I’m allowing my inner nineteen-year-old to share her experience. She has been frozen in time. I could have stopped these posts a few weeks ago. In the midst of the pandemic of COVID-19 virus circumnavigating the globe I can hear myself say, ‘Don’t we have enough to deal with right now?’ ‘Do we really need just another story that contains a difficult challenge?’ Yet I have been guided to stop thinking that I know what is supposed to be happening as I lean in to listen to the deeper, ‘what next? what now? what matters? and the most important, ‘what would love do now?’
Thank you for being a reader.
I trust that there is enough universal quality to what happens in this young girl/woman’s life to make her tale transferable. Surely she can remind us of other times/other places/other circumstances that can connect us and support us in seeing that we need to notice. I have a need to qualify my use of the word need. I do not know what anyone else needs. And yet I say:
We need to pay attention.
We need to be vulnerable with one another and with our own experience. I pushed this ‘young girl’ part away for decades. I thought I knew what this young girl had gone through. I thought I knew what she needed.
However, her appearance following my traumatic injury showed me that I was simply projecting my current event on top of what she had gone through. I continuously buried her. I kept disappearing her. She was too much for me. Turns out it required fifty years for me to realize that I didn’t have a clue what she went through. I still don’t have a clue for her. Now I’m willing to see … I’m willing to see her differently. It means the world that you are a witness.
The question is not what you look at,
but what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
Mr. V pulls the car quietly into the driveway. I hold myself together so as not to break into pieces. I’m a slow-motion crash-in-process. He reaches gently up the porch stair taking the overnight bag from my hand.
He is so kind. He guides me down as though I’m a prom queen and settles me into the backseat. Wet clothes and a single tear; petrified.
I’m entering a long dark tunnel.
I can’t see what’s ahead.
Others move me.
Across the town, into a wheelchair, down a hospital corridor, onto a gurney.
The last thing I see is the face of my friend. She smiles gently and squeezes my hand. She tells me she will be waiting. I’m pushed through a doorway into the unknown. My face is wet.
I don’t remember.
Her silhouette looms beside the bed. She waits. I slowly lift my head as she hands me a paper cup. I sip the warm water. She says, “It’s a boy.” She smiles softly at the diamonds in my eyes. This is the celebration.
Lying on my back I close out the glaring lights. I need to keep the ceiling from swirling. I need to stop the floor from twisting.
I don’t remember.
I lean back on the pillows. Sometime later I look through the open door.
Down the hall
I see mom.
I see the drummer.
I see my friend.
They gaze through the glass.
They are looking at what rippled under my skin.
They see what I am forbidden to acknowledge.
I watch.
Since coming to the young widow’s bungalow I’ve been talking to the soon-to-arrive.
I make short cryptic records.
Look within ebb tide river mind know pain kindle love search deep find yourself
Speak a mind Know a heart
Play a part On the stage Of life’s
uncertainties
Always looking Never to see
The reality
of the Mystery
A nine-month life has come Then … gone
Tracks have been erased.
Within the rivers of my mind The memory is laced.
I lie alone.
I listen to the conversation floating into my room from the corridor. Robert Kennedy’s funeral train is traveling from New York to Virginia. It’s Saturday. Mourners line the tracks by the thousands. He’ll be buried tonight in Arlington National Cemetary. He was assassinated several days ago.
I remember.
In the morning the door swings open. The squeaking shoes of the smiling nurse mark her arrival as she walks toward my bed. Odd. She’s carrying something and it’s not a breakfast tray. She’s making direct eye contact, beaming wide and twinkly. She says something as I slide up bracing myself against the headboard while she purposely places the blanket into my instinctively raised arms. She adjusts my hands. Left cradles the tiny head. The right hand supports the length of the blanket. She doesn’t notice that she slides the envelope holding the adoption paperwork off to one side as she places a bottle on the bed stand.
She smiles at us.
Us
She leaves.
Turned inside out; an infant visible … sleeping in my arms.
I immediately rest the bundle onto the sheets nestled against my tender belly. I lean to the right, reaching to pick up envelope and ballpoint pen.
Blurry vision. Eyes weepy.
Move pen. Move pen.
Don’t cry. Make lines. Capture this.
This
What do I call this? A mistake? A miracle?
I quickly move the pen and secure the line. My souvenir.
Setting the portrait aside, I gaze at the new arrival. I raise his crown to my long inhale. I am breathing him back inside. For safekeeping.
The door swings open.
The nurse, officious and curt, swoops in quickly for the retrieval. She mutters something about mistake and bonding time as she pries the sleeping infant out of my arms, a wrenching.
Gone
My body.
What is happening? What? I can feel something rising. Out of the depths of my body comes the full force of the silent scream.
I first heard it when I lay in utero listening to mom’s muffled worried conversation about the hardship coming with my birth. I knew in advance:
I.
am.
a.
burden.
The long-locked-away wail escapes. No. Please.
Stop! Don’t! Don’t make a sound. Stop! Don’t make a scene. Stop!
Don’t
Don’t
Don’t
The keening rises. The sound escapes out of my room and into the hallway.
My bellows land in the ears of everyone at the nurse’s station. A nurse comes running. A Whitecoat follows. I receive his command, “Turn! Turn onto your side!” He stabs my right hip.
thank you for allowing us to be a witness to the opening of your buried treasures .
your words and feelings are painting an exquiste potrait
of your 18 year old self.
Her story has touched parts of my own unwitnessed self
who in time may come out to show me more of my
own repressed pain. the lost child part of me that aches to be achknowldged
and understood by my own inner authority figures too lon denied.
Thank you again for the gifts unfolfing fo r mamy of us thanks to you and that 18 year old
Thank you so much Renie ~ It is in reading your words that the ability to keep scribing is made possible. I have a concern that she will share her story from heart and soul with no ear to hear, no one to witness.
Each comment and reflection supports a saving from loss and harm that I believe extends out into the world in ways that heal us all … it also amazes me that her story is surfacing at this time of collective ‘sheltering-in-place’.
I appreciate so much your share that “Her story has touched parts of my own unwitnessed self
who in time may come out to show me more of my
own repressed pain. the lost child part of me that aches to be acknowledged
and understood”
Iona it is a gift to me being able to be a witness for you and your 18 year old self and I am so grateful for your sharing your journey with her . She and you have touched my heart with profound compassion . My belief is what you are doing is evoking compassion in a world that is desperate need of it. There is a tract i would love you to hear if you have not heard it that soothes my soul through some of my own challenges and would love to share with the both of you . It is called The Great Bell Chant (The End Of Suffering) https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=f1zwaezmtjw
Read by Thich Nath Hanh, chanted by brother Phap Niem.
The creators of this audio track were Gary Malkin, the composer/arranger, producer, and collaborator Michael Stillwater. The work came from a CD/book called Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying.
Thank you and Your 18 year old wishing you many blessings and healing with masterful ease.
Thank you Renie ~ I am hearing the Great Bell Chant for the first time, in the background as I type this to you. It’s profound.
I know that I will be listening to it many times. Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my teachers helping me to allow blossoms, lotus blossoms, to rise from the muck and the mire that life can bring.
This chant also resonates, of course, with my twelve years in ‘Tibetan Buddha School’.
I have a tattoo on my left (feminine-yin) arm that is in Tibetan and keeps my vow close for always. It reads, in symbols, ‘I vow to return to the earth, as many times as there are atoms of the earth, to assist in the release from suffering and the causes of suffering of all living beings. OM AH HUNG.’
I so appreciate this gift that you send, the blessings and the healing with masterful ease, may this be true for all living beings.
So sad for that young girl that was.
So happy for this strong, wise, brave, empowered woman that is.
So beautiful that you made – and kept – that sketch.
I know that this terrible trauma is part of what forged this wonderful person who radiates light into the world so that others can bask in your illumination. That doesn’t make it right…Perhaps it simply makes it part of the dark/light duality that we all must live as humans?
Thank you, Cherry.
Yes. Her story is a heartbreak. I am so happy that she feels safe enough to share it. Here. Now.
The infant sketch amazes my eye. I cannot imagine having the wherewithal to take that action and to make that archive in that brief moment.
It seems to be well documented that trauma can be a door and as you point out a part of the dark/light duality.
As Joseph Campbell’s work with myth and story helps us learn over and over again…the journey.
Yes! I meant to comment on that incredible, beautiful sketch when I first read this segment of your story, Donna! Have you shown that to your son?? I would think it would make his heart melt! I hope you see more clearly every single day how remarkable you are in oh-so-many ways!!!
Hello, Marianne ~
Thank you for being here!
Thank you for taking a stand as a witness for this nineteen-year-old younger self.
As she writes of her experience she has no knowledge of what will be. She is living only what is.
There are so many ways in which I respect this younger part for feeling safe enough to come forward at this most synchronistic time. Hopefully, we can imagine a bit more clearly what it must be like for her. She is taken away from everything she has ever known. And everything is taken away from her.
You have brought your young self to a group of women who would love to mother her with our wisdom at this stage. Finally, may we be able to nurture ourselves in a way that might have mitigated the anguish we felt at being less than. I too have pushed her down and down. So many unspoken stories with so much buried pain.
Thank you, Lynn ~ Your comment cuts through to the depth of the power of sharing the story. Not being a victim of the circumstance but a teller of the tale for just the point that you make so beautifully: “may we be able to nurture ourselves in a way that might have mitigated the anguish we felt at being less than.” And the additional clarity and wisdom that you state in: “So many unspoken stories with so much buried pain.”
That truth will remain hidden and will follow us to our grave until and unless we come to the place where we can listen and hear … and HEAR … what was gained.
Thank you for seeing this young girl/woman. Thank you, and all readers, who recognize her. Thank you.
Beautiful. That you can retrieve these memories and share them when you have buried your younger self for so long is a miracle. You are weaving what you thought was dross into a powerful, golden narrative. How delightful that you have settled into frame of mind that allows you to take your time and tell a little bit at time, guided by the need of your younger self to be UNDERSTOOD and VALUED. It’s worth it. I can relate to the experience of not wanting to look too closely at my younger self because some of my experiences were so distasteful. I long for wisdom and beauty. In contrast, my past seems littered with unsightly, unfortunate misadventures, for which I, in my mind, am to blame. Your story makes me consider how I judge myself to my own disadvantage, discarding my story as sub par at best, trash at worst. What a tale. What a journey to tell it.
Thank you, Donna, for all that you bring and especially for: “Your story makes me consider how I judge myself to my disadvantage, discarding my story as sub-par at best, trash at worst.”
This kind of awareness requires courage. Stating this means that it can never be ‘unheard’. Thank you. No part of you is sub-par and no part of your story is trash. You remind me of Muriel Rukeyser: ‘The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.’, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’
Thank you for sending me off to Wikipedia to locate her words about story. I didn’t recall this part at all: ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’
We are at a crossroads. Each of us in our way has the opportunity and perhaps even the obligation to listen to the disenfranchised parts of ourselves.
We come complete. Like a seed, we carry everything we need to blossom.
My opportunity to wake up presented itself last year with the ‘failure in my bones’, the shattering of my shoulder. Suddenly I was unable to ‘make myself comfortable’ with any number of distractions; so many worthy causes, so many important things to take care of.
All of a sudden everything went quiet.
I couldn’t move.
I was under orders to stay still.
It was extended.
It went beyond any long-term sitting meditation practice.
And there was the pain. Pain that was indescribable as my body mustered all of its strength to put me back together again, despite the surgeon telling me that this was a “Humpty-Dumpty fall’ … in other words … don’t expect to be put back together again. He set the bar for my recovery. He told me what I could expect. Inside of me, there was a rising up. This voice whispered, “He doesn’t know me.” I began to listen to that part. That part has led me to these posts.
OMG! my heart breaks for you, for what you went through at that early age……….as you couldn’t stop that wail, I cannot stop my tears. So very, very sad………….all your emotions, your love, your depth, with nowhere to go under the circumstances and the decisions made by the “not-you’s”. My respect for you just grows and grows, Donna! I am so glad you are writing this story and even more glad that we get to hear it. …..I believe we all are traveling that road with you and growing as we go……
Thank you, Marianne. Thank you for your feelings shared here. When she described her wail, her silent scream awareness, I wept too. Truly sad.
I now have no choice. I now have to set other things aside and make space for her. I have to listen and write down what she brings.
Being inadequately educated, made to feel different and less-than is a form of violence. Having no voice is a kind of death. Being invisible is a heartbreaker.
My eyes well with each of her entries. I sometimes cry (am I feeling empathy or embarrassment?) after publishing a post and remind myself that this is ‘not about me’. This a real-life story that has only been told, by the adult me, in fragments. I am learning that I, the adult, have no real-time recollection of what this young girl-woman lived. I have to acknowledge that she was buried alive.
My heart is so grateful to you for witnessing her story and for everyone who is here as a reader.
Dear Karen … I appreciate your being a reader so much.
I cannot even imagine either.
My heart reaches for her thawing nature.
She has been frozen in space and catatonic in her suspended state.
Now she has a safe space to tell what happened.
I wish her so much well.
You being here witnessing her path and reaching out a hand … gives her permission to breathe a bit more deeply into her experience.
She is no longer invisible.
She is no longer a ghost.
thank you for allowing us to be a witness to the opening of your buried treasures .
your words and feelings are painting an exquiste potrait
of your 18 year old self.
Her story has touched parts of my own unwitnessed self
who in time may come out to show me more of my
own repressed pain. the lost child part of me that aches to be achknowldged
and understood by my own inner authority figures too lon denied.
Thank you again for the gifts unfolfing fo r mamy of us thanks to you and that 18 year old
Thank you so much Renie ~ It is in reading your words that the ability to keep scribing is made possible. I have a concern that she will share her story from heart and soul with no ear to hear, no one to witness.
Each comment and reflection supports a saving from loss and harm that I believe extends out into the world in ways that heal us all … it also amazes me that her story is surfacing at this time of collective ‘sheltering-in-place’.
I appreciate so much your share that “Her story has touched parts of my own unwitnessed self
who in time may come out to show me more of my
own repressed pain. the lost child part of me that aches to be acknowledged
and understood”
AH HO!!
Iona it is a gift to me being able to be a witness for you and your 18 year old self and I am so grateful for your sharing your journey with her . She and you have touched my heart with profound compassion . My belief is what you are doing is evoking compassion in a world that is desperate need of it. There is a tract i would love you to hear if you have not heard it that soothes my soul through some of my own challenges and would love to share with the both of you . It is called The Great Bell Chant (The End Of Suffering) https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=f1zwaezmtjw
Read by Thich Nath Hanh, chanted by brother Phap Niem.
The creators of this audio track were Gary Malkin, the composer/arranger, producer, and collaborator Michael Stillwater. The work came from a CD/book called Graceful Passages: A Companion for Living and Dying.
Thank you and Your 18 year old wishing you many blessings and healing with masterful ease.
Thank you Renie ~ I am hearing the Great Bell Chant for the first time, in the background as I type this to you. It’s profound.
I know that I will be listening to it many times. Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my teachers helping me to allow blossoms, lotus blossoms, to rise from the muck and the mire that life can bring.
This chant also resonates, of course, with my twelve years in ‘Tibetan Buddha School’.
I have a tattoo on my left (feminine-yin) arm that is in Tibetan and keeps my vow close for always. It reads, in symbols,
‘I vow to return to the earth, as many times as there are atoms of the earth, to assist in the release from suffering and the causes of suffering of all living beings. OM AH HUNG.’
I so appreciate this gift that you send, the blessings and the healing with masterful ease, may this be true for all living beings.
So sad for that young girl that was.
So happy for this strong, wise, brave, empowered woman that is.
So beautiful that you made – and kept – that sketch.
I know that this terrible trauma is part of what forged this wonderful person who radiates light into the world so that others can bask in your illumination. That doesn’t make it right…Perhaps it simply makes it part of the dark/light duality that we all must live as humans?
Thank you, Cherry.
Yes. Her story is a heartbreak. I am so happy that she feels safe enough to share it. Here. Now.
The infant sketch amazes my eye. I cannot imagine having the wherewithal to take that action and to make that archive in that brief moment.
It seems to be well documented that trauma can be a door and as you point out a part of the dark/light duality.
As Joseph Campbell’s work with myth and story helps us learn over and over again…the journey.
Yes! I meant to comment on that incredible, beautiful sketch when I first read this segment of your story, Donna! Have you shown that to your son?? I would think it would make his heart melt! I hope you see more clearly every single day how remarkable you are in oh-so-many ways!!!
Hello, Marianne ~
Thank you for being here!
Thank you for taking a stand as a witness for this nineteen-year-old younger self.
As she writes of her experience she has no knowledge of what will be. She is living only what is.
There are so many ways in which I respect this younger part for feeling safe enough to come forward at this most synchronistic time. Hopefully, we can imagine a bit more clearly what it must be like for her. She is taken away from everything she has ever known. And everything is taken away from her.
You have brought your young self to a group of women who would love to mother her with our wisdom at this stage. Finally, may we be able to nurture ourselves in a way that might have mitigated the anguish we felt at being less than. I too have pushed her down and down. So many unspoken stories with so much buried pain.
Thank you, Lynn ~ Your comment cuts through to the depth of the power of sharing the story. Not being a victim of the circumstance but a teller of the tale for just the point that you make so beautifully: “may we be able to nurture ourselves in a way that might have mitigated the anguish we felt at being less than.” And the additional clarity and wisdom that you state in: “So many unspoken stories with so much buried pain.”
That truth will remain hidden and will follow us to our grave until and unless we come to the place where we can listen and hear … and HEAR … what was gained.
Thank you for seeing this young girl/woman. Thank you, and all readers, who recognize her. Thank you.
Beautiful. That you can retrieve these memories and share them when you have buried your younger self for so long is a miracle. You are weaving what you thought was dross into a powerful, golden narrative. How delightful that you have settled into frame of mind that allows you to take your time and tell a little bit at time, guided by the need of your younger self to be UNDERSTOOD and VALUED. It’s worth it. I can relate to the experience of not wanting to look too closely at my younger self because some of my experiences were so distasteful. I long for wisdom and beauty. In contrast, my past seems littered with unsightly, unfortunate misadventures, for which I, in my mind, am to blame. Your story makes me consider how I judge myself to my own disadvantage, discarding my story as sub par at best, trash at worst. What a tale. What a journey to tell it.
Thank you, Donna, for all that you bring and especially for: “Your story makes me consider how I judge myself to my disadvantage, discarding my story as sub-par at best, trash at worst.”
This kind of awareness requires courage. Stating this means that it can never be ‘unheard’. Thank you. No part of you is sub-par and no part of your story is trash. You remind me of Muriel Rukeyser: ‘The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.’, ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’
Thank you for sending me off to Wikipedia to locate her words about story. I didn’t recall this part at all: ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’
We are at a crossroads. Each of us in our way has the opportunity and perhaps even the obligation to listen to the disenfranchised parts of ourselves.
We come complete. Like a seed, we carry everything we need to blossom.
My opportunity to wake up presented itself last year with the ‘failure in my bones’, the shattering of my shoulder. Suddenly I was unable to ‘make myself comfortable’ with any number of distractions; so many worthy causes, so many important things to take care of.
All of a sudden everything went quiet.
I couldn’t move.
I was under orders to stay still.
It was extended.
It went beyond any long-term sitting meditation practice.
And there was the pain. Pain that was indescribable as my body mustered all of its strength to put me back together again, despite the surgeon telling me that this was a “Humpty-Dumpty fall’ … in other words … don’t expect to be put back together again. He set the bar for my recovery. He told me what I could expect. Inside of me, there was a rising up. This voice whispered, “He doesn’t know me.” I began to listen to that part. That part has led me to these posts.
OMG! my heart breaks for you, for what you went through at that early age……….as you couldn’t stop that wail, I cannot stop my tears. So very, very sad………….all your emotions, your love, your depth, with nowhere to go under the circumstances and the decisions made by the “not-you’s”. My respect for you just grows and grows, Donna! I am so glad you are writing this story and even more glad that we get to hear it. …..I believe we all are traveling that road with you and growing as we go……
Thank you, Marianne. Thank you for your feelings shared here. When she described her wail, her silent scream awareness, I wept too. Truly sad.
I now have no choice. I now have to set other things aside and make space for her. I have to listen and write down what she brings.
Being inadequately educated, made to feel different and less-than is a form of violence. Having no voice is a kind of death. Being invisible is a heartbreaker.
My eyes well with each of her entries. I sometimes cry (am I feeling empathy or embarrassment?) after publishing a post and remind myself that this is ‘not about me’. This a real-life story that has only been told, by the adult me, in fragments. I am learning that I, the adult, have no real-time recollection of what this young girl-woman lived. I have to acknowledge that she was buried alive.
My heart is so grateful to you for witnessing her story and for everyone who is here as a reader.
I cannot even imagine. My heart reaches for you. You are so incredibly awesome and I am so lucky to have crossed path with you.
Dear Karen … I appreciate your being a reader so much.
I cannot even imagine either.
My heart reaches for her thawing nature.
She has been frozen in space and catatonic in her suspended state.
Now she has a safe space to tell what happened.
I wish her so much well.
You being here witnessing her path and reaching out a hand … gives her permission to breathe a bit more deeply into her experience.
She is no longer invisible.
She is no longer a ghost.
and that was the end of whoever you were.
Hi Karen … yes. The end of whoever she was … stay tuned.
As my adult self, I attempt to hold in mind the three gifts that eventually surface.