These past weeks have been tough on me. I went through phases of pure inner rage, to anxiety, sleeplessness, worthlessness, cravings and intense fidgetness (?!).
I felt shushed and I thought I wasn't allowed to say what I wanted and needed to say. I was surrounded by a multitude of well-intentioned people who were adamant they knew what I needed, what I thought, what I felt and especially what I was doing wrong. When I asked for help and I felt abandoned and cast away. The next phase was being made to feel ungrateful for the "help" I got since it seemed I didn't take it into consideration.
The only thing I needed, the only thing that anyone needs, is to have someone asking you:
What can I do?
How can I help?
Being made aware of your pain and your struggles because, in the end, "we are all in the same boat" makes me feel that you are not listening to me and that my pain is not important to you. Being given suggestions and hints [mostly especially at the wrong time] makes people feel stupid like they haven't thought about it themselves. Worst of all was someone who felt bad himself - and made it very clear over the phone - because it felt like I wasn't taking in any of his suggestions. Or the person who decided to list all the times I "was wrong" and all the "bad choices" I made along the way, including going back to university. Or maybe all the ones who disappeared and thought "I let her calm down and then I'll give her a call".
What can I do?
How can I help?
This is all it takes.
And then shut the hell up. If you feel that this is more like a rant than a post, I am okay with that. The whole point of growing is to find the courage to say what we feel inside. This was it. And this is how healing begins, by recognising that what you thought was your tribe, it actually isn't and that we outgrow people. I am grateful because I was pushed to test my limits and this confirmed I could do it all by myself. They also gave me the freedom to listen to that voice within which always knows which way to go. There is a lot of research out there which recognises that we therapists have deep issues in finding others [non-therapists but friends and family] who really know how to listen, without having to go and pay a colleague... in the end, aren't we all going to therapy because we feel unheard? Unseen? Misunderstood? Therapists have the same problem on top of the frustration of knowing the tricks-of-the-trade and having no one taking them seriously [the tricks, I mean... well, no, also their profession].
Anyway, in the end, the Thesis is almost finished and my inner deadline is next Sunday. What a journey this has been! What I found comforting was the "hidden" academic tribe I discovered along the way: some old voices and others brand new. These women have supported me with their courage, words and stamina and resilience. Here I name just a few: Gloria Steinem, Olivia Laing, Sharon Blackie, Rebecca Solnit, Fran Lebowitz, Phyllis Curott... I went back to them over and over again. I read, re-read, and listened to their voices while driving, falling asleep or walking in my favourite park. I remember walking there between 2011 and the end of 2013, feeling lost and in tears, with Deepak Chopra's Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, Marianne Cantwell's Be a Free Range Human and Robert Ackerman's Perfect Daughters: Adult Daughters of Alcoholics in my ears. I think that getting lost in that park and those words have been the foundation of a growth I could not imagine and that after 10 years sees me here, waiting to hand in my thesis and off to a Ph.D. I think that only now, really, I understand how much I have been blessed, supported, nurtured and protected [and partly directed, when I allowed it!] by the divine. Only now do I realise how much all the external paraphernalia and images and tools and memorabilia mean absolutely nothing because it is all external, and partially all fake. "Recognising the divinity within" is something I craved and looked for in all shapes, forms and denominations, something I applied myself religiously and that I studied, meditated upon, prayed, chanted, divinated and prostrated for... while it has always been within. Just within. The Being instead of the Acting. Seeing the Self in the sacredness of the Rhythms and the crying for Nature and this Oneness of Connections.
Ask yourself:
What can I do?
How can I help?
Then, listen.
This is all it takes.