The Skeksies and the Mystics Unite

The Skeksies and the Mystics Unite  12/4/09

I’ve been reading Alan Cohen’s book I Had it All the Time: When Self-improvement Gives Way to Ecstasy. It’s hard to nutshell his book but here goes: He helps us see that our attitudes can keep us from heaven on earth and that gratitude is the key to happiness. His discussion of the movie Dark Crystal was particularly meaningful for me. A planet is dying because the two peoples who inhabit it can’t come together. One group, the strong and ruthless Skeksies, is obsessed with their warrior side. The Mystics group focuses on inner knowledge or “wisdom” but somehow “lacks motivation.” Because each side isolates itself from the other, the planet is dying. Too much energy is going into protection and fear.

In much the same way, I, as an infant surgery survivor, divided myself into two camps–the one who had recovered from surgery and the one who was deathly ill. The one who was healed and the one who was broken. Unconsciously, I walled off the sick one from the healthy one. We lived in two separate spheres, each protected from the other. In my life, this schism played out as follows: model grade school student/gang leader; high school twirler/shoplifter; Ivy League student/patient on psych ward; and so on. At age twenty-six, with the help of a therapist, I began to integrate these two. The bad baby and the good baby merged. 

By trying to separate myself from my operation (the old putting it behind you routine), I made myself weaker. Identifying only with my healthy self resulted in emotional, spiritual and intellectual wounds going untended. Identifying only with the fact that I was sick early on ignored my strength and resilience in coping with a difficult situation. 

Cohen writes, what is wrong with you may be what is right with you. I couldn’t agree more. The whole me–the Skeksies together with the Mystics–is what is right with me. By integrating both sides, I save myself. Combining the one who healed with the one who needed healing, I am whole, potent;  I am human. I have strengths and flaws that teach me how to grow. In a way, two lost sisters inside me have found each other. In the embrace of their reunion, this new self becomes.

After the Surgery–Two Photos

Here I am in August, 1952 at seven-weeks-old, eyes two dots, black as coal. Mouth hanging open as if to say, “Wha’ happened?” I’m sure my incision was still healing and my system resetting itself. I wonder how much I weighed. At three-weeks-old, at the time of the operation, I weighed four pounds. Four weeks later, as shown in the photo, was I at least caught up to my initial birth weight, six pounds seven ounces? When I see this photo, I see a haunted baby. My mother told me that after the surgery, I didn’t smile until I was three months old. “Why not?” I asked her. “Nothing to smile about” was her simple answer.

Here I am five months after the surgery in December, 1952, bouncing up and down.
When a dear friend of mine saw this photo, she called me a “sunbaby.” I’m certainly starting to come alive, yes?

Harmonizing with Hemi-Sync

Just got back from Mount Shasta with my partner, where I took an Excursion Workshop with a group of twelve others. How to explain this work without  getting bogged down in detail?  I have been meditating for many years and recently hit a plateau. Wanting to deepen my daily experience, I signed up for this workshop given by Kathryn Streletzky, a fantastic facilitator with the Monroe Institute. Let me put it this way: We spent a lot of time lying on blow-up mattresses and listening to Hemi-sync on our Ipods!  Hemi-sync are tones introduced into each ear that result in the right and left hemispheres harmonizing or achieving greater unity or synchronicity. After listening to one CD titled Inner Journey at the Middle Falls of the McCloud River, I gained insight into something that happened to me in the 1970’s.

The years 1974-1980 were very difficult for me. I was struggling to understand my emotional self, but my clarity was blurred by an addiction to food and to cigarettes. During these years, I quit smoking several times and tried to get my eating under control by attending food addiction groups and by writing about my cravings. I was unhappy with my job, and friendships seemed to come and go–I couldn’t keep anyone in my life for very long.

At one point, I became quite depressed and left a note for my roommate that I was going to end my life. I took the Bart and then a bus to the Pacific Ocean near the Cliff House in San Francisco. By that time, it was late in the evening, so I settled into the roots of a cypress tree for the night, figuring that I would take care of business in the morning. When I awoke, however, morning mist suffused the sky with light and hope. I felt refreshed and ready to return to my apartment in Berkeley. What had happened?  Without realizing it, I had accomplished two things:  one, I had taken a mini-vacation, just what my stress-ridden self needed; and two, the wave-crashing had likely harmonized my brain, not the same way Hemi-sync does, but its own way.

At the beginning of each recording that we listened to at the workshop in Mount Shasta,  the sound of ocean waves soothed us.  The Hemi-sync tones followed the ocean waves, which allow the brain to reach a new level of concentration. Consciousness expanded, inviting new levels of awareness. As I sat experiencing the majestic Middle Falls while listening to Hemi-Sync, I remembered those earlier years of struggle and wondered if the ocean waves that night near the Cliff House achieved a type of hemispheric synchronization–enough so that I felt more focussed and able to take on the difficulties of my chaotic life once again. 

Associating ocean waves with  family vacations on Sandy Hook at the New Jersey Shore also helped.  As I lay in my bed each night as a little girl, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashed, a deep boom sounding when the wave hit the rocks. This childhood time was simpler and happier than the tumultuous days of my twenties. I’m sure this pleasant association played a part in my returning to Berkeley that day. 

I’m looking forward to all the insights that Hemi-Sync is going to bring my way and to sharing my discoveries with you.  Tomorrow morning for my early meditation,
I’ll be listening to CD The “SO” Chord with Hemi-Sync. Will keep you posted.

p.s. Check out the newly posted excerpt from Chapter Five of  The Autobiography of a Sea Creature on My Memoir Pages.

Visiting Humanities 13A

Today I had the privilege of delivering a short talk about my memoir manuscript, The Autobiography of a Sea Creature, to Professor Dylan Eret’s Humanities 13A: Myth, Symbols and Folklore class at the College of Alameda in Alameda, California. As homework, the class had read my memoir manuscript excerpts on this blog and posted some comments on their Humanities blog, which I read before our appointed time together. In the classroom, I spoke about my experience of writing the story of my early infant trauma in book form and of sharing my story verbally with others over the past few years. One thing the class made me realize is that my verbal narrative has become much more detailed and developed. I’m becoming more and more comfortable telling my story to others.

Speaking to the class was fun and a bit scary as some of the students in the class are also my students. I decided though before I made the commitment to visit the class that I am no longer interested in hiding my experience and, in fact, feel passionate about sharing the information with as many people as possible. I really enjoyed the questions the students asked and the attentive listening that I experienced as I told my story. Thank you Prof. Eret and thank you College of Alameda students.

p.s. I just finished updating My Memoir page, so please take a look.

A small price

Here’s the latest–a quick note–on my ongoing journey in accepting, embracing, cherishing, and celebrating this female body I was given.

Today, standing in my shower and leaning over so the hot water could blast onto my back, I noticed my scar. It was scrunched into the length of an inch instead of three. A small price to pay, I heard myself say. I felt gratitude and appreciation, emotions that I rarely feel when I notice my scar. I looked down at myself. There was my adult woman’s body in all its beauty–the color of a ripe cantaloupe, tapering into long legs and strong feet to hold me up.

Re-integration

Here is another drawing I made in the ‘70’s, trying to work through the trauma I experienced from my surgery in infancy. This picture depicts the aftermath of the explosion of my skin. I am scattered into pieces. Below, a red (wounded) fetus remains “unborn”– a lump, inert and undelivered, left to languish. Another little yellow (with fear?) fetus lies to the left; above are the insides of a stomach; and to the upper left, the banished spiral of my brain.  I chose this picture because recently, I’ve been focusing on re-integrating parts of myself in more conscious ways.

Each morning as I sit quietly, breathing deeply into meditation, I face great fear (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts). My body feels frozen into blocks of ice and I must unfreeze each part. First I allow myself to feel the generalized fear that I might explode, a terror that is always there just below the surface of my skin. Reassuring myself that I am safe, I am then able to feel the tightness of my chest, my shoulders, my belly, my thighs and my knees. I barely sense my feet on the floor.

Through somatic bodywork, a practice that I learned through the Middendorf Institute of Breathexperience in Berkeley, I begin to allow breath into the at-risk areas. As I focus on each blocked part, I note the absence of breath, which acts as an invitation for breath involvement. I do not will the breath, nor do I simply breathe autonomically, i.e. unconsciously, as we all do. I allow my body to be moved by the breath and ultimately, my breath breathes me. Rather than an enemy held at bay at all costs, breath becomes a trusted friend, helping me thaw. In this process, as I feel my belly gently rise and then fall, I feel great relief. Allowing breath into my knees and then my feet brings me into powerful contact with the earth. I am ready for the next level of inner awareness. For me, breathwork is the first step in meditation.

Here is the image that my meditation brought me yesterday: a dangerous train, engine always on, straining to break free from the station. An indicator light inside the car glares red.  This train is all but leaping from the tracks, seconds away from running anybody and everybody down. In the meditation, someone urges, “Turn it off!” I hear myself respond: “I can’t. If I do, then I won’t be ready…………….to escape.”  

These days, I am turning off the train’s engine every morning, letting it know that not only is it life-saving to rest but pleasurable. Rest precedes rejuvenation. Re-integration work is about making peace with my body—integrating the fragments and becoming whole. Joy is one of the welcome returns of this practice.

Too Scared to Cry

by Dr. Lenore Terr is this amazing book about childhood trauma. I heard about it at the Writing the Medical Experience Workshop summer 2008 at Sarah Lawrence College. It’s the story of these school children from Chowchilla, California who were kidnapped and then forced to climb down into the hull of a bus buried in a rock quarry. The kidnappers then covered the escape hatch with soil and debris. The circumstances are entirely bazarre. Dr. Terr was called in five months after the incident to work with the children, all of whom escaped. At first, it was thought that the children were ok and that to bring in psychologists would just further traumatize the children. But I’m learning (I’m only on page 40) that the kids were presenting symptoms of distress, just not the ones that were expected.

Here’s a quote that thrilled me because it connected my experience directly with what I was reading. Dr. Ter was giving some of the history of the research into childhood trauma: “David Levy, a gifted child psychiatrist who practiced in midtown Manhattan, observed in 1945 that youngsters fared after surgery similarly to American soldiers who had been evacuated because of ‘trauma’ from the European battlefields. The soldiers had experienced nightmares–so did the kids. The soldiers acted fearful–the youngsters did, too. Levy’s report of the traumatic responses in children who had undergone surgery led to an overdue humanism at the hospital” (40). I can’t wait to read about his research. I had a recurring nightmare in my early years from which I would awaken sweating and shaken emotionally. A low brick wall would appear in my dream. It was clear that this wall was a foundation holding up a house. The bricks were really large and more like cinderblocks. Suddenly, a brick shifted and dislodged, casting lots of dust and particles into the air. I awoke as the brick teetered and about to fall. Upon waking, the visual image of a dark hole in the wall stayed with me.

I’m beginning to realize that I’ve spend much of my life tense, scared and isolated and that my body has been hyper-tensed for decades. Hyper-vigilance is another way to describe it. I’ve been in freeze mode. Instead of fight or flight, I froze. Dr. Peter Levine talks about this phenomenon in his book Waking the Tiger. He says the choice is never simply between fight or flight; freezing is a third option. His book explains his theory beautifully, including a discussion of his observations of animal behavior, which helped him create his theory. 

Dr. Ter’s book Too Scared to Cry is also an important work for those who want to not only learn more about trauma in general but for those who might want to further understand their own. I’ll keep you posted as I read on.

healing image

Here is one of the first pictures I drew back in 1977 in an attempt to address my feeling inside of constriction. Though I could barely talk about the details of my operation, I could draw pictures. This image helped me begin to understand how I felt. Wow, look how out of balance I am!  Only one foot on the ground and this foot is turned in. And my poor flat head with a space inside. 

Looking at this image brings me sadness and joy, sadness that I felt so bound and joy that I got this image into representation, out of myself. Over the years, I’ve been able to show this image to others. It explains so much that words cannot really equal.

my first blog poem

My partner said to me, why don’t you post a poem? ( I’ve been writing poetry for over thirty years!) “I don’t write poems about pyloric stenosis,” I shot back. “I started writing prose because my poems couldn’t contain all I wanted to say.” The glint in her eye told me the challenge was on.

The next morning, there it was: a short poem about my ongoing healing from pyloric stenosis. And here it is:

A scar at the center of being
sent me running from self

hiding under big shirts
and cinching belts tight.

Flight ruled
though return beckoned–
a reunion of body and spirit.

Age 50 the party began.
Clothes fit now,
belts loose.

My center is a sun
and the stitch-scar
rays of light.

In my middle, a button
activating power.
Press and current flows

turned on to life!

© 2009, Wendy Patrice Williams, All rights reserved

On Fire

The other day, as I was warming tortillas in the countertop convection oven, something quick that I could eat with tahini while I worked on my computer, I wondered if there was any connection between my propensity as an adult to underfeed myself, a sort of resistance to eating, and the fact that I was starving before my ps surgery. As I sat there thinking about this, the word “starving” became real and not just a word I was repeating for the umpteenth time. Wow, I was starving! How many times had I described the fact that as a baby, my food was going undigested and I was projectile vomiting everything Mom put in my mouth. Plenty!! I had not though allowed myself to really imagine what that experience may have been like.

What about that 3-week period between birth and surgery? What was my day-to-day life like in that window of time? Most of the time, when discussing my childhood, the tale of my surgery takes over. Years ago, I found my baby book and opened it with excitement only to find the pages blank! First word, first smile, record of weight gain, record of food introduced undocumented. I was unknown, details withheld. No wonder I studied science initially; I wanted answers for blank spaces. (As if science, I came to discover, had all the answers!)

Then I smelled the burning tortillas, not just burning but flaming! By the time I wrestled the oven out the door and onto the concrete driveway where it could cool, the tortillas were black. Maybe that’s what my experience was like in those early days–a belly on fire. I’ve seen pictures in a medical text of the peristaltic waves (the muscular movement the alimentary canal makes in order to move material along) of a ps baby pre-surgery. The waves are visible because the baby had lost so much weight and the movement can be intense since the material is blocked.

Life must have been awful, especially the last few days before surgery. So what is the connection, if any, between my reluctance or slight aversion to nourishing myself with food and my early experience? My mother told me that once I started eating again, I was a good eater and ate everything! This behavior is easier to understand, given that there was such a shortage early on. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve gone back and forth undereating and overeating until I went into therapy in my late twenties. Well, there it is. Early on, I’m starving (there’s that word again) and then I’m eating everything. The pattern was established in my first two months of life–a tug-of-war back and forth of nothing versus everything.

There’s another factor to consider–nursing abruptly stopped when I was taken to the hospital. After I came home, my mother fed me with a bottle. This is where the deepy deep stuff comes in– the break in intimacy with my mother. This subject is one of the main themes of my memoir manuscript, The Autobiography of a Sea Creature. A few excerpts are posted under My Memoir pages on this blog. More are forthcoming. For now, let me just say that I’m glad I got the oven outside before the house caught on fire!