child, some walk away and never speak of it again. Others reach back a hand to families on the same path behind them. Seeing the result which the latter approach yielded, strengthened my resolve to work with babies and families traversing the territory I know so well.

Would that there were a short-cut to resolving the world's collective traumas. Perhaps returning to some of our tribal elders's wisdom is not a panacea, but rather a rich opportunity to heal individual hurts in community. What happened in isolation is best healed in community.

Humans can only do so much on our own when we truly need at least two to carry our stretcher. When our injuries are of such magnitude that we cannot get up and go home to lick our wounds in private, but need the support of others in order to regain functionality, then each of us lending a hand is crucial to keeping the tribe functional.

We call it co-mmunity, not co-mutiny for a reason. We cannot thrive if we abandon our principles of securing the best out-come for all. Being adrift in inhospitable space on this life-boat Earth, the human tribe must band together for survival. Each of us has a task.

The thrust of this memoir (working title is Emergence) is to offer an accounting of my self-assigned task to have empathy for those who have been hurt early and often and to offer hope for reclaiming functionality... or at least restoring the FUN to dysFUNctional.

What I recount here are stories of dear humans of differing ages reclaiming their foothold on a path of upward trajectory. These are stories of the ordinary miracle of humans healing with a little help from their community.

While I have endeavored to be painstaking in conveying the truest version of the facts of what happened as I could possibly convey, I have also disguised my clients completely for their privacy. 

May the stories you read here engender hope for humanity reclaiming its own humanity!

Look...

Gravity sucks.

Combined with estrogen loss, sun damage, wiry hairs in odd places, general aging and decrepitude, looks are not much to celebrate compared to the glossy magazine models and celebrities in Hollywood’s shadow. 

Yet, Mother Nature is generous. She gives us crepe-like skin, if not crepe paper streamers with which to decorate our sunset years. I love that She’s generous. But, sunsets don’t need decoration. Why should we? I aspire to be the one whose twinkle precedes her with such a force-field that no one even sees the whiskers, wrinkles, and road-maps on her skin.

The movie, Book Club celebrates friendship among three friends of a certain age who have one another’s backs. While predictable, I did laugh out loud several times in the old Elmwood Theater in Berkeley, filled with folks (mostly women) of a certain age. 

It’s the certainty OF age that’s the given, not what will happen when we are truly old. Maybe the greeting card is right: We should slide into home with our hair messy, our muscles sore, and a twinkle in our eye. Chin whiskers be damned. I’m going outside in the light to Play!

A sudden chill blowing in off California’s coast caused my So Cal volunteer counselor hubby to say that last week, when it was so warm, he was afraid of getting a mosquito bite and, when the temperature dropped so unseasonably, he was afraid of getting frost bite!

Unbearable news cycle… children being ripped from the bosom of their family.  We’re creating trauma with a capital T faster than ever we can heal it. Between War and Epidemics, why must we insert Shredding Families? Romans 13:1? Really, Mr. Sessions?

Some friends and I are thinking about going to Southern California where there is one such facility that houses these youngsters who have been wrenched from their country, their mothers and fathers, even their siblings. No one is allowed to touch or comfort them. Really, Mr. Sessions? We’re wanting just to be witnesses: Vigil Aunties, (and Uncles) sitting vigil, bearing witness to this atrocity that is inhumane and evil.  How can those who carry out “orders” sleep at night? How can these people live with themselves. How is this policy different from the tactics of any fascist regime? 

Put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat, it will acclimate until it’s too late, be cooked, and die. Pop it into already boiling water and it will jump right out. The fire has been warming us since November of 2016. If your country is not safe and you seek asylum in one that you think is safe(r), how is justice served when everyone turns a cold shoulder and worst of all wrenches your child(ren) from your protective arms?

Aunties with white hair, delicate or bulging varicosities tracing roadmaps of Cleveland on their legs, and lots of life experience have had enough. We’ve earned our stripes and will not sit by and watch the heat being turned up slowly. We shall intercept, interrupt, and disrupt the status quo that allows border agents to rip nursing babies out of their mother’s arms. We will resist. We will turn this around.

What's already occurred is sinful, if you want to put a religious spin on it, Mr. Sessions. Simply SINFUL. Your actions will come back to haunt you. May you have terribly disrupted sleep. You deserve it.

The Old Guard

Burton Ritchie Payne died June 9, 2018. At nearly ninety-eight years of age, Ritchie had a good long run. 

He was my mother's paramour during her sunset years, 1994 until her death in 2012.  They met at an Elder Hostel educational program on campus at University of Southern California.  The subject of the three day class was  Films of Steven Spielberg.  Neither Ritchie nor Mama Barbara had lost touch with how to raid another's nor lose their own hearts to create a romantic arc.  After three lunches together, she moved into his Glendale home in short order.  They enjoyed travel, Scrabble, studying esoteric topics, and the PBS News Hour.  I teased her about being born and living in Cincinnati and for her autumn years, just living in sin.  I chalked it up to my not having raised her right.

Ritchie had outlived his two previous wives, each of whom bore him children.  Kim and Michael were his first kids; Michael was born of Ritchie's second wife.  When my husband, daughters, and I were introduced to the three, they independently and collectively warned us that their dad would talk our ears off.  In Ritchie's own words, he was "paid to be an asshole" - as contract negotiator for Warner Brother's Studios.  After we got to know him, we imagined that representatives of the other side must have run off the WB Burbank Lot - screaming and pulling their hair - yielding to the studio's demands just to be done negotiating with Ritchie.  We nicknamed him Motor Mouth.  

His kindness to my mother cannot be denied. In 2003, Barbara had a catastrophic stroke which paralyzed her right side and made Swiss cheese of her left brain.  Her words fell into those holes. Complete aphasia for a poet and woman of words was cruel punishment.  During her two month convalescent hospital stay, in a lucid moment, she made the decision to return to Ritchie's home.  I shall never know whether that decision was born of great love for him or, because she did not want to be a burden to her own three children.  My brothers and I went along with her spoken desire

Ritchie's gracious invitation to Barbara to continue living with him, necessarily included her hospital bed, and full-time care-giver. For seven and a half years, she ate, slept and was bathed in that hospital bed in his living room. There, all of us family members could gather comfortably to surround her with love and music.  I'd crawl right into bed with her placing her old guitar against her bony knee to play the old folk and freedom songs of the 'sixties.  Her brother Larry came once a month to play his trombone or guitar for her as well.  She knew all the melodies, harmonies, and lyrics in various languages and she sang right along with us, only near the end of her life did she sing out "doodly-doo" in perfect rhythm when the words failed to pop to mind.  The brain is an amazingly plastic organ.  She was able to learn some new songs we'd learned at camps where we were volunteering for summer camp, and winter, spring and fall family weekends.  

For what would be her last year, we moved her and her beloved care-giver Ellen into our home so as not to wear out the welcome at Ritchie's.  During that year, he did not come to visit his "dear Barbara" even once.   I wondered if he relished the break from the constant bustle of invalid care in his living room.  As it turned out, dear Ellen cared for Ritchie in his familiar home after Barbara died.  Then, her son Ryan took over Ritchie's care - right through last Saturday night when Ritchie slipped his mortal coil. 

I wonder if he and Barbara will meet up again.  I wonder how his children will adjust to the "new normal" without Lord Loquacious as paterfamilias.  I wonder what the next step will be for dear Ryan who will need to find work elsewhere.  

If there be a Heaven, I hope Mom is there. If there be sneakers there, I hope she puts them on to sneak up and surprise Ritchie with a restored voice.   May they enjoy gorgeous sunsets as viewed during their sunset years together.

The Grandie Got 2 B 9!

I know it's supposed to happen. It's just so much faster than I could've predicted. 

Plans to move north at some point began to percolate on the back burners of our minds the moment we met our granddaughter - on the day of her birth in San Francisco in 2009. 

It took her mama, our daughter, some time to be ready for us to move, so it was just over three and a half years ago that we transplanted ourselves. Our rootlets are deepening in the fertile soil by the beautiful Bay. Instead of arriving the day before her celebration, tired from the drive from Los Angeles, we're now already here and know where to go to get balloons, ice-cream, and last minute party items very close to home.

Generally, the celebrations of her birth have been fairly low-key. This ninth birthday / slumber party / pool party also was low-key. Home made pizza, (her dad), home made cake, (her mom) and clean-up and set-up done by all of us, including her dad's new wife. 

This time, our younger daughter "Auntie Sid" decided to forego the pool & slumber party portions of the weekend and just come up for the Sunday afternoon and evening family gathering at our (relatively) new (for us) home. It makes a lot of sense. If you're not a nine-year-old and in the pool, you're going to be ignored, for the most part, by the Birthday Girl.

We're so glad of our daughter's commitment to drive the four hours from San Luis Obispo to be a presence in her young niece's life, AND so we can all be together. There's so much joy in simply hanging out together.

Here's what I loved hearing at the dinner table Sunday after the topic of conversation turned to therapy: 

D: (the granddaughter): What's therapy? Why would someone want to go to a therapist?

AS: (Auntie Sid): A therapist is someone who can help us be with big feelings. You know the Leggo Movie where Sparkle Pony is always so nice but keeps stuffing all her feelings down deep until she just explodes?

D: Oh, yah... and the screen is just full of her exploded sparkly pieces - like confetti!

AS: That's right! A therapist can help us get some of those feelings out before they get so big that they hurt us or others and so they don't make us go crazy... or explode. 

D: Oh.

What's lovely to me about this conversation - apart from the content - is that at nine, the Grandie is at that lovely stage of life called latency during which she is mastering many skills - from bike and horseback riding to Pogo-Stick jumping to making friendship bracelets to cursive to dipping her toe into the adult conversation - just as much as she wants to. 

When the leftover chocolate cake, frosting and berries were finished, and the tissue paper recycled, D retired to the den to comb the mane and tail of one of her new birthday gifts from her parents - an eighteen-inch-tall black and white horse she'd named Eve. D thought Eve looked and felt much better without her saddle on. Too restrictive, she announced.

The long and busy weekend showed in her eyes and posture. She'd melted into the sofa. Farewell hugs and high-fives were shared and D and her mama were off to prepare for Monday back at school for the last week of the semester. 

She and I will have a good long summer to practice the above skills and perhaps learn new ones... before the hormones hit for the next stage of life.  For that stage, saddles and seat belts may be required.