Tag: Artistic Courage

Many and Mighty and Loved

EMDR memoir reading

Stacks of my brand new EMDR memoir were on display in the front window of our local bookstore. Boxes of books had begun arriving from the printer, smelling faintly chemical, their bindings so tight they creaked when I opened them.

I got to sign the first two copies of Every Moment of a Fall to my San Francisco therapists, Connie Rubiano and Jan Cehn. We met to celebrate its release a few days before my first reading and book signing. We laughed ourselves silly, reminisced about the moments in therapy that stuck out for each of us, marveled at how far we’d come together, how much awareness of EMDR has grown since Jan and I did our sessions together. Anyone observing us would have seen nothing out of the ordinary, just three women having lunch, getting a little loud, talking with our hands.

It felt completely, conspicuously normal. I was a normal woman, like them, eating Chinese food on a Tuesday afternoon. Not a head case. Not a sad, self-loathing PTSD statistic. I was myself, easy and released from trauma. I was completely Carol, owning my name: song of joy. My fortune read, “No obstacles will stand in your way this coming week.”

All the flurry and excitement of the launch of my book—at last!—was thrilling, scary, goose-bump inducing. But maybe the best part was noticing, in the sunny window of that restaurant, how fine I felt. I was ready to share my story. Ready to look people in the eye, speak my truth and not feel judged or shamed.

In one of her columns for O Magazine, the awesome Martha Beck cites this life-changing zinger from spiritual teacher Byron Katie: “When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet.” Beck challenges her reader to try that concept on for size. “Imagine how you’d enter a public space,” she writes,  “if you knew without a doubt that everyone in it adored you. How would you move? How would you look at people? What would you say?”

That’s what I resolved to do. I would enter those bookstores, stride to each podium certain that everyone in the audience loved me, whether or not they knew it yet. And guess what? They actually do. They flood me with their love, listening so attentively to my story. Asking such thoughtful questions. Coming up to tell me that I read beautifully, that my words let them experience a piece of what I lived.

I guess sometimes you just gotta roll with it: you’re A-Ok. And surrounded by love.

That’s what I’d say if came face to face with the woman who emailed me recently to thank me for writing this blog and publishing my EMDR memoir. EMDR has helped her tremendously, it turns out. So has my story. She wrote:

Thank you for having the courage to tell your story! I hope great things from it for you and countless others. . . .

I recently latched onto the thought, which has become almost an obsession, to put MY story out there, as well. It is because of the silence that the problem has gotten this far!!! And I find anyone suspect who discourages us from putting it out there! There is a reason they want us silent. . . .

I don’t have your vast experience and education, and I’ll probably never write the book I’ve dreamed of writing to share my story with the world. But reading yours makes me know that it’s no small thing to have lived an entire lifetime without true love, from and for myself, and from others.

I want her to know that she is heard, and loved—by all kinds of people who might not have realized it yet. Or are just beginning to. I bet you’ve already begun to love her yourself, reading her heart-rending words.

She sent a follow-up email to tell me that she’d kept a printed copy of one of my blog posts with her at all times “to remind myself I was not alone.”

I wrote back to tell her how incredibly thankful I am that a piece of my story made her feel like she didn’t have to go it on her own. There are so many of us walking around with similar stories, I reminded her. Far too many. Not every one of us is going to write a memoir. But whenever and however we let those stories out into the light, we become part of that light ourselves—and part of one another as well.

We are many. When we find our voices, instead of keeping silent, we are mighty. We remind one another that we walk in the world worthy of love—normal, everyday, anywhere, just-fine love.

Embracing the Wild, Part 1

 

meeting-cheryl-strayed-pt1

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon, twenty years ago, my former partner and I drove four hours from Las Vegas, pulled into a parking lot, walked 50 feet to the canyon rim, took some pictures, got back in the car and drove away. Ditto for Monument Valley, Natural Bridges and all the rest of the national parks we cruised through on that trip.

By contrast, this August my husband and I stayed two nights in the Grand Canyon village. We slept with the windows and blinds open, got up at first light and piled on layers against the chill. We walked eastward a couple of miles along the rim to our trail head, then switch-backed our way down into the canyon another mile or so before climbing out in the heat. In the afternoon, we hit the rim trail again for more miles of incredible vistas to the west. We watched the sun and a trio of chuckling ravens sink toward the unseen river, flowing miles below.

In Monument Valley, we protected ourselves as best we could against the midday heat and hiked the Wildcat Trail, the only way into the park on foot. Every scrubby pinon sent me ducking for a patch of shade. It was grueling and electrifying. We saw nothing of the throng of visitors cruising the park road. No cars, no people, no sound. Just the silent company of giant stone structures.

From there, we drove to Telluride, Colorado for Labor Day weekend. I’d never been before. It’s a little alarming that humans live in such a gorgeous place, surrounded by peaks so high you have to look straight up to see stars. At 9,000 feet, it was a struggle to climb one flight of stairs without panting like a fish. We rode the gondola to the mountain village over and over again and gaped.

Our visit coincided with the annual film festival, and we were lucky enough to nab the last two seats to a free screening of Ethan Hawke’s new documentary, Seymour: An Introduction. Just before the lights went down, Cheryl Strayed and her husband Brian Lindstrom slipped in to occupy two chairs hastily set up on the side of the tiny auditorium. I knew they were at the festival for the North American premiere of Wild, the film based on Strayed’s memoir. I’d fantasized about running into her in a coffee line. Now she was sitting ten feet away.

Seymour is a profile of the 87-year-old concert pianist and master teacher Seymour Bernstein. The film’s big message is about cultivating artistic courage. I blubbered through most of it, but the waterworks really got going when Bernstein talked about his father’s dismissal of his talent and the way he dealt with it: young Seymour would picture himself playing piano inside a protective cage where his father’s criticisms and humiliations couldn’t reach him. Hawke confessed to Bernstein that he suffered crippling stage fright, and Bernstein shared that he had worked hard to overcome the same fear through intensive preparation. If six hours of piano practice a day were not enough to feel mastery of a piece, Bernstein doubled that to twelve hours.

As the final credits were rolling, I realized I had something urgent to say to Cheryl Strayed. I needed to thank her for the ballsy honesty of her work, and for emboldening readers like me to tell our stories without prettifying them or skipping the hard bits. To master our fear of ridicule and let fly with the truth.

She was chatting with the people next to her. I stood waiting my turn. When she said hello, I could see she was a little teary-eyed, too. I introduced myself and then sort of blacked out. I remember her saying that Bernstein was talking as much about writing as music or acting. Talking directly to us writers. I remember thanking her for what her work has taught me about courage. She asked if she could give me a hug!

And our road trip was only half finished.

We rolled out of Colorado into the canyonlands of southern Utah, hiking our way through gorgeous, otherworldy formations, some of which I’d driven past years before. But hugging the edge of a sandstone cliff, hunting for petroglyphs, bashing my shins on wet river rocks—this time it was all about participating instead of watching. Wading in instead of hanging back.

As Strayed writes in her memoir: “It was my life—like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.”

The first time I traveled this route, I thought my life was far from sacred. I believed that I didn’t deserve to be alive at all. That I should have died in the plane crash instead of Nancy, the way Dad wished I had. It was good enough for someone like me to sit and watch stuff roll past the window—that was as much “living” as I’d earned.

This summer’s trip was a do-over, a reminder of how very different I am today from the woman who, twenty years ago, sat dejected and passive in the face of all that mysterious wild. It drove home how totally transformed my life has been by the hard work I’ve done to face my trauma. Slowly but surely, I’ve found the courage to reclaim my voice. To bring myself back alive. And I found a companion for the rest of the trip who challenges me to stay present for whatever turns up. Someone who always seems to find the wildest detour. Who loves life enough to get out of the car, and who loves me enough to hike for the view.